Green groups seem pleased with Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden as his running mate. Grist has a rundown of Biden's environmental record here and highlights include his support for the strongest global warming bill in the Senate, the Boxer-Sanders bill, and and lifetime LCV score of 83. Not bad at all, Joe. Judging by both their record and rhetoric, we can be reasonably assured that the Obama/Biden team, if elected, will make climate legislation a national priority. But when voters start standing in line on the first Tuesday in November, they ought to be also considering just what the people farther down the ballot will do about global warming.
The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund has a new Web site up called CandidAnswers, which showcases the results of their global warming/energy survey that they put out to candidates for Congress. Brace yourself. In 2008, after record temperatures, melting glaciers, and a Nobel prize for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there are still several politicians in and out of Congress that can be easily classified as deniers of the existence or impact of global warming. Leaving aside political affiliation, here's some choice answers from people seeking to govern:
NC-02 Willis Adkins: "The global warming scare has been popularized to benefit big-government politicians, environmentalists, and researchers whose funding is contingent upon endorsing it. Credible scientists do not attribute this as being man-made; even proponents admit that warming stopped nearly a decade ago. While we should all be good stewards of the environment, I don't support crippling our economy and sending manufacturing jobs overseas where CO2 caps will be ignored simply to promote politcal agendas."
OR-3 Delia Lopez: "If you look at history you see variations in temperature, from ice ages to times when it has been much warmer than now. The corelation between CO2 and warming has been disproven. Th esun is responsible for most warming. Between 1940 and 1980 when CO2 levels were rising, temperatures were falling. Temperatures have been falling again for 6 years, some scientists are warning of an ice age, again! That was the big fear when I was in school. Then came the hole in the ozone layer."
CA-53 Edward Teyssier: "That human activity is a significant cause of global warming has been soundly rebuked by qualified scientists using sound methodologies. While the earth has undergone numerous cycles of warming and cooling trends there is no indication that human activities, either now or in the past, had a significant effect on these trends."
MO-06 Dave Browning: "At this point I do not believe that the scientific evidence supports the position that global warming if the same exists, is not a function of sun activity rather than human activity. No study I have been made aware of uses mandlebrot mathematics (chaos math) to do its projections. It is a fact that the mathematics of climateology requires the use of chaos mathematics to describe it as it is a chaotic system. The use of liner models is just BUNK."
Yikes. I'm in no position to endorse or reject these folks for office (Greenpeace is nonpartisan), only to bring you their thoughts here, in their own words. I can, however, offer this suggestion. Go here and write these folks an email telling them that as candidates for office they have a responsibility to educate themselves about the biggest environmental threat we've ever faced. Whether it's Obama/Biden or McCain/whoever, the next administration will need a Congress that understands global warming and is ready to take immediate action. Here's hoping they get one.