A White House report issued Tuesday that calls for urgent steps to address climate change fell flat with congressional Republicans.
House Science Chairman Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, called it “a political document intended to frighten Americans into believing that any abnormal weather we experience is the direct result of human CO2 emissions. In reality, there is little science to support any connection between climate change and more frequent or extreme storms.”
But the senior Democrat on the panel, Dallas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, embraced the White House analysis.
“The scientific debate over climate change is over and the impacts are growing more evident in the lives of every American,” she said. “As a Texan, I have seen the impacts myself with severe drought and record temperatures. These conditions impact our agriculture economy, human health, water supplies, and the livelihoods of many citizens. In addition, these changing conditions are destroying ecosystems both on land and in the ocean.”
Rolling out the report, John Podesta, a top adviser to President Barack Obama, said that climate denial in Congress poses an obstacle to much-needed action that would save lives and property, and mitigate damage from increasingly extreme droughts and other weather events.
“You see a very real challenge. I think the entire lineup of the House Science Committee on the Republican side voted relatively recently to deny the fact that climate change was even happening,” Podesta said. “So hopefully this report — they might review it and it will change their minds. But we’ve got a challenging context on Capitol Hill.”
The third National Climate Assessment was widely expected to generate pushback from the right.
At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney unequivocally denied that the report is intended to scare anyone.
“No,” Carney said. “The purpose of the third national climate assessment is to provide information in a form that is understandable and comprehensive for Americans across the country to use and review, so that they can better understand the effects of the changing climate on their regions.”
“It’s happening now. That is the bottom line … of this assessment,” he said.
Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, warned that the climate report is meant to lay the groundwork for “costly and unnecessary regulations and subsidies.”
The report points to the 2011 drought in Texas and Oklahoma – more than 100 days over 100°F – as evidence of the unusual and damaging weather extremes that a changing climate has already entailed.
“Rates of water loss were double the long-term average, depleting water resources and contributing to more than $10 billion in direct losses to agriculture alone,” the report says.
Water will become scarcer. And the report warns of increasingly damaging storms in coming years: “The expected rise in sea level will result in the potential for greater damage from storm surge along the Gulf Coast of Texas.”
“Observed climate-induced changes have been linked to changing timing of flowering, increases in wildfire activity and pest outbreaks, shifts in species distributions, declines in the abundance of native species, and the spread of invasive species,” the report says. Warming could lead to an increased population of the black ratsnake, for instance.
Smith rejected the findings, asserting that they’re based in part on selective use of facts.
“The White House today released a report claiming that changes in regional U.S. weather can be attributed to manmade climate change. The climate is changing due to a number of factors, including human contributions and natural cycles. But the administration’s report includes unscientific characterizations on the connection between severe weather events and climate change and fails to explain the absence of warming over the last 15 years,” he said.SOURCE: Dallas Morning News
