House Republicans reject climate change science

AP Photo/Gene Blythe

All 31 Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee declined on Tuesday to vote in favor of a series of amendments acknowledging the scientific consensus around climate change.

The three amendments were attached to a bill aiming to curb the Environmental Protection Agency's power to regulate greenhouse gasses. They posited that "Congress accepts the scientific finding ... that 'warming of the climate system is unequivocal'"; that the scientific evidence regarding climate change "is compelling"; and that "human-caused climate change is a threat to public health and welfare."

The committee passed the measure, but voted down the amendments, with 30 of the 31 Republicans voting against them and one - Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee - declining to vote either way. Democrats unanimously voted in favor of the amendments.

Republicans, who have strongly opposed Obama administration efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses, have been pushing to strip the EPA of its regulatory power. The party blocked Democratic efforts last year to pass climate change legislation.

Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), the committee's ranking Democrat who offered one of the three amendments, said they should not even be necessary because the "finding is so obviously correct."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), however, contended that the science of the issue was "not settled."

"My good friend from California tries to make it clear that the science is settled. I would say it's not settled," Barton said of Waxman's amendment, according to the Hill.

The global scientific community is largely unified in the belief that the climate is warming as a result of human actions, among them the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said Republicans' rejection of Waxman's amendment showed "what it means to be on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of science."

Daniel Lashof, the Director of the Climate Center at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told Hotsheet the GOP refusal to acknowledge climate science reflected Republicans "substituting ideology for science" in the face of political interests.

"They started with a conclusion - which is they don't want to limit carbon pollution - and then worked backwards and put themselves in a position where they had to deny science," he said, adding that he thought the tendency to "ignore the facts and substitute politics" was "disturbing."

Politico reported in January that nearly all of the leading GOP presidential contenders have at some point expressed concerns about the impact of climate change - including Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee. (Huckabee is even purported to have at one time supported cap-and-trade legislation - a charge he now vehemently denies.)

Senate Democrats are also scrambling to block efforts in their chamber to keep the EPA from having regulatory power over greenhouse gases .

In a statement on Tuesday night, a White House spokesperson slammed the Senate GOP's efforts, arguing that an amendment from Senate Republicans "rolls back the Clean Air Act and harms Americans' health by taking away our ability to decrease air pollution."

"Instead of holding big polluters accountable, this amendment overrules public health experts and scientists," the statement continued, according to the Hill. "Finally, at a time when America's families are struggling with the cost of gasoline, the amendment would undercut fuel efficiency standards that will save Americans money at the pump while also decreasing our reliance on foreign oil."

[EVsRoll]

You may state political opinions all you like. Notice however that the US Navy is accepting the results of climate change as fact. The seas are warming, ice is melting, and new security concerns will require the Navy to adapt, or lose.

I doubt the US Navy wants to lose.

EVsRock!
http://www.evsroll.com

[MemeMine]

Climate Change was to us, what the "right to life" bible thumping crap was to the neocons. Both were wrong.
Let's move on from the climate change blame mistake and stop acting like fear mongering REPUBLICANS!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, things HAVE "changed":
The majority of Liberal voters are now "former" climate change believers, because Obama made absolutely no mention what so ever of the climate change crisis in his State of the Union Address.
That DOES NOT mean the Republican deniers won anything at all since the neocons will always put environmental protection last on their selfish list of priorities. So our goals are exactly the same without any CO2 mitigation action. We still fight the battles of finding new energy, continued pollution controls, population control, environmental awareness, clean water management and promising our children that we will all them a sustainable planet. And if we have to fight the right wingers to do it, do it we shall.

[marandalaw]

Well i guess....Man-Made...is the Intelligent way to put it!!I call it"The Lies and The People That Swear To Those Lies"Or.."The Lies That Cause World Disasters"Or..."We Have Nothing Better To do..But Lie"..Or "We Tell Lies..To Carry Out Ignorance".......Those are ALL....The Truth!!

[MemeMine]

President Obama made no mention of the climate change crisis in his State of the Union Address as Obama knows too that the majority of Liberal voters are now FORMER climate change believers. But that DOES NOT mean the Republican deniers won anything since the neocons will always put environmental protection last. So we are left with the same battles of finding new energy, continued pollution controls, population control, environmental awareness, clean water management and promising our children that we will all them a sustainable planet.

[MemeMine]

The majority of Liberal voters are now "former" climate change believers, because Obama made absolutely no mention what so ever of the climate change crisis in his State of the Union Address. STOP! Relax. That DOES NOT mean the Republican deniers won anything at all since the neocons will always put environmental protection last on their selfish list of priorities. So our goals are exactly the same without any CO2 mitigation action. We still fight the battles of finding new energy, continued pollution controls, population control, environmental awareness, clean water management and promising our children that we will all them a sustainable planet. And if we have to fight the right wingers to do it, do it we shall.

[MViney]

Perhaps when the AGW "scientists" can provide an accurate model that shows the Roman warm period, the cold (dark ages period) - the Medieval Warm period (when Vikings settled Greenland), the "mini-Ice Age" in the 1600's (when there was a Maunder Minimum for sunspots and low solar output) ...then it might be worth considering. But no scientific model shows all these variations reliably. Besides - our weather at present is no where as warm as the Medieval Warm period - when Greenland was an agricultural community and world-wide crops grew better.

No - the Jame Hanson type fraud-scientists generate a "hockey stick" that hides both the Medieval Warm period and the Mini-Ice age ...because their models don't explain the variations.

These scientists are FRAUDS ...and are supported by idiots or sycophants incapable of examining the facts.

Besides - the cost of avoiding a 1 degree change in temperature could be far better spent in many other ways that would improve the quality of life for the billions living on this earth, without subjecting the majority to a life that is solitary, poor, nasty and brutish.

[MemeMine]

President Obama made no mention of the climate change crisis in his State of the Union Address as the majority of Liberals are now former climate change believers. But that DOES NOT mean the Republican deniers won anything since the neocons will always put environmental protection last. So we are left with the same battles of finding new energy, continued pollution controls, population control, environmental awareness, clean water management and promising our children that we will all them a sustainable planet.

[levelheadedtoo]

It is hard for republicans to see past the horizon. The commonly shared belief of the GOP is that their are only monsters and demons past the horizon, so don't go there because you might fall off the edge. In this century, most intelligent people have learned to look to science for the answers to our existence on this planet. The GOP is willing to kick environmental issues way down the road so they don't have to answer to their handlers.

Who owns Congressman Joe Barton?

You won't be shocked to find that his constituents are Oil, Gas, Power, Pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. All good stewards of the earth. Drill Baby Drill, Burn Baby Burn.

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00005656

[sleepership]

Considering the National Academy of Sciences (started by Lincoln) and asked by Bush II to evaluate the threats of global warming (which they said posed 'significant risks' in the near future- I find it perplexing that the GOP still denies a problem exists.

The science is solid, but when you learn the facts, its very frightening what is happening. We are adding C02 at a rate now, over a period of 100 years, that in the past took 10,000 years!

In the end, the GOP will be blamed for their slavish idolization of a capitalist system, which they in the end will hasten a collapse of this country.

Resource wars, famine, increasingly dangerous and unpredictable weather patterns, sea rise- will add to a 21st century scenario of frightening perspectives.

[MemeMine]

You faded remaining climate blame doomers are no longer welcome in mainstream liberalism. We have moved on from the CO2 mistake.

[MemeMine]

Climate Change was to us, what the "right to life" bible thumping crap was to the neocons. Both were wrong.
Let's move on from the climate change blame mistake and stop acting like fear mongering REPUBLICANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!