I appreciate that the show isn’t shy about about connecting Cole’s affection to the wild to a political worldview. “He was a passionate environmentalist,” one of the people eulogizing him says in news reports of his disappearance. But the show isn’t entirely clear on its relationship to that worldview. Cole’s explorations got him killed, or at least disappeared, and it’s clear that the time he sacrificed to his explorations that he could have spent with his family has left his son Lincoln with mixed feelings about the wilderness his father loved. “He missed my life to inspire a billion people I could give a shit about. There’s no magic out there,” he tells his mother. And later, he tells Lena, the daughter of another explorer who’s gone missing with Emmet, that “Science isn’t a great big wonder anymore. Discoveries are made in the lab, not the jungle.” It’s a perspective that downplays preserving the wild and focuses instead on the importance of human ingenuity and industry. But rather than just letting that statement sit, Lincoln gets pulled back into the jungle as his father sees it. Flooded by dragonflies, he admits to Lena, “Okay, that was pretty cool.”

That same canniness is present in the show’s examination of the ethics of reality television. Tess, Emmet’s wife and Lincoln’s mother, first shows up as the love of Emmet’s life. When we next see her, she’s meeting Lincoln in a bar, bringing cameras in to film her conversation with her grieving son who believes he’s just buried his father, telling him “They won’t pay if you won’t go.” Her behavior’s repulsive, but it’s also driven by need rather than pure greed: this is the way she can finance the search for her missing husband. Lincoln is surly around the crew once they’re on the river. “So Lincoln, tell us about your relationship with your father,” a producer asks him, only to get the entirely appropriate response of “Go fuck yourself.” (A side note, I appreciate that the characters are swearing like they would if they were real humans under stressful situations.) But by the end of the show, Lincoln’s playing along. After a touching, and theoretically private, moment between Tess and Lincoln, she points out that there’s a camera watching them—but he knows. She may be using him to get back to the river, but Lincoln has an agenda of his own.

There’s been a lot of conversation about reality television as horror show, especially in the wake of Russell Armstrong’s suicide. But things like The River and The Hunger Games are upping the stakes and trying to find a limit to what we’d let ourselves be entertained by—and what people will do to entertain us.

Simply put, “We the People” are fed up and have already entered into what is in effect a Second American Revolution because judges and other government officials behave as if they are “above the law,” in effect nobility who can do as they please. . . . In short, the comments of Chief Justice Roberts [suggesting that Kagan does not need to recuse] are an affront to the high ethical standards of our Founding Fathers and amount to a subversion of our laws. They are disgraceful at best and at worst amount to obstruction of justice. They are the result of someone who became Chief Justice by first ingratiating himself to the “Washington establishment,” and now seeks to act as the Chief Justice not just of the Court, but of this same establishment – which for decades has pushed the nation to the brink of revolution by representing mostly its own interests, perpetuating and consolidating its power and selling out “We the People.” This is why in large part the nation is in a deep crisis; the majority of Americans have little if any respect for either the Supreme Court or our judiciary as a whole, notwithstanding their current similar disdain for the other two branches of government.

The situation is as bad as in 1776 when “We the People” declared independence from King George III and the British Crown. In the 236 years since the start of the first American Revolution, our current ruling class, which is not of the mettle of our Founding Fathers, – who pledged their sacred honor, fortunes and risked their lives to create a free nation – has come full circle. Today, the Supreme Court and the other two branches of government have assumed the role of a “royalty” – in some ways worse than even King George III – who feel free to ignore the legitimate interests and grievances of “We the People,” because they believe they are a “protected class” and above the law.

So, to be clear, the claim here is that far-right Chief Justice John Roberts is part of a giant conspiracy to help Kagan preserve President Obama’s chief legislative accomplishment, that this conspiracy is “in some ways worse” than monarchy, and that the American people are presently responding to it with a “Second American Revolution.” And this is what passes as legal argument among the Kagan recusal crowd. Sadly, this argument is only slightly better than the absurd claim that the Affordable Care Act itself is unconstitutional.

As Gingrich himself admitted later in the interview, he was not exonerated on every count. While most of the initial charges against him were dropped, he was sanctioned on one count of flouting tax laws relating to a college course he taught that received non-profit status even though it was political in nature.

And contrary to Gingrich’s claim that House Republicans voted to reprimand him simply to move on, many said at the time that they were very disturbed by Gingrich’s actions. “Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) at the time. “If [the voters] see more of that, they will question our judgment.” Even Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), who cast the lone dissenting vote on the ethics committee against charging Gingrich, said the Speaker made “real mistakes but they shouldn’t be hanging offenses.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, who has endorsed Romney and often speaks for him as campaign surrogate, made a similar statement on a conference call with reporters yesterday, saying the ethics records were a “very important piece of opaque material” that could hurt Gingrich in November if he won the nomination.

But Romney escalated the issue today when asked about it in South Carolina:

REPORTER: Others have mentioned that Newt Gingrich should release his congressional ethics report. Do you think he would release those?

ROMNEY: Of course he should, of course he should. One of the issues in this race raised last night by Rick Santorum was the fact that he was pushed out of the House by his fellow members. I think over 80 percent of Republican Congressman voted to reprimand the Speaker of the House. The first time in history.

Watch it:

“That must be so damning that that’s the kind of thing that would be an October surprise,” Sununu said yesterday.

Gingrich was the first House speaker in American history to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. A total of 84 ethics charges were filed against him on a host of issues, including violating federal tax law and House ethics rules. Most of the charges were dropped, but he was eventually sanctioned $300,000 by a overwhelming 395–28 House vote, with included many of Gingrich’s allies voting against him.

The 1,280-page ethics report is available online here, but there are many documents used in the House Ethics Committee investigation that have yet been publicly released.

In order to defend himself against this ethics complaint, Gableman received tens of thousands of dollars in free legal fees from a law firm that frequently litigates in front of his court. Yet Gableman has continued to sit on cases brought by that firm — even casting the deciding vote allowing Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attack on collective bargaining to go into effect.

