President Barack Obama’s top science adviser urged lawmakers to act to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, despite the uproar over emails in which some prominent climate scientists appeared to advocate squelching the views of researchers skeptical that human activity is driving a dangerous rise in global temperatures.
The adviser, John Holdren, said scientists generally are capable of defensiveness, bias and "misbehavior." But he said the meaning of some of the statements in the emails isn’t clear, and that the significance of others has been exaggerated.
Human activity is "beyond any reasonable doubt" the primary cause of warming temperatures, Mr. Holdren said.
Mr. Holdren’s comments drew a unanimously supportive response from Democrats and unanimous skepticism from Republicans, some of whom called for a congressional inquiry into the dispute over the integrity of climate science.