Okay, on May 1 1996, US California and Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher complained that money spent on climate research was money “down a rat hole.” )Gelbspan 1998 page 76-7) The context was that the Republicans at this time had become significantly sensitised to climate as a “wedge” issue, and were aware that it was a stick they could beat the Democrats with (having defeated the BTU tax a couple of years earlier, and with a Presidential election in the offing.
They had started attacking the IPCC, which was in the process of doing its Fourth Assessment report, second assessment report. And they knew that Clinton’s administration had agreed to the Berlin mandate that was going to mean that in a couple of years time, the US government was going to be proposing some emissions reductions, perhaps over and above what Gore had already suggested.
There is an underlying antipathy, of course, to impact their to impact science – which is science that tells you the consequences of your extraction – and produ. ction science. And, of course, if they can resist money being spent on impact science, they can say that there isn’t enough evidence to do policy to fix a problem because they’re not sure that it exists, so it’s a win-win for them. They also get to harass and demoralise scientists, which they regard as a fun pastime.
Why this matters
The people who made it harder for the species’ to see its mess have faces and names. To the Hague with them.
What happened next
In early 1997 the US Senate voted 95-0 to say “to hell with any climate treaty that doesn’t force China etc to cut its emissions.”
References
Gelbspan, R. (1998) The Heat is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription. Basic Books;