Tweet
Originally posted to PolluterWatch
Chris Stewart is a climate change denier, newly elected to the house committee on science.
Chris Stewart, a republican from Utah, was recently appointed Chair of the House subcommittee on Science.
This means that Congressman Stewart now has dominion over the EPA, climate change research, and “all activities related to climate.” According to the House Science Committees website, the chair of the energy subcommittee oversees:
“all matters relating to environmental research; Environmental Protection Agency research and development; environmental standards; climate change research and development; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including all activities related to weather, weather services, climate, the atmosphere, marine fisheries, and oceanic research;…”
Unfortunately for the EPA, NOAA, and anyone worried about climate change, Chris Stewart is a climate science denier. Mr. Stewart believes there is “insufficient science” to determine if climate change is caused by humans. He believes this in spite of the fact that the EPA, NOAA, and all experts in the field (which he now oversees), disagrees with him.
For the record, Chris Stewart has no advanced degrees in science. However, before running for congress he was owner and CEO of Shipley Group, a company that trains government workers on environmental issues. Shipley Group actually runs a training on climate change science, and according to the Shipley Group website “Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to understand basic climate change science.” Clearly Mr. Stewart has never taken his company’s training.
Ties to Fossil Fuels
Though Stewart seems to ignore climate change science (while his company profits by teaching it), he does not ignore the fossil fuel industry. In fact he is quite sympathetic to the plight of oil and gas companies. His campaign website claims:
“I am the CEO of a company that works extensively with independent energy producers. I understand how difficult it is to get a drilling permit on federal lands. It is painfully slow, incoherently arbitrary, and always expensive.”
Stewart’s “extensive” knowledge of the fossil fuel industry is not a surprise. His brother, Tim Stewart is a lobbyist for American Capitol Group, a washington DC lobbying firm. American capitol Group lobbies for fossil Fuel interests, like the Western Energy Alliance, a group mainly comprised of fracking and oil companies. Tim Stewart also lobbied for EnergyNorthAmerica, a company he cofounded to lobby for the Fossil Fuel Industry. One EnergyNorthAmerica slide presentation reads:
“The fact that fossil energy and mining are viewed by political “elites” with disfavor, a view driven by acolytes of radical environmentalism, has resulted in damaging laws and regulation and general neglect”
Unsurprisingly, the fossil fuel industry does not ignore Chris Stewart either. One of Stewart’s books (which were published and praised by Glenn Beck), is recommended reading at Koch Industries. Stewart received the maximum possible campaign contribution from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries during his last campaign. He also received considerable support from several Koch and Exxon funded SuperPACs. All told, he received more funding from dirty energy companies and their superPACs than any other single source.
See Chris Stewart’s PolluterWatch profile for more information.
Public domain portrait from Wikimedia Commons.
18 Comments
It appears that this article is very distorted – i.e., propaganda.
When I google:
“chris stewart” “insufficient science”
I get 2 pages of hits – almost all of them are at FireDogLake.com
OTOH, I did find a meatier quote than “insufficient science”, at thinkprogress:
It sure looks to me like he recognizes a potential threat, just not a very pressing one. And, quite rightly, he is raising questions not only about the severity of the threat, but the relative cost of remedial, preventive action vs. dealing directly with whatever fallout may occur. (Bjorn Lomborg has taken this approach. Lomborg has found benefit, overall, from about another 2.3C temperature rise, the opposite, above that point. Anthropogenic CO2 is thought to contribute directly to about half of the recent greening of the earth. It is, after, plant food…. )
An example of “What some people think”, and it’s variance from reality, can be grasped by, e.g., this recent article, How well did Hansen (1988) do?
The questions then arise,
“Who is more in denial – people like Chris Stewart, or whoever posted this article? And of what, precisely, are they in denial of?”
Yup, I do recall how the Tobacco fought tooth and nail to protect their business model. Smoking doesn’t cause cancer! That was the assertion. They lie just as oil whores lie.
Chris Stewart is exactly what the writer says he is, a Carbon lobby shill, nothing more and nothing less.
What? More Co2 = More green? It is not that simple. There are other issues, Nitrogen, Water, and so on.
This is not true:
The so called “Green Revolution” is based on Oil, from water mining (aka: irrigation causing aquifer depletion) to Oil (energy) based fertilizers, especially nitrogenous fertilizers.
Fortunately, most Democrats are not climate change denialists. Many of them–including the president–talk a good game on climate. However, actions speak louder than words, and the action that will speaker louder than all others is the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It’s coming, probably in a sleepy Friday afternoon in the dead of summer.
Does it really matter anymore ?
Chris Lopart Stewart (R- Oil Whore) Science Denier / baldness denier.
I think we should cut Congressman Stewart some slack. No doubt his head was stuck way up inside of his ass during that whole “New York Got Wet” thingy last year. Hence, he very probably would have totally missed it.
And Michelle Bachmann is on the Permanent Select Intelligence Committee? How do these things happen?
One major reason is that Democrats continue their futile search to “reach out” and “find common ground” with this pack of rabid jackals.
I used to think that the Democrats were the 1962 Mets of politics. Now I suspect that they’re the 1919 Black Sox.
This has been a fairly routine Republican m.o. since Reagan. I’m surprised they haven’t appointed Dick Cheney to head up the House’s efforts to advance government transparency and accountability.
What, exactly, is not true? I see absolutely nothing that looks untrue.
Consider the case of rice:
The video I linked to went into non-agricultural greening, which is also occuring (according to the speaker, anyway; I don’t want to dig around for references, but this is hardly a new claim.)
What does Heritage pay you?
Oh, on re-reading, perhaps you consider increased yields on farmland, driven by fossil fuel fertilizers and fossil water irrigation to not be “green”.
I don’t think such a definition of “green” would get widespread acceptance, especially as it seems to imply that higher yields would not have occurred even if you compared with some sort of fossil fuel / fossil water baseline. The rice research I just quoted seems to contradict such a notion, though I haven’t read the details. Also, if non-agricultural lands are greening, with no fossil fuel and fossil water inputs, a priori I would expect a similar effect on farmlands.
Nobody pays me anything to post anything. If you say otherwise, you’re lying.
I don’t know enough about more plants growing or not, but the real issue to me about climate change is that it can also be described as status quo change. There will be winner, losers, and many things not much affected. How much money do you spend to keep the ocean front consistent in Miami safe when there could be beautiful buildings along Hudson Bay in Canada?? Maybe Sarah can’t really see Russian from her house…but maybe she’d like to waterski over to there??
I meant Miami condominiums.. (have agressive autocorrect) and edit button isn’t showing
I keep thinking of Jake La Motta taking a dive for the Mob in RAGING BULL. And the way the PTB have ruined the country is encapsulated very well in the “fuck you pay me” sequence in GOODFELLAS where they bust the restaurant out.