In response to these two incidents, a member of the state legislature has now introduced a resolution calling for Gableman to be removed from the bench:

A Democratic state lawmaker circulated a resolution Wednesday calling for the ouster of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman because he presided over cases involving a law firm that had represented him without charging legal fees.

State Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, an attorney who is also running for Congress for the district covering the city of Madison, asked her colleagues to sign on to the resolution by Jan. 18. The state constitution allows for the Legislature to remove a judge from office with a two-thirds majority vote in both the Senate and Assembly.

Although Roys’ resolution is very unlikely to receive the two-thirds majority it requires in the GOP-controlled state legislature, Wisconsin’s voters are not powerless if they agree with Roys that Gableman’s actions go too far. Because Gableman has served more than a year of his current term in elected office, Wisconsin election law allows him to be recalled.

by Donald A. Brown, cross-posted from the Penn State Climate Ethics Blog

Over the next few weeks, ClimateEthics will take a deeper look at what has been referred to as the “climate change disinformation campaign” through an ethical lens. Although ClimateEthics has examined these issues briefly before, see: An Ethical Analysis of the Climate Change Disinformation Campaign: Is This A New Kind of Assault on Humanity?, this is the first in a series of posts that will examine this phenomenon in depth.

Later entries will look in more detail at specific tactics used by this movement. Because skepticism in science should be encouraged rather than vilified, the last entry in this series will make recommendations about norms that should guide responsible skepticism in climate science.

The climate disinformation campaign can be understood as a movement of organizations and individuals that can be counted on to systematically attack mainstream climate change science in ways that radically depart from responsible scientific skepticism. In the next entry we will look more closely at what we mean by a “campaign” or “movement.”

This series is based upon the assumption that skepticism in science is essential to increase understanding of the natural world. Yet, ideologically based disinformation is ethically abhorrent particularly in regard to behaviors about which there is credible scientific support for the conclusion that human activities threaten life and the ecological systems on which life depend. This report focuses on specific tactics that have been deployed in the climate change disinformation campaign. It is not a critique of responsible skepticism. The tactics that will be examined in detail include:

• Lying Or Reckless Disregard For the Truth
• Focusing On Unknowns While Ignoring The Knowns
• Specious Claims Of “Bad” Science
• Creation of Front Groups
• Manufacturing Bogus Climate Science
• Think Tank Campaigns
• Misleading PR Campaigns.
• Creation of Astroturf Groups
• Cyber-bullying Scientists and Journalists

The series will demonstrate that the controversy over climate change science that has unfolded in the last twenty years is a strong example of the urgent need to create new societal norms about how to deal with scientific uncertainty for human problems about which there is a justifiable scientific basis for great concern but uncertainty about the consequences of human actions.

The philosopher Hans Jonas argued that scientific uncertainty about the consequences of technologies that have great potential for good and harm create new, profound ethical challenges for the human race. (Jonas, 1979). This is so because although humans are now capable of engaging in technologically mediated behavior that may create great harm as well as good, traditional ethical reasoning relied upon through the course of recent human civilization is not up to the challenges of dealing with scientific uncertainty that needs to be considered in response to these new technologies. That is, because of the magnitude and power of these technologies that humans can now harness, humans are often unable to predict the extent of the harms that may be created by the use of these powerful new forces because of the complexity of ecological systems and the scope of the kinds of impacts that may be caused by these technologies.

In light of the fact that accurate predictions may not be made about whether great harms will be caused by these new technologies when decisions must be made about them, Jonas claimed that the ethics of dealing with scientific uncertainty may be the most pressing ethical problem facing the human race.

Jonas believed that previous ethical reasoning is challenged when humans are confronted with the potentially harmful consequences of technology but uncertainties about the nature of the harms, uncertainties that could take decades to be resolved if they can be resolved at all. Because of this, Jonas argued that ethics requires that humans must apply a “heuristics of fear” to their deliberations about whether they should deploy new potentially harmful technologies about which there is reasonable scientific basis for concern. That is, decision-makers should assume the harms will occur if there is a scientific basis for concern that significant harms could occur. Jonas claimed that in such situations, precaution is both ethically mandated and may be necessary for human survival. Furthermore, precaution in these situations requires that those who propose dangerous activities assume the burden of proof to show that the activities are safe. This is especially true for human behaviors that could create catastrophic harms. When burdens of proof should shift is a complex ethical question but without doubt an ethical question at its core, not a “value-neutral” scientific matter alone. To determine when burdens should shift, ethics would require that other questions be examined such as who may be harmed, have they consented to be put at risk, what is at stake, will waiting to resolve the uncertainties make the problem much worse, who wants to use uncertainty as an excuse for continuing dangerous behavior, what is the probability that great harms could be triggered by the behavior in question, and other questions.

Climate change is an extraordinary example of the kind of problem that Jonas was worried about. That is so because it is a problem about which there will always be some uncertainty about the precise impacts from human-induced warming, yet these impacts are potentially catastrophic particularly for tens of millions of current people and innumerable members of future generations. Therefore great care must be taken in considering uncertainty about climate change. That is, climate change is a problem about which some facts are uncertain (although as we shall see, there is a strong scientific consensus about many aspects of this problem), yet the stakes are extraordinarily high.

If Jonas is right, great care is called for when considering human responsibilities for climate change particularly in regard to how scientific uncertainty about climate change impacts are considered, discussed, and identified. Jonas foresaw the ethical challenges entailed by decision-making in the face of uncertainty for a problem like climate change but perhaps underestimated how economic interests aligned with the technologies threatening humanity would distort public discussion of the potential harms created by human activities.

This series will both review the climate change disinformation campaign in light of these concerns and make recommendations about what should be expected from scientific skepticism in light of the issues of concern to Jonas. The series will further argue, in light of the tactics of the disinformation campaign, that deeper societal reflection about the norms that should guide public discussions of scientific uncertainty is urgently needed.

