House GOP Clowns for the Climate

by Emily Gertz

Published April 22, 2009 @ 05:24PM PT

In these dark days of economic crisis and climactic instability, GOP members of the House of Representatives want to cheer up their Democratic colleagues.  How else to explain the humor they brought to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment's March 25 hearing on climate change and energy legislation?

As Kate Sheppard reports in Grist, the minority lined up some great acts for the hearing, including:

E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who warned that “fear of catastrophic, man-made global warming is a mistake,” and argued that because the “biblical worldview sees the world and ecosystems as the work of a wise God,” humankind couldn’t possibly be affecting the climate. Going further, he warned that restricting the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere would harm the poor, and that Americans are “morally obligated to provide access for the poor to affordable, abundant fossil fuels.”

The minority’s second witness was Lord Christopher Monckton, aka the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a British hereditary peer ... “The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing,” he told the panel...

Monckton argued that if Congress moved to address climate change, it would “create green jobs by the thousands and eliminate real jobs by the millions ... Green jobs are the new euphemism for vast unemployment.”

He also contended that aggressive environmental regulation in California has prompted a vast exodus from the state. “Everyone with the means to get up and go is getting up and going, and unlike their robotic governor, they won’t be back,” Monckton said—though he offered no evidence of a mass migration. (In reality, the state’s overall population continues to grow, even though the number of people moving out of California has slightly surpassed the number moving in.)

Monckton has a colorful history—journalist by training, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, business consultant, and developer of the high-selling Eternity puzzle—but no background in climate science.  Nonetheless, he’s touted by climate deniers as an “expert” on the topic, and serves as chief policy adviser to theScience & Public Policy Institute, a climate-skeptic group. 

Apparently the elected representatives were determined not to be upstaged, even by their own guests.  Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) joked that we didn't need to worry about global warming, because "the planet is “carbon-starved,” asking “If we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? ... So all our good intentions could be for vain.  In fact, we could be doing the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.”

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) wowed House colleagues with his stand-up rap: “Adapting is a common natural way for people to adapt to their environment...I believe that the earth’s climate is changing, but I think it’s changing for natural variation reasons...And I think mankind has been adopting, or adapting to climate as long as man has walked the earth. When it rains, we find shelter. When it’s hot, we get shade. When it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay," reports Sheppard.  She adds,

A few weeks earlier, at a hearing on renewable power, Barton raised the question of whether expanding wind power might actually cause the planet to heat up:

Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.

Funny!

Alas, things have settled down into a more serious track at the committee hearings.  Yesterday's session focused on the potential costs of the Waxman-Markey climate bill.  

But it was nice of the minority members to lighten things up last week.