State Sen. Mike Jungbauer

No Republican contenders in the 2010 gubernatorial contest — except environmental activist Leslie Davis — believe in global warming, according to a report from Minnesota Public Radio. Perhaps most strident is state Sen. Mike Jungbauer (East Bethel), who told attendees at a recent State Fair debate that global warming is “pure, unadulterated BS.”

While the other GOP contenders were less colorful in their declarations, none would own up to believing that climate change owing to human activity is a credible, significant issue. House Minority Leader Marty Seifert (Marshall) declared such concerns to be “theoretical.” Rep. David Hann (Eden Prairie) labeled global warming an “excuse” to shift towards alternative energy sources.

Their stance is in contrast to current Gov. Tim Pawlenty — as well as mainstream scientific opinion.

There is, however, one Republican gubernatorial hopeful who acknowledges the validity of global warming: Leslie Davis, a perennial candidate and environmental activist. He’s highly unlikely to end up being the party’s nominee.

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

Audio after the jump.

Smart Politics notes it’s not the first time since the election of President Obama and a new Democrat-led Congress that Bachmann dubbed her conservative compatriots “foreign correspondents reporting to you from enemy lines.” The metaphor, combined with her “armed-and-dangerous” rhetoric, drifts close to Sean Hannity’s excited speculation about a militant right-wing reaction.

But if she sounded like any kind of journalist, it was a 1950s writer for the show-biz rag Variety. Here’s what she said about climate-change doubter Christopher Horner, who she is bringing to the Sixth District for two appearances in April: “He gave a boffo speech out in D.C. … people’s socks will be knocked off.”

Think Progress has the full audio from Bachmann’s Saturday appearance on WWTC-AM.

Here’s the key minute (h/t DumpBachmann):

But as a surrogate for Sen. John McCain, Pawlenty these days is crooning lullabies to the party’s base of (mostly religious) global warming doubters.

On the Glenn Beck radio show Tuesday, Pawlenty reversed himself. After three years of advocacy to mitigate global warming, Pawlenty the surrogate disagrees with Pawlenty the governor.

But, you know, in my view is this: you can argue that the world, the globe is warming as it always has for natural reasons. But I think the weight of the science indicates that at least some of it — you could argue it’s half a percent or something more substantial — is caused by human behavior . . . But, in the wake of this energy crisis, where people are struggling to pay the bills, that debate on cap and trade has fallen to the background for understandable reasons.

To repeat: Pawlenty the governor has advocated for cap and trade. From Minnesota Public Radio, November 2007:

“Gov. Pawlenty said the cap-and-trade market is a good way to reduce pollution. ‘If you unleash the requirements and incentives and attractive features of a market, people will respond to it,’ he said. ‘Some will respond by reducing pollution directly. Others will respond by buying credits or offsets in the marketplace, with the ultimate same net effect.’”

And at a National Governors Association meeting in 2008, he said global warming was real:

“We should have listened to President Carter… We should not spend time on voices that say [climate change] is not real.”

And in a press release from the Office of the Governor in 2007, it’s people that cause the problem:

“[O]ur global climate is warming, at least in part due to the energy sources we use. We cannot solve it by ourselves, but we need to lead and do our part. We also need to push for an effective national and international effort.”

The article’s author, Dennis Avery, made the determinations on his own and no one from the Heartland Institute — or the Hudson Institute, where Avery also published the article — ever contacted any of the researchers. Last week Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog decided to do just that. After sending out 122 e-mails, Grandia heard back from more than 45 researchers who objected to their inclusion on the list.

Minnesota Monitor attempted to contact the three current and former faculty members at the University of Minnesota who appeared on the list. At the time of publication two of the three had denounced their inclusion.

“I was surprised to find my name in the list of ‘Co-Authors’ in the Heartland Institute’s web page,” says Edward Cushing, professor emeritus in the U of M’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. “I resent their implication that I agree with one or more of their statements.”

Cushing (pictured above) says that he believes many of his colleagues in the field of paleoecology would also disapprove “if informed that they in some way support the Heartland Institute’s claims.”

Herbert Wright Jr. is a former regents professor in the U of M’s Department of Geology, Ecology and Botany who was also named by Avery. “I requested that my name be removed from the list,” Wright said, “but the perpetrator refused to do so.”

