More than 140 groups and individuals signed onto a letter Monday supporting President Donald Trump’s proposed climate panel to review recent studies on climate change.
The letter’s signatories include conservative think tanks, science groups, scientists such as Ivar Giaever, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, and others. Recent climate science is built on shaky predictions from flawed models, manipulated data and narrative-driven reports, the letter states.
“In our view, an independent review of these reports is long overdue,” the letter, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation, reads. “Serious problems and shortcomings have been raised repeatedly in the past by highly qualified scientists only to be ignored or dismissed by the federal agencies in charge of producing [climate] reports.”
A February report by The Washington Post revealed that top administration officials at the White House, including Trump, are considering creating an independent panel of hand-picked government scientists to review the climate science at the base of federal reports such as the second volume of the National Climate Assessment released in November 2018.
Democrats used the report to push for more government-driven action on climate change while the White House downplayed the report’s importance, saying it was “largely based on the most extreme scenario” of global warming.
“The conclusions and predictions made by these reports are the basis for proposed energy policies that could cost trillions of dollars in less than a decade and tens of trillions of dollars over several decades,” the letter says. “Given the magnitude of the potential costs involved, we think that taking the insular processes of official, consensus science on trust, as has been the case for the past three decades, is negligent and imprudent.”
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the latest volume of the National Climate Assessment to rally support for the Green New Deal, a wide-ranging resolution that called for overhauling U.S. manufacturing, infrastructure, social programs and other areas.
Ocasio-Cortez’s plan is thought to cost trillions or tens of trillions of dollars to enact with substantive policies. The resolution itself is largely filled with ideas and goals, making any hard estimates impossible to measure.
“If the alarmists are truly confident in their claims, they should welcome a review which would put to rest the doubts that have been expressed by climate skeptics. The opposition to a critical review suggests that the alarmists know their case is built on hot air and not on sound science,” Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, said in a statement.
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