II. Climate Science and Uncertainty

Climate change must be understood to be at its core an ethical problem because: (a) it is a problem caused by some people in one part of the world who are threatening people who are often far away in time and space and poor, (b) the harms to these victims are potentially catastrophic, and (c) the victims can’t protect themselves by petitioning their governments. The victims must hope that those causing the problem will see that their ethical duties to those whom they may be harming requires them to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

Because climate change is an ethical problem, those causing the problem may not use self-interest alone as justification for policy responses; they must fulfill responsibilities, obligations and duties to others. Because climate change is a moral problem, those who are putting others at risk through no fault of their own have a special duty to be precautious about scientific uncertainty. If anything, the need for care in considering harms from powerful technology recognized by Jonas is even more salient in the case of a problem like climate change because it is a problem that is caused by some that are putting others at great risk.that have not consented to be threatened.

This series should not be construed to discourage scientific skepticism. Skepticism is both the oxygen and catalyst of science. Climate science continues to need skeptical approaches to current understandings of how human activities may affect the climate to help scientists understand what we don’t know about human impacts on the climate system.

However, a review of the tactics used by the scientific disinformation campaign will reveal that these tactics can’t be construed as the application of reasonable scientific skepticism, but, as we shall see, often constitute malicious, morally reprehensible disinformation. Yet these tactics provide important lessons about norms that should guide reasonable skepticism.

This series should also not be interpreted to discourage free speech. Some people that have echoed the misinformation on climate science produced by others are simply repeating what others have said. Yet free speech is morally reprehensible if it deceives people about vitally important matters. For instance, it would be morally reprehensible to tell a child laying on a railroad track that no train was coming if the person telling the child did not have strong evidence for the claim that no train was actually coming. For this reason, a case can be made that despite free speech, all public claims about climate change should be made carefully. Although all people are free to state their views on the dangers of climate change, if they are claiming that they are experts to convince a wider public about what climate science entails, they have a special duty to be very careful about their claims.

Now it is undoubtedly true that a few that have argued in support of climate change policies have exaggerated what the consensus science is saying about likely impacts of human activities that release greenhouse gases. A notable example of this was a movie, “The Day After Tomorrow,” that depicted extremely rapid climate change at rates far faster than would be supported any reasonable scientific speculation. Yet, the disinformation campaign discussed in this series is not simply attacking hyperbole on the part of those that support climate change policies, they are attacking the consensus view which has been based, as we shall see, upon peer-reviewed science, not on the worst hyperbole of climate change policy proponents. That is, this series examines the tactics of the disinformation campaign in relation to the view of mainstream science that has largely been established through the process of peer-review. However, we are not claiming that peer-reviewed science is the final word on any scientific issue, only that peer-review is the scientific process that has been established to prevent unsupportable scientific claims. Those who believe that the peer-reviewed literature on any scientific subject is untrustworthy must themselves subject their claims to peer-review particularly in the case of a problem like climate change, a matter about which the stakes are extraordinarily high and great care about uncertainty claims is ethically warranted.

Although one can find hyperbolic claims about climate change from those who support climate change policies, however, the consensus view does assume that human-induced climate change could be very catastrophic for some people and places if not most of the world. This is not hyperbole, it is where the mainstream science points as potential consequences of business-as-usual. Yet, to say that catastrophic consequences are possible is not to claim they are absolutely certain. All reasonable climate scientists will admit that there may be negative feedbacks in the climate system that we don’t understand. Yet the mainstream scientists claim that these negative feedbacks are increasingly unlikely. These worries are not hyperbolic, however, just because they are not proven. In fact, as we shall see, ethics actually requires people to act responsibly once it becomes evident that their actions could cause great harm. As a matter of ethics, responsibility does not start only when it is proven that behavior will cause great harm. For instance, laws of reckless endangerment that have been enacted around the world make dangerous behavior criminal. Defendants in reckless endangerment cases may not defend themselves on the grounds that the prosecution did not prove that their behavior would cause harm, the prosecution need only prove that the behavior could cause serious harm. That is potential harm is relevant to ethical considerations.

To understand the full moral unacceptability of the disinformation campaign, one must know something about the state of climate science. There is a “consensus” view on climate science that has been articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (IPCC, 2010a)

The IPCC was established by World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 1988 to assess for governments the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, an identify its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. (IPCC, 2010a) IPCC does not do original research but synthesizes and summarizes the extant peer-reviewed climate change science to make recommendations for governments and policy makers. (IPCC, 2010a)

Any government that is a member of the WHO or UNEP may be a member of IPCC. Currently 194 countries are members of the IPCC (IPCC, 2011). The coordinating work of the IPCC is the IPCC general assembly, where every member country has one vote. The IPCCs summary for policy makers requires unanimous agreement. Governments that have often opposed international action on climate change on scientific grounds because of economic concerns including the United States and Saudi Arabia, not to mention China and India who have been afraid that climate change policies could prevent their governments from lifting their poor out of poverty have the same power as governments that have traditionally strongly supported international action on climate change. Governments supporting international action on cliamte change include those in the European Union and many of the small island developing states including the Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Maldives. Given that the IPCC’s reports must be unanimously approved by all member countries, including representatives of countries that have for most of the history of international climate change negotiations opposed establishing international enforceable climate change regimes, one can conclude that there is broad consensus about IPCC’s scientific conclusions among all nations around the world. In light of the consensus process, it is not credible to conclude that IPCC’s conclusions are biased to overstating the risks of climate change. In addition, IPCC ties its conclusions to peer-reviewed evidence in thousands of foot-notes in their reports.