Continued: Click “Read More”Dozens of scientists have demanded that their names be removed from the list and that they be issued an apology, but the Heartland Institute opted instead to simply change the name of the study from “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” to “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.” In a release accompanying the name change, Heartland Institute’s Joseph Bast said the scientists “are embarrassed — as they should be — to see their names in a list of scientists whose peer-reviewed published work suggests the modern warming might be due to a natural 1,500-year climate cycle.”

“I suppose the list included anyone who had published on past climatic changes as inferred from the dated geologic record, even without reference to human factors,” said Wright, who did not seem the slightest bit embarrassed.

Heartland’s seven statements:

The following list includes more than 500 qualified researchers whose research in professional journals provides historic and/or physical proxy evidence that:

1) Most of the recent global warming has been caused by a long, moderate, natural cycle rather than by the burning of fossil fuels;

2) The sun’s varying radiance impacts the Earth’s climate as more or fewer cosmic rays create more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that act as the Earth’s thermostats, deflecting more or less solar heat out into
space.

3) Sea levels are not rising rapidly nor are they likely to;

4) Wild species are not being driven to extinction but rather are increasing the biodiversity of our wildlands;

5) Fewer human deaths are likely rather than more as the current warming continues, since cold is far more dangerous and the Earth is always warming or cooling;

6) Food production is likely to thrive during the decades ahead, rather than collapsing due to climate overheating; or

7) Our storms are likely to be fewer and milder as the declining temperature differential between the equator and the poles reduces their power.

Full text of letter from Cushing:

I was surprised to find my name in the list of “Co-Authors” in the Heartland Institute’s web page. I have published nothing during my career that supports any of the seven numbered statements on their web page. Neither have I had any communication with the Heartland Institute, and I resent their implication that I agree with one of more
of their statements.

My research in is paleoecology, and I have studied how the vegetation of Minnesota has changed during the past 20,000 years — that is, since the last glaciation in the state. The principal technique I have used is pollen analysis, which identifies changes, over centuries and millennia, in the kinds and amounts of pollen that are deposited in lake sediments. Although there is strong evidence that changes in climate have driven great changes in vegetation in the past, that evidence neither directly supports nor directly refutes the claim that climate is not now changing or will not change in the future.

I observe that many of my colleagues in paleoecology, whose published research I know well, are also named on the Heartland Institute’s list. I believe that they would react as I do if informed that they in some way support the Heartland Institute’s claims.

Edward J. Cushing
Professor Emeritus

In a telephone survey last month, 37 percent of 1,012 adults interviewed said they worry a “great deal” about global warming. That’s virtually unchanged from 19 years ago, when 35 percent responded the same way.

The findings call into question both the impact of and the interest in the deluge of news media and pop culture coverage of “green” issues in recent years.

“The trend data suggest that despite the growing attention to and emphasis on global warming in recent years, there has been no consistent increase in worry about it since Gallup began asking the question way back in 1989,” a Gallup analysis says.

More Americans claim to understand global warming today than did in previous polls. That figure is up to 80 percent compared to 53 percent in a poll 16 years ago.

Strangely, the percentage of Americans who say global warming “will pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime” — 40 percent — is higher than the percentage who say they worry about it a great deal.

The Gallup poll appears to be consistent with a Pew Research Center survey last year that measured American’s political priorities. Among a list of 21 issues, global warming ranked dead last for Republicans. Maybe that’s to be expected, but less than half of Democrats surveyed said global warming was a top priority. For Democrats, global warming was fifth from the bottom, tied with illegal immigration and just a few points ahead of morality.

Below the jump, see the Gallup chart on global warming attitudes over time.

Continued: Click “Read More”
]]> http://minnesotaindependent.com/3698/gallup-poll-most-americans-not-too-worried-about-global-warming/feed 4 http://minnesotaindependent.com/3689/in-defense-of-doing-something http://minnesotaindependent.com/3689/in-defense-of-doing-something#comments Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:58:44 +0000 Dan Haugen http://www.minnesotaindependent.com.php5-9.websitetestlink.com/?p=3689

Here’s for all the cynics out there: Michael Pollan, author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” argues in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine why seemingly small, individual steps to save the planet are worth taking:

Continued: Click “Read more”

Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.

The breakthrough was reported at the 235th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. The Inhabitat blog notes that much of the discussion around carbon sequestration has focused on finding ways to bury the carbon underground. Recycling carbon emissions is a new concept, and technologically not too much of a stretch.

“Using CO2 to create polycarbonates might not solve the total carbon dioxide problem, but it could be a significant contribution,” said Thomas M

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Cold enough for ya? Not cold enough to kill tree pests