At a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Republican senators hammered White House science officials about the emails leaked from prominent climate scientists two weeks ago.

“These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit,” said Jim Sensenbrenner (Rep., Wis.) at a hearing of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. He quoted from eight of the emails in his opening statement, and charged that they read more like “scientific fascism than the scientific process”. (AP)

But John Holdren, the presidential science adviser, and Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that the affair did nothing to undermine the strong scientific consensus that the earth was warming, largely as a result of human activity.

Some Republicans called for a congressional enquiry into the dispute over the integrity of climate science (Wall Street Journal), but Holdren said that wasn’t needed, as the scientific community had its own process for investigating the legitimacy of data (ScienceInsider).

The debate also included a few science experiments performed by Lubchenco to demonstrate the acidification of the oceans. The hearing was supposed to focus on the latest in global warming findings, but as AP writes, Lubchenco’s “bubble-inducing experiments were ignored in favour of the more explosive emails”.

“These emails are an embarrassment on the brink of Copenhagen,” added Candice Miller (Rep., Mich.) ( WSJ).