The first IPCC assessment report was published in 1990; the second in 1996; the third in 2001; and the fourth in 2007. Each IPCC report drew conclusions linking human activities to observable warming with increasing levels of certainty. (IPCC, 2010a) The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was completed in early 2007. Like previous reports, this assessment consisted of four reports, three of them from each of its working groups. Working Group I assesses the physical science basis for climate change. Working Group II examines climate change impacts. Working Group III assesses options for mitigating climate change through limiting greenhouse gas emissions or enhancing activities that remove carbon from the atmosphere. (IPCC, 2010b) In addition to the reports of these three Working Groups, AR4 also included a Synthesis Report. (IPCC, 2010c)

The Working Group I Summary for Policymakers in AR4 concluded that human actions were causing dangerous climate change with higher levels of certainty than in previous reports. Its key conclusions were that:
•Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
• Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increases in anthropogenic (human) emissions greenhouse gas concentrations.
• Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise will continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations are stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century.
• The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
• World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century. As a result:

o Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in.) during the 21st century.
o There is a confidence level greater than 90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall.
o There is a confidence level greater than 66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides.

• Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise for more than a millennium.
• Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years.
(IPCC 2007: Summary for Policy Makers)
Throughout this series we will refer to these IPCC conclusions about climate change as the “consensus” view because, as we will see, this view has been supported by almost all scientific organizations with expertise in relevant climate change science issues and most scientists that actually do climate change research.

By the early 1990s, a ”consensus” had developed in the scientific community that warming had occurred and that humans were at least partially responsible. (Edwards 2007:6)

Yet, criticisms of IPCC’s conclusions have been frequently made by skeptical scientists, some of whom are affiliated with conservative think tanks, while others are scientists playing the appropriate role of a scientific skeptic, a role necessary for science to advance, that is producing peer-reviewed scientific papers that challenge conventional scientific wisdom.

Skeptical claims about the consensus view are of many types and range from claims that IPCC is overestimating adverse climate change impacts to assertions that there is no evidence that observed warming is attributable to human actions. Some of the ideological climate change deniers discussed later in this series have argued that the entire body of science supporting the consensus view is a hoax.

Recent reports have concluded that the vast majority of scientists actually doing research in the field support the consensus scientific view. For example, a 2009 study–published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States–polled 1,372 climate researchers and resulted in the following two conclusions.

(i) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and
(ii) The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
(Anderegga et. al 2010)

Another poll performed in 2009 of 3,146 of known 10,257 Earth scientists concluded that 76 out of 79 climatologists who “listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change” believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and 75 out of 77 believe that human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. (Doran and Zimmerman, 2009)

In response to arguments from some climate change skeptics, many scientific organizations with expertise relevant to climate change have endorsed the consensus position that “most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities” including the following:

• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Astronomical Society
• American Chemical Society
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Physics
• American Meteorological Society
• American Physical Society
• Australian Coral Reef Society
• Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO
• British Antarctic Survey
• Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
• Environmental Protection Agency
• European Federation of Geologists
• European Geosciences Union
• European Physical Society
• Federation of American Scientists
• Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
• Geological Society of America
• Geological Society of Australia
• International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)
• International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Royal Meteorological Society
• Royal Society of the UK
(Skeptical Science, 2010)

The Academies of Science from nineteen different countries all endorse the consensus view. Eleven countries have signed a joint statement endorsing the consensus position.

They are:
• Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil)
• Royal Society of Canada
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Academie des Sciences (France)
• Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
• Indian National Science Academy
• Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
• Science Council of Japan
• Russian Academy of Sciences
• Royal Society (United Kingdom)
• National Academy of Sciences (USA):
(Skeptical Science, 2010):

From this it can be seen that the consensus view articulated by IPCC is strongly supported by the vast majority of climate change scientists that actually do research on human-induced climate change and organizations comprised of scientists with relevant climate change expertise. For this reason, the IPCC consensus position is entitled to strong respect that, at the very minimum, climate change poses a legitimate significant threat to human well-being and the natural resources on which life depends.

In fact, some critics have contended that the IPCC reports tend to underestimate climate change dangers and risks because the process that leads to the IPCC conclusions give representatives from countries that have consistently opposed the adoption of international climate regimes power to pressure the IPCC scientists to report only the lowest common denominator. (For a discussion of the limits of IPCC, see, Brown, 2008) In fact observations of actual greenhouse gas atmospheric concentrations, temperatures, and sea level rise are near or exceeding IPCC worst-case predictions. One recent comparison of greenhouse gas concentrations, temperatures, and sea-level rise observations versus predictions concluded:

Overall, these observational data underscore the concerns about global climate change. Previous projections, as summarized by IPCC, have not exaggerated but may in some respects even have underestimated the climate changes that have been observed. (Rahmstorf et al., 2007)

It is important as a mater of ethics to remember that if the consensus view is wrong, it could be wrong in two directions. That is, not only could IPCC be overstating the magnitude and timing of climate change in the future, they may be understating the harshness of climate change harms..

However, even if one concludes that there is a strong scientific basis for the mainstream scientific conclusion that human-induced climate change is a great threat to people around the world and the ecological systems on which they depend, this does not mean that responsible scientific skepticism may not play an important role in climate change science in the future. Yet, as we shall see, much of the ideological climate disinformation that has been prominent in the climate change debate in the United States and a few other developed countries is sometimes deeply ethically abhorrent.

This consensus is not a consensus on all scientific issues in climate science; it is a consensus about the fact that the planet is warming, that this warming is largely human caused, and that under business-as-usual we are headed to potentially catastrophic impacts for humans and the natural resources on which life depends. Furthermore, these harms are likely to be most harshly experienced by many of the Earth’s poorest people.

