Noting the occasion of the 15th annual Lake Tahoe Summit, a conference examining the environmental and developmental issues affecting the iconic alpine region straddling the California and Nevada borders, California Governor Jerry Brown announced the launch of a website dedicated to combating skeptics of climate change.
"Global warming's impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented. It is just one example of how, after decades of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return," Brown said in a statement. "Those who still deny global warming’s existence should wake up and honestly face the facts."
The site is called Climate Change: Just the Facts and is operated by the Governor's Office of Planning & Research. It gives a basic description of the science behind global warming, shows the scientific consensus behind global warming science and directly takes on common arguments made by people who question climate change.
While not every move made by the Governor is beloved by environmentalists, Brown has a very long history of having a very short temper when it comes people arguing against the existence of global warming.
"The main thing we have to deal with in climate change is skepticism and denial, and the cult-like behavior of political lemmings that would take us over the cliff," Brown said at an event he co-hosted with former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last year. "[There are powerful wealthy forces] that want to crush any effort to cope with climate change."
California has long been a pioneer when it comes to environmental issues--especially when its politicians found national leadership on the part of the federal government lacking.
In 2006, Schwarzenegger worked with California Democrats to pass the state's global warming bill into law. This bill established a cap-and-trade system for energy emissions--something Republican opposition in Washington has made replicating on a national scale virtually impossible.
In his 2010 gubernatorial race against former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, Brown repeatedly hammered Whitman for her vocal support of a ultimately unsuccessful measure that would have temporarily repealed much of the bill while the state's unemployment rate remained above 5.5 percent.
The governor is currently hoping to use some of the funds generated under the cap-and-trade program to pay for the state's controversial high speed rail system that will eventually run between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Check out the new climate change website here.