Climate science in the docket: a "monkey" trial for our time?

The US Chamber of Commerce says it wants to put the science of climate change on trial. It has petitioned the US Environmental Protection Agency to hold a public hearing to weigh the evidence about the claimed impacts of climate change on human mortality, health and the environment, and on extreme weather events.

It would be the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century, reported the LA Times, quoting Chamber officials. ""It would be evolution versus creationism," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs.

The Chamber is challenging the EPA's proposed finding that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and the environment and contribute to climate change. An on-the-record proceeding "is necessary to narrow the areas of scientific uncertainty, to permit a credible weighing of the scientific evidence and to enable submitters of proof to demonstrate the falsity of some key erroneous claims," the Chamber said in a statement supporting its petition.

The agency has only two choices, the Chamber said: grant the petition or withdraw the endangerment finding entirely.

EPA spokesman Brendan Gifillian said the agency based its finding "on the soundest of peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare."

For its part, the Chamber responded in a posting on its web site that said it is "pushing the agency to reveal the data it used to justify the endangerment proposal. We need to drop the articles of faith and use the entirety of scientific study on the effects of climate change not a sub-set, chosen by the EPA, not for its validity but rather on its ability to forward a policy goal."

That's a little more nuanced than the Chamber's soundbite rhetoric suggested. But taking its public pronouncements at face value, putting science on "trial" is medievalism. And the Scopes trial was hardly an ideal forum for a thoughtful dicussion of evolution science.

The 1925 trial of Tennessee school teacher John Scopes was among the most sensational of the 20th century. It featured an epic confrontation between storied attorney Clarence Darrow, for the defense, and William Jennings Bryan, a three-time candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, for the prosecution.

The jury was not asked to make a legal determination about the validity of evolution science, a task, in any event, that no jury, judicial proceeding or judge is qualified to undertake. Instead, it was asked to decide if Scopes violated a state law that made it unlawful to teach in a state-funded educational institution "any theory that denies the story of the Devine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animal."

After a seven-day trial, the jury deliberated for nine minutes and found Scopes guilty. A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision on a technicality and dismissed what it called "this bizarre case." Eighty-five years later, US may be the only industrialized country, and non-theocracy, where a significant portion of the population rejects the theory of evolution in favor of creationism.

EPA probably is not going to grant the Chamber's request for a quasi-judicial hearing on the validity of the science it relied upon to make its endangerment finding. If it doesn't, you can count on the Chamber to beat the drum about the EPA having something to hide.

But no matter how it plays out, the Chamber can continue to attempt to sow public doubt about the validity of climate science. If, as a result, it undermines regulatory and legislative efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions, the Chamber will count it as a victory.