Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2017--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for yielding. I just want to talk a little bit about data. I believe in data. I try to find good information about issues and use that information to inform my work. We need good data. But can we trust the think tanks and public policy groups that hold themselves out as offering solid independent research?

The work at these think tanks and public policy groups is increasingly funded by wealthy corporate interests, and the line between objective scholarly research and pay-for-play studies is becoming blurred. The problem is compounded by the fact that corporate financial support often occurs in the dark. Think about it this way: Companies are required to disclose their expenses when they directly lobby lawmakers. But these same companies are allowed to make huge secret contributions to think tanks, even if they have the same goal of influencing those same lawmakers.

Today, climate deniers have an increasingly difficult time selling their anti-science positions. So a small industry of think tanks has emerged to give the veneer of plausibility to their bizarre views. Take a look at just one organization, the Science and Public Policy Institute. The Science and Public Policy Institute describes its mission as providing ``research and educational materials dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science.''

That seems pretty reasonable. But where is this sound public policy and sound science actually coming from? Well, for several years, the chief science advisor at the Science and Public Policy Institute was a man named Willie Soon, one of the most notorious climate change deniers around. Armed with scientific credentials and a part-time job at the Smithsonian Institution, Soon churned out paper after paper, disagreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are driving climate change.

Eventually it was revealed that--surprise, surprise--Soon had accepted $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry. Exxon, the American Petroleum Institute, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and coal giant company, Southern Company, made payments to Soon, payments that he rarely disclosed when promoting his climate change denial research.

In other words, Soon was raking in fossil fuel cash by producing research helpful to the fossil fuel industry. Great deal. Willie Soon left the Science and Public Policy Institute a few years ago.

These days, the most prominent figure at the organization is Christopher Monckton, the think tank's chief policy advisor. So let's ask the question here: Who is Christopher Monckton? Oh, boy, Christopher Monckton is a former politician from the UK. He has presented himself as a member of the House of Lords, a claim that is so off base that the House of Lords was forced to do something that it had never done before, and that is issue a statement saying: No, he is not part of the House of Lords, and he should stop lying about it.

Monckton used to represent the ultraconservative, anti-immigrant UK Independence Party that recently led the Brexit campaign. In fact, Monckton thought Brexit was such a good idea that he has also called for a Texit, as he puts it, pushing for Texas to secede from the United States to protect itself against Muslim and Latino immigrants.

Monckton is clear about where he stands on climate change and on the people who are concerned about it. He said that global efforts to fight climate change are part of a ``totalitarian'' plot to create a ``world government,'' and he has compared climate change activists to ``Hitler youth.''

To be clear, these allegations of government overreach are coming from someone who believes that reading the Koran out loud should be a prosecutable offense in the United States and who once called for everyone with AIDS to be rounded up and permanently quarantined.

Now he has backed away from that last idea, but don't worry. Monckton has found a new idea to address AIDS. He claims to have invented a miracle cure that can treat everything from HIV to multiple sclerosis to the flu. You can't make this stuff up.

The fact is, Monckton is not a climate scientist or a scientist of any kind. His degrees are in classics and journalism. Actual scientists who have taken a look at his work have found his conclusion to be completely made up.

So why does it matter that scientific posers like Christopher Monckton and industry-funded hacks like Willie Soon are running around saying crazy things about climate change? Well, I will tell you why it matters. It matters because by attaching themselves to the Science and Public Policy Institute and other credible-sounding think tanks, people start to take them seriously.

You don't think so? Monckton has testified in front of Congress three times, each time representing the Science and Public Policy Institute. A former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee called him ``one of the most knowledgeable, if not the most knowledgeable, expert from a skeptical point of view on this issue of climate change.'' Soon's work has been repeatedly cited by influential climate change deniers, those in Congress and elsewhere.

As Senator Whitehouse has pointed out, Monckton, Soon, and the Science and Public Policy Institute are part of a much larger network of pseudoscientific researchers and organizations who get paid to spin a web of denials about the science behind climate change. It is a network that has been funded by the fossil fuel industry and by its friends.

But there is no getting around it. Climate change is real. It is caused by humans. If we are going to address it in a meaningful way, we need to take decisive action now. This is why the fake science think thanks are so dangerous. They throw enough fake facts into the process to justify inaction, enough fake facts to excuse inaction, enough fake facts to let every politician in the pocket of Big Oil or Big Coal keep right on blocking meaningful action while the earth slowly chokes on its own filth.

It is time to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and its well- funded PR efforts and say enough is enough. Our children's futures are at stake. We will not sit on the sidelines while big fossil fuel companies call the shots here in Washington.

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