Mainstream climate science openly acknowledges uncertainties that could affect the warming response of the global climate system to increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. As Hulme notes:

Some uncertainty originates from incomplete understanding of how the physical climate works-the effect of atmospheric aerosols on clouds, for example, or the role of deep oceans in altering surplus heat exchange. Some of these uncertainties can be reduced over tie, or at least quantified formally. Other sources of uncertainty emerge from the innate unpredictability of large, complex, chaotic systems such as the global atmosphere and oceans. (Holme, 2009 :83)

In fact all uncertainties about the impacts of human activities on the climate system will likely never completely be resolved. This is so because, the climate system is comprised of many interlocking systems including the atmosphere, the oceans, the cryosphere (ice and snow), the land surface (soil and reflecting substances), and the biosphere (ecosystems, agriculture, forests, etc). (Edwards, xv) It is also a chaotic system which means that small changes in inputs can create large system responses as thresholds are exceeded that create non-linear responses. It is very unlikely that humans will ever be able to eliminate all uncertainties that have confounded accurate climate system predictions. Yet the scientific basis for concluding that humans are affecting the climate system in a way that could cause harsh consequences for tens of millions of people is a matter about which a strong scientific consensus has emerged.

The next entry in this series will examine several specific tactics of the climate change disinformation campaign though an ethical lens after discussing the nature of the disinformation movement. The third in the series will examine other tactics of that have been deployed to undermine mainstream science. The last entry will make recommendations for responsible climate science skepticism in light of what was discussed earlier in the series and with full recognition that skepticism should be encouraged provided it plays by the rules of science.

Donald Brown is Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science and Law at Penn State University. This piece was originally published at the Penn State Climate Ethics blog.

References:

Agrarwala, Shardul and Stiener Anderson, 1999, Indispensability and Indefensibility?:
The United States In Climate Treaty Negotiations. ” 2w Governance 5, December 1999).

Brown, Donald, 2008, Ethical Issues Raised by the Work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Report On The Bali Workshop (COP-13). Climate Ethics. http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2008/02/report-on-the-workshop-at-the-13th-conference-of-the-parties-of-the-united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change.html

Doran, Peter T.; Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, 2009. Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, EOS 90 (3): 22-23

Edwards, Paul, 2006, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and The Politics of Global Warming, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), 2007, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, Working Group I, Summary for Policy Makers,

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spm.html

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), 2010a, History,

http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_history.htm

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), 2010c,
ttp://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm#1

Jonas. H. 1979, Imperative of Responsibility, In Search for Ethics In A Technological Age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Rahmstorf. Stepen, Anny Cazenave, John A. Church, James E. Hansen,
Ralph F. Keeling, David E. Parker, Richard C. J. Somervilles, 2007, Recent Climate Observations Compared to Projections, Science, Vol 316 , May 2007

Skeptical Science, 2010, What the Science Says: shttp://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm (retrieved, Jan 3, 2011)

Roberts Is Probably Right About Recusal

Most commentators have focused on a single line in Roberts’ report: “I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” and this line almost certainly refers to calls for Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan to remove themselves from the Affordable Care Act litigation. It is certainly helpful that Roberts is now the second leading Republican to reject the Affordable Care Act’s opponents’ thinly veiled attempt to rig the lawsuit challenging this law by whining that left-of-center Justice Kagan needs to recuse herself. Likewise, although the case for Justice Thomas’ recusal is far less frivolous, it depends upon evidence that Thomas’ wife is currently earning substantial income to try to get health reform repealed. Until such evidence emerges, there is no way to prove that Thomas must remove himself from the case.

A Thinly Veiled Threat?

Roberts’ report defends his colleagues’ ethical behavior, but it also includes several pointed reminders that the Supreme Court does not believe itself to be powerless if elected officials are not satisfied by Roberts’ defense. Roberts points out, correctly, that the Supreme Court is created by the Constitution, but lower courts are created by Congress. As such, Congress has more authority to regulate the conduct of lower court judges then they do the justices themselves. The chief justice also hints several times that, should Congress enact new ethical laws regulating the Supreme Court, the Court will bite back.

He notes that the Judicial Conference of the United States, which writes many of the ethical guidelines for lower court judges, has “no mandate to prescribe rules or standards” for the Supreme Court. He points out that “[t]he Court has never addressed whether Congress may impose” financial disclosure requirements on the justices. And he adds that “the limits of Congress’s power to require recusal have never been tested.” Roberts never comes out and calls congressional regulation of the Supreme Court unconstitutional — indeed, he notes that his “judicial responsibilities preclude [him] from commenting on any ongoing debates about particular issues or the constitutionality of any enacted legislation or pending proposals.” Nevertheless, it is tough not to read his report as a warning that his Court may be prepared to nullify any attempt to tighten the ethical rules guiding its members.

Caesar’s Wife No Longer Lives At The Supreme Court

Ultimately, however, if Congress does decide to trigger a constitutional showdown over Supreme Court ethics, Roberts should look to his own conservative colleagues first in deciding who to blame. Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito’s participation in conservative political fundraisers is both inappropriate and contrary to the ethical guidelines that Roberts calls the “starting point and a key source of guidance for the Justices.” And nothing can excuse Thomas’ many ethical lapses. Among other things, the tens of thousands of dollars in gifts Thomas received from wealthy benefactors are difficult to distinguish from a very similar gifting scandal that forced Justice Abe Fortas off the Supreme Court in 1969.

Fortas was a liberal justice, and he served under liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren — just as Thomas is very conservative and serves under conservative Chief Justice Roberts. Yet the parallels end there. When the full breadth of Fortas’ gift-taking came out, Warren did not just write a report defending the Supreme Court’s right to police it’s own ethics — he policed those ethics himself by helping push Fortas off the Court.

A newly released letter, however, suggests that Gableman managed to violate ethics laws in hiring legal counsel to defend him against these allegations that he violated ethics laws:

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman received free legal service worth thousands of dollars from one of Wisconsin’s largest law firms as it defended him against an ethics charge, according to a letter released Thursday by the firm.

The state’s ethics code says state officials cannot receive anything of value for free because of their position. And a separate ethics code specifically for judges says they cannot accept gifts from anyone who is likely to appear before them.

A former state ethics official on Thursday said authorities should thoroughly investigate how the deal between Gableman and attorney Eric McLeod of Michael Best & Friedrich worked because Gableman did not end up paying any attorneys fees. [...]

