Frustration on global warming deepens for supporters of climate change bill
by Andrew Restuccia, The Hill, January 13, 2011
Frustration among lawmakers backing climate change legislation is palpable in the wake of the latest evidence of global warming.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday announced that 2010 was tied for the hottest year on record, yet Democrats in Congress said the nation is not getting any closer to taking action on greenhouse gas emissions.
“How many times do we have to be smacked in the face with factual evidence before we address global climate change? Report after report keep confirming it’s getting worse every year,” an exasperated Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a statement Wednesday.
It does not appear that Kerry and his allies will make much progress in 2011.
Democrats’ hope for passage of a cap-and-trade bill have been dashed, and the best liberals can hope for is a narrow energy bill that, among other things, requires a certain percentage of the country’s electricity to come from renewable sources like wind and solar. Even that legislation faces the possibility of being expanded to include nuclear, coal with carbon capture technology and natural gas.
And while the Obama administration has already taken action to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and refineries, Republicans — bolstered by their majority in the House and their increased numbers in the Senate — and Rust Belt Democrats are hoping to block the administration’s climate change authority.
A big part of the problem, acknowledged by some advocates, is that data like NOAA’s have so far failed to convince the American people there is a desperate problem.
According to a Rasmussen poll released Wednesday, 44 percent of Americans believe climate change is caused by natural “planetary trends,” while 40 percent of Americans say climate change is caused by human activity.
And stories about NOAA’s report were dismissed by skeptics, some of whom pointed out that Europe is on pace for one of the coldest winters on record.
“There are more skeptics of catastrophic man-made global warming than there have ever been as part of this global warming movement,” bragged Matt Dempsey, the spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s best-known global warming skeptic.
Dempsey criticized Kerry and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) for usingNOAA’s data to call for policies to address climate change.
“Sen. Kerry and his allies had their chance over the last five or 10 years to pass cap-and-trade,” he said. Now, Dempsey said, it’s time for a new approach.
Another issue plaguing Democrats is the weather. Winter isn’t exactly the best time to be arguing that the climate is warming. Climate skeptics are always happy to point to freak blizzards and cold-snaps to argue their case.
But scientists have sought to push back against those claims. For example, a lead scientist at NOAA told The Hill last month that the changing climate will also lead to more extreme weather events like winter storms.
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