Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman and the AP on Global Warming

Today in New Hampshire, Rick Perry gave voters some straight talk on the climate:

“I think we’re seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists that are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change,” the Texas governor said on the first stop of a two-day trip to the first-in-the-nation primary state.

He said some want billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars spent to address the issue, but he added: “I don’t think from my perspective that I want to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question.”

What Perry said was correct. The realists are winning the global warming debate hands-down, and their ranks are growing steadily. The anthropogenic global warming theory is not only unproven, it is contradicted by a vast body of empirical data, and has been shown to rest, to a considerable degree, on fraud. Bravo to Governor Perry for being on top of the issue.

The Associated Press naturally was scandalized by Perry’s refusal to join in the alarmist scam, and jumped in to editorialize:

But Perry’s opinion runs counter to the view held by an overwhelming majority of scientists that pollution released from the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the planet.

The AP is simply wrong. I haven’t seen any survey data for quite a few years, but at this point I would guess that a majority of qualified scientists reject the alarmists’ claims. Carbon dioxide isn’t pollution, either, but that is another story. The AP continues:

Perry’s home state of Texas releases more heat-trapping pollution carbon dioxide — the chief greenhouse gas — than any other state in the country, according to government data.

Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of economic growth. Where there are factories, vehicles, people–jobs–there is carbon dioxide. Now the AP’s editorializing becomes explicitly partisan:

Global warming has become an issue for contenders for the Republican nomination to run away from, since many conservatives question overwhelming evidence showing climate change is happening and the big government solutions to stem it.

Where to begin? First, a clear majority of Americans do not believe the anthropogenic global warming hype, so this is hardly an issue for Republicans to run away from. On the contrary, Republicans are increasingly willing to side with the majority, and with the most current and reliable science, against the self-interested and frequently corrupt claims of the alarmists.

Next, the AP makes a pitifully obvious logical error, referring to “overwhelming evidence showing climate change is happening.” Climate change is always happening. It has been happening for millions of years, and will continue for as long as the Earth exists. That is not the issue. The issue is whether the United States, alone or in combination with other nations, can control the climate by regulating emissions of carbon dioxide. The answer to that question is, as most scientists agree and as most Americans understand, No.

Next the AP contradicts its own statement that “global warming has become an issue for contenders for the Republican nomination to run away from”:

Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney — who all at one point supported steps to curb global warming pollution — have since tempered their stances. But unlike Perry, both Romney and Huntsman acknowledge the scientific evidence.

“Acknowledge the scientific evidence.” Got that? This AP reporter wouldn’t know scientific evidence if it bit him in the proverbial rear end.

That the Associated Press is, for the most part, a Democratic Party organ is not news. We expect this kind of nonsense from the AP, but we don’t expect it from Republican presidential contenders. So this report by Politico, is appalling:

Huntsman strategist John Weaver speaks up in the Washington Post to express disapproval of the Texas governor’s