Climate Scientists plan to speak out against skeptics.

From the LA Times:

Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.

On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

Well for God's sake it is about time! 

The only question is have they waited too long?

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has pledged to hold hearings on the "Politicization of Science," which will consist of a rehashing of the so-called ClimateGate "scandal." He's also called for greater oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency's coming regulations of greenhouse gases. With Issa in charge, the oversight committee will devote a good deal of time to hauling government and university climate scientists before Congress.

Last November's release of thousands of emails stolen from a web server at University of East Anglia in the UK only added fuel to the fire. The emails showed climate scientists on the defensive about attacks from climate deniers, and sometimes acting a bit catty. But selected portions of them were spun in the denialist world as evidence that climate change is actually a giant hoax perpetrated by evil scientists.

For the past year, the story has been blown up by deniers inside and outside of Congress, despite numerous investigations on the part of universities and independent commissions that found no evidence of wrongdoing or fraud. And nothing said in the emails could change the fact that thousands of studies have validated the fact that carbon emissions from human activity are causing the planet to warm. If climate change were a hoax, that would mean that more than 97 percent of scientists in the world who agree with the consensus are party to the conspiracy.

Issa says he just wants a "careful relook" at the science. But that's hardly the tack that he's likely to take, given that he's argued that it's "very clear that [climate scientists] played fast and loose with both the truth and our money." He also indicated that he plans to trot out the same climate deniers that the Republicans have relied on for years—most of whom aren't scientists at all and have been widely discredited. "I think science should always be filled with skeptics, and I want to make sure the skeptics are heard," Issa told The Hill in September.

Of course now that the American people, in their vast ignorance, have put the corporate whores back in power, it means that the energy companies are back in the drivers seat and they can keep fighting to bring in those truckloads of money while actively destroying the planet that we all share.

And sad to say, but our very own write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski will undoubtedly be standing right along with them while they push forward policies that result in the melting of the permafrost that supports Native Alaska villages all over our state, and reduces the sea ice that sustains many of our magnificent Arctic inhabitants.