As I said in a previous reply, the institution's political alignment may or may not influence an individual professor's politics. This professor has been studying the PETM for awhile now, and I expect that his understanding of it, and his ability to compare then and now in a climate sense, is not overly influenced by politics. The media interpretation of what he says, and even the press releases produced by the institution, may certainly give it a lefthand spin.
Good point. Let the science stand on it's own. But, keep the politicians from using data as a weapon to force unnecessary changes onto our society.
It's arrogant to think that the sliver of time that man has been 'impacting' the globe can overcome the Sun's, and thus the Earth's natural heating and cooling cycles. I see the hysteria of global warming more akin to religion than science. And we all know about mixing religion and politics.