Michael Best has five cases currently before the Supreme Court. Gableman is participating in all of them. Gableman did not respond Thursday to a request for an interview.

Sadly, this is hardly the only ethical tangle to emerge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since Gableman’s election allowed conservatives to seize control over it. With Gableman casting the key fourth vote, the court’s conservatives voted to allow corporate lobbyists to write the court’s ethics rule enabling justices to sit on cases involving their major campaign donors.

Earlier this season, we discussed an uncomfortable question to raise about television’s favorite insanely enthusiastic public servant: is Leslie Knope corrupt or unethical? I was glad to see Parks and Recreation take up at least a small aspect of that question, and even gladder to see it come in a surprisingly sweet episode that moved both Leslie and Ben forward. Also, my mother used to work for Bella Abzug, so any reference to her on any show ever automatically earns a piece of popular culture a half-grade bump from yours truly, even if no reference will ever be as awesomely surreal as the reality.

The thing that worked so nicely about this episode was that it allowed everyone to pay appropriate prices for their actions, while also moving them forward to better things. A lot of this season has been about Leslie acknowledging her limitations, whether she’s steamrolling Ben or reassessing her sense of her own history. Tonight, she had to face up to the fact that she’d done something wrong, not just in the fact of hiding her relationship with Ben, but in the process of it. Even if George’s wife “said my skin was luminous,” it wasn’t okay for Leslie to buy off another city employee to keep a secret that probably wouldn’t have been a problem if she’d just disclosed it in the first place. In typical Leslie fashion, she thinks she should get fired rather than get suspended for two weeks. And she probably will pay a price for it, electorally. But the self-knowledge is probably worth it.

And I also think it’s a good thing for Ben that he lost his job. The show’s acknowledged repeatedly that he’s not necessarily professionally fulfilled in Pawnee, a little town that would have been just another State of the Public Service cross for him as he attempts to rebuild his credibility. It’s good that he’s been shaken loose, whether because he can now manage her campaign openly, rebuilding a bit more of his credentials, or because he can do what I wish Parks and Recreation had done with Tom, and used him as a basis for expanding our sense of Pawnee, a necessary move to broaden and unify the world as Leslie moves out of the Parks department.

On an emotional level, it was also nice, and well-executed, to see the hearing level Ben and Leslie’s relationship up a bit. “The first time we returned was the first time we kissed each other on each other’s mouths. It was excellent. That was unnecessary to add,” Leslie tells the ethics committee, carried away by her ability to speak publicly about the relationship for the first time. “I received adorable nicknames and amazing backrubs.” And Ben puts on the record along with on the line the fact that he loves Leslie, prompting her to reciprocate. “The official record has now, annoyingly, been reopened,” Ethel Beavers reads in the snow as a preface to Leslie’s declaration, the perfect bureaucratic soundtrack to two government nerds’ romance.

I’m also glad to see Chris get an emotional arc that plays off the hilarious set of quirks the character’s been given, but that he’s all too often to reduced to. “I admire and respect you and dragging you through an ethics trial is filling me with sadness. I have never felt so low,” Chris explains to Leslie as he set up a herbalist’s menagerie and some exercise equipment in preparation for her hearing. “I ate an unreasonable amount of Saint John’s Wort.” Chris is probably the only person in the series who loves public service more deeply, and with more cheerful enthusiasm than Leslie — Ben matches her passion, but not her demonstrativeness. And I thought “The Trial of Leslie Knope” did a nice job of bringing out the work it takes for Chris to keep himself in his normal heightened state. He’s not overreacting to the idea that he’s getting older here — he’s genuinely sad that he has to let go someone he’s worked with and cared for longer than we have.

And finally, I appreciated all the nice little Pawnee moments throughout the episode, the monstrous portrait, Sarah Nelson Quindell’s principled stand on elbow exposure, the laws governing the caning of Presbyterians and the use of the sidewalks by black people, the apocalyptic mural of Pawnee’s history. I’d particularly like to know who does Pawnee’s wacky public art. It’s part of what’s made this one of the most genuinely realized and eccentric settings on television.

Yes, I would like to see [a bill banning insider trading] come to the floor. I would hope that it’s not as necessary as the hoop-dee-doo over it makes it seem. But I do think that we all disclose what we do and that’s really important. And everything that we do is a matter of public record, so it’s in the public domain, so it’s not so insider, but to the extent that they — and I’ll be interested to see how the hearing comes up with it — but I’m sure they’ll come up with something that removes all doubt, that this is not something that is acceptable in Congress. And when they do, to me it seems like it would fly through Congress.

Watch it:

60 Minutes’ investigation unfortunately also tried to pin non-existent charges of insider trading on both Pelosi and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). So far, 131 members of the House have co-sponsored legislation to ban insider trading by members of Congress.

Groups frame climate as a moral cause

Op-Ed: Arguments to abandon Kyoto Protocol untenable

As negotiators are gathering in Durban, South Africa, to push for new progress on global efforts to deal with climate change, divergent views emerge over the fate of Kyoto Protocol.

As the cornerstone of the climate regime, Kyoto Protocol sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to cut their emissions to an average of 5 percent against 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period.

As the first commitment period is to expire in 2012, some signatory countries have not only backed down from their previous emissions cuts commitment, but refused to renew their pledges beyond 2012.

They argue that Kyoto Protocol, an agreement adopted more than a decade ago, is a thing of the past and could no longer reflect a changing reality.

Thus a global deal, which moves beyond the distinction between rich and poor countries and commits all the major emitters to binding emissions targets, is needed, they said.

Their arguments are untenable and far-fetched. For a start, developed countries are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere in its long and historical process of industrialization.

