Minnesota Republicans Prepping for Climate Change? Look Who Came to the Forum

When it comes to political alignment, normally we find Democrats holding forums on climate change and Republicans holding forums on the economic impact of the Kyoto Protocol, or some related contrarian issue.

If one weren’t looking closely, one might have been fooled into thinking the latter role had been reversed on Thursday, as several Republican lawmakers sponsored a Climate Science Symposium at the Minnesota History Center.

Not “Global Warming.”  Not “Climate Change.”  Not “Human effects on the environment.”  No, they went with “Climate Science.”  What does that mean?

According to the list of speakers, it means trying to debunk the mountains of evidence that say human activity has had a significant and deleterious effect on our planet’s ecosystem. 

Read MoreJust look at that guest list:

Featuring:

Dr. Patrick Michaels, Research Professor, Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia

Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesman, Interfaith Stewardship Alliance

James Taylor, JD, Senior Fellow, Heartland Institute

Sponsored by:

Senator Mike Jungbauer

Senator David Hann [Ed:  not "Hamm"]

Representative Tom Emmer

Representative Mike Beard

American Property Coalition

Michaels wrote a book in 2000 entitled “The Satanic Gases” in which he attempted to debunk the conventional wisdom on climate change.  Of course, there is a political aspect to Michaels’ assertions.  Here is an excerpt from the book cover:

Global warming and the various plans to combat it remain controversial issues, and they will be even more so during next year’s Presidential race, especially because of Al Gore’s very public stance about the severity of global warming. Contrary to what Gore and much of the media argue, however, these issues are far from settled. The authors are two of the foremost scientific critics of the apocalyptic vision pushed by Gore in his book Earth in the Balance and during his tenure as vice president, and Gore has singled out Michaels in particular for attack. The authors discuss Gore’s stated positions about global warming at length and refute them, making this book an essential part of both environmental and political science collections during the 2000 race.

Sounds like a fair and balanced scientific figure to have on hand.  However, it gets worse. 

Calvin Beisner claims to be an expert on climate science, and is an Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Social Ethics at Knox Theological Seminary.  Here is an excerpt of his interview with Bill Moyers of PBS:

BILL MOYERS: They say that global warming will hit the poor most heavily.

DR. CALVIN BEISNER: Yes. And, quite understandable reasons for saying that. They think that, for instance, global warming will drive sea level increase. And that will threaten low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, where there are high percentages of poor people. That’s very understandable.

The problem is that I don’t think that the science substantiates that sea level increase is being driven by human-induced global warming. Sea level has been increasing for a couple of hundred years at least. And there doesn’t seem to be any statistically significant correlation between that and patterns of global average temperature, which means that it’s probably driven by a natural cause, not by a human-induced cause. I–

BILL MOYERS: But the first claim in their document is, “Claim Number One: Human-induced climate change is real.”

DR. CALVIN BEISNER: Oh, and I don’t contest that human-induced climate change is I’d say at least probably real. The question is: What proportion of climate change is human induced? And is it a proportion that is big enough that whatever we can do to reduce CO2 emissions is going to make a significant impact on the climate change that actually does happen?

And I think that it is– I think that human contribution to climate change is very small. And I think that, in fact, even the IPCC’s data indicate that, even if we could achieve the goals of, for example, the Kyoto Protocol for CO2 reductions, we would achieve at most a 0.2 degree Fahrenheit reduction in global average temperature from a hypothetical doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, which might or might not occur in this century. And that’s just simply too small to avert the kinds of dangers that they predict.

ExxonSecrets.org, a watchdog group focused on “[d]ocumenting Exxon-Mobil’s funding of climate change skeptics” has a lengthy fact sheet on Mr. Beisner.

As for Mr. Taylor, his organization is “a nonprofit organization devoted to discovering and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems.”  Taylor wrote an article for the organization back in 2004 entitled “Global Warming Fears Melting:  New Studies Appearing in Respected Scientific Journals Suggest Time is Running out For the Biggest Eco-Scare of the Twentieth Century.”  Clearly a climate change skeptic, Taylor also has a profile at ExxonSecrets.org, who indicate that he “has served as a legal analyst for Defenders of Property Rights, an intern at the Cato Institute, and a member of the Federalist Society.”

For as much noise as Republican lawmakers have made about the controversies surrounding generally-accepted scientific theories like evolution and climate change, their choice of speakers at events like these smack of political motivation and self-reinforcement.  Perhaps the event should have been titled “Climate Politics Symposium” instead – such a title would have been more accurate.