Op-Ed: Climate change and the Kiribati syndrome

This week in Durban, South Africa, 194 nations are meeting to discuss global warming. The whole effort is in disarray: The Bush administration withdrew American support in 2001, in a decision that is still having disastrous consequences; China, considered a developing country, isn’t bound by Kyoto targets for reducing carbon emissions. With the world’s two biggest economies out of the discussion, Durban is crowded with little island nations and other poor, vulnerable countries that have resorted to forming a 132-nation bloc – call them the pesky unknowns – to protest the continuing environmental damage.

Another obstacle to progress is the very term “global warming,’’ which sounds like one big group hug — far too benign to generate the political momentum needed to promote renewable energy, slow deforestation, and embrace energy efficiency. Dry scientific discussions — about, say, how many more gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions the climate can tolerate — aren’t creating a compelling narrative, either. Environmentalists should focus on repackaging the problem in a way that prods people into action. We need a new name: the Kiribati syndrome.

I’ll admit to having felt like this season of The Walking Dead has spent a lot of time with the characters, human and formerly human, stewing in the same juices: the endless hunt for Sophia, the secrets of Hershel’s farm, the insecurities of Dale, Glen, Darryl and Andrea, the question of whether Rick or Shane is better suited to lead and to love Lori. Fortunately, the stunning final scene of this episode tied all of those threads neatly together. After massacring the walkers in the barn, who they’ve convinced themselves aren’t human, one more emerges: Sophia, changed and ravening. And Rick finds a bridge between Shane’s harsh moral view of the apocalypse and Hershel’s idealism, shaped by isolation from the outside world, and shoots the girl in an act of self-protection and mercy.

I thought the scene did a wonderful job of giving everyone a human moment that addressed, if not resolved, their arc. Glenn steps up to protect Maggie, and she protects her father, grieving with him, but doesn’t try to stop her lover. Darryl, after rejecting Carol’s profession of affection with a brutal, “Leave me be. Stupid bitch,” earlier in the episode, holds her as she sees what’s become of her daughter, and as she witnesses her death. Carl, who told his mother, “I’m not leaving until we find Sophia…I was thinking, she’s going to like it here, this place. It could be a home,” who tried on a man’s cursing to go with a man’s hat earlier in the episode, is reduced to childhood by his friend’s transformation and execution, sobbing in Lori’s arms. Andrea steps up to the front lines with Shane, unaware that Shane’s emotions and his move to start the massacre are deeply engaged with Lori, who is off to the side here. T-Dog is, for once, unconflicted and part of the firing line. And Dale is late to the slaughter, protected from his own dehumanization by fate if not design.

So is the conclusion that Rick is right? Do the reasons you do things matter as much as the fact that you do them? Does Hershel’s determination to see the humanity in the walkers redeem the risks he’s taken, his denial of outside reality? Does the murder Rick commits out of a profound sympathy for the little girl his community’s lost mean something different than the brutal executions carried out by the other members of that community? And does Lori’s declaration to Shane that “Even if it’s yours, it’s not gonna be yours. And it’s never gonna be yours. And there’s nothing you can do to change that,” actually make it so? The Walking Dead is very good at posing moral questions, though I’m not sure it’s as good at knowing what its own answers to them are. Even if the show doesn’t reveal them to us all at once, I’d like a sense that they have a coherent and decisive worldview.

Last night on The Walking Dead, the prospect of new life, whether in the form of a pregnancy, a revitalized sex drive, or the dream of a cure for “Mom. Sean. Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. Lacy. Duncan,” got everyone in trouble.

First, there’s the question of the walkers in the barn, fed by chickens and kept safe. Dale, providing at least half-successfully wily, lets Hershel know he knows what’s up without implicating Glen, only to find himself in a moral debate with their host. Hershel’s upset by the walker’s death at the well, suggesting it was coarsening. “You killed a person,” he tells Dale. “We don’t shoot sick people…My wife and stepson are in that barn. They’re people.” But he has the benefit of isolation, something that still doesn’t quite strike me as plausible. And Maggie has their beliefs on that score challenged when she’s attacked by a walker in the pharmacy and saved only by Glen’s brutal and brutally efficient intervention. But the budding affection between them is too much for her. “You’re smart, you’re a leader, but your friends don’t see it,” Maggie tells Glen. “They don’t want to see it. You’re just their errand boy. Walker in the well? Send Glen down. You’re walker bait.” Rick and his people may be right about what it takes to survive, but Hershel may be right that it’s cost them something along the way.

Then, there’s the matter of Lori’s abortion. Maggie’s right that there’s something horrible about Lori making Glen take risks for her, particularly for something she’s not even sure will work. And I appreciate that the show suggested it would be entirely reasonable for Lori to not want to bring a child into a zombie-ridden world. “I got a deep well to draw on. I still remember joy. But I think Carl’s is already running dry,” she explains. I understand that keeping her pregnant makes the show more complicated and provides a lot of dramatic tension, or as Glen puts it, “You’re pregnant. You need vitamins. Medicine. A nice pillow.” And it’s interesting that the show presented her decision to vomit up the morning-after pills as less rational than trying to go through with an abortion. But it’s still a fairly typical television approach to abortion on television: get absolutely up to the edge of the prospect, then back aggressively away from it.

And then, as Lori decides to have Rick’s child, Shane and Andrea, hyped up by stress, have sex in a car and return to Hershel’s farm changed. What will it mean for Lori, who’s been unable to do the right thing and relinquish her hold over Shane, to see his affections shifted. What will it mean for Dale to have Andrea revitalized, not reliant on him for her ties to life and to the group? In a world dominated by death, the life force, and the hope it engenders, can be awfully dangerous.

Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Alice Batchelder

Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the federal judiciary’s ethics committee ruled that the Sixth Circuit council’s decision was “clearly erroneous“:

[W]e easily conclude that Belle Meade invidiously discriminates against women and African Americans for purposes of Canon 2C and, consequently, that Judge Paine’s membership in the organization runs afoul of that Canon. Nashville, Tennessee, is one of the major cosmopolitan cities of the Southern United States. In particular, it boasts a 27% African American population. Its female population is just over 50%. Although few organizations perfectly mirror the population trends of their surrounding locales, a member of the public would reasonably expect to see at least some women and African Americans among Belle Meade’s Resident Membership barring (1) invidious discrimination or (2) something unique about the Club…that would suggest otherwise. There is, however, nothing about Belle Meade’s stated aims or activities that provides any such justification for the total absence of any female or African American Resident Members. The organization is a social club for prominent persons living in and around the Nashville area. Naturally, there is no shortage of women or – as Judge Paine proclaimed in his 1990 letter to the Club’s Board — African Americans fitting that description.

It’s worth noting that the Sixth Circuit council’s deeply erroneous opinion permitting judges to belong to this sort of club was authored by Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Alice Batchelder — a woman with her own unfortunate history of ethical lapses. Batchelder refused to recuse from a case where the Ohio Republican Party sought to prevent as many as 200,000 registered voters from having their votes counted, even though her husband — the current GOP speaker of the Ohio House — had an obvious interest in the case as a GOP candidate for re-election.

Batchelder also serves on the board of a notorious oil-industry funded “junkets for judges” organization that until very recently provided expense-paid trips to western resorts where the judges were instructed on how to decide cases by industry representatives, and she has repeatedly refused to resign from this board despite an opinion from the federal judiciary’s ethics committee saying that federal judges have an ethical duty not to serve on it.

As a final, unfortunate note about this story, it is worth noting that one of the five judges on the panel that disagreed with Batchelder in yesterday’s ethics opinion was Judge Edith Clement — who also sits on that same junkets for judges board as Batchelder. Although Clement reached the correct decision in yesterday’s opinion, it is tough to imagine a clearer example of a fox guarding the hen house that allowing a judge who unethically led a corporate junketing group to decide on judicial ethics issues.

Noting that “the American people don’t have a lot of trust in Congress,” Gillibrand told CBS’ Early Show host Chris Wagge that “it’s incumbent upon us to make the kinds of changes that the American people would expect we would make so that we live by the exact same exact rules that everyone else does.” While there is disclosure now, she said, “it has to be illegal, just like it’s illegal for everyone else.” Watch it:

House Speaker John Boehner (R), however, thinks that such laws are unnecessary as “there are already guidelines for congressional investments,” adding, “I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities in my account and haven’t for years.”

The global challenge of climate change poses a perfect moral storm — by failing to take action to rein in carbon emissions, the current generation is spreading the costs of its behavior far into the future. Why should people in the future pay to clean up our mess?

Here are some excerpts of a piece Stephen Gardiner published in Yale Environment 360, “The Ethical Dimension of Tackling Climate Change”:

Sometimes the best way to make progress on a problem is to get clearer on what that problem is. Arguably, the biggest issue facing humanity at the moment is the looming global environmental crisis. Here, the problem is not that we are unaware that trouble is coming. After all, the basic science is both well known and continually being reiterated in major national and international reports. Rather, the core problem is that thus far effective action seems beyond us. We seem at best paralyzed, and at worst indifferent. Put starkly, there seems little place within our grand institutions and busy lives for what may turn out to be the defining issue of our generation.

Why? In my view, at the heart of the matter is the fact that humanity is in the grip of a profound ethical challenge that our current institutions and theories are ill-equipped to meet….

… Climate change brings together many areas in which our best theories are far from robust, such as intergenerational ethics, global justice, scientific uncertainty, and humanity’s relationship to nature. The problem here is not that we do not have any guidance at all. For example, the idea that imposing catastrophe on the future for the sake of our own modest benefits is not a defensible way to behave is a relatively secure basic ethical intuition. Rather, the problem is that it is difficult to move beyond those basic intuitions to deal with the details, and we are too easily distracted by counterarguments, especially from theories that have merits in other contexts, but fail to take the future seriously enough.

For example, some influential economists claim the current generation is justified in moving slowly on climate change because future people will be richer due to economic growth, and so should pay more. But are we entitled to assume that the future will be richer even in a climate catastrophe? And even if they are, why should they pay to clean up our mess?

… We in the current generation — and especially the more affluent — are in a position to continue taking modest benefits for ourselves, while passing nasty costs onto the poor, future generations, and nature. However, pointing this out is morally uncomfortable. Better, then, to cover it up with clever but shallow arguments that distort public discussion, and solutions that do little to get at the core problems….

This is a grim state of affairs…. We must acknowledge the global and intergenerational power that we yield and take responsibility for it, rather than taking solace in comfortable distraction. No one will stop us from exploiting that power but us. This is why ethics is at the heart of the matter.

The rest of this excellent piece can be found at Yale Environment 360. Gardiner is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he specializes in ethics, political philosophy, and environmental ethics.

For my interview with Gardiner on geo-engineering, see:

• Exclusive: Dysfunctional, Lop-Sided Geoengineering Panel Tries to Launch Greenwashing Euphemism, “Climate Remediation”:  Revealing Interview with Ethicist Who Withdrew from Panel, Equally Revealing Article by Panel Member on Report’s Dysfunctional Process

Related Post:

• Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?

– The letter notes that Issa purchased millions of dollars worth of high-yield Goldman Sachs mutual funds at the same time the congressman pressured the Securities and Exchange Commission to drop a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs for allegedly defrauding investors.

– The letter highlights Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs VP, who went to work for Issa on the Oversight Committee and used his power to pressure bank regulators to ease new Dodd-Frank rules on banks like Goldman Sachs.

– The letter revisits a controversial earmark made by Issa near property he owns in Vista, California. As ThinkProgress first reported, the taxpayer project would have enhanced the value of several lucrative office buildings purchased by Issa.

View a copy of the letter below:

Ethics experts from the American Enterprise Institute, the Project on Government Oversight, Public Citizen, and others have weighed in condemning Issa’s conduct. However, the letter today may be the first step in ensuring accountability over Issa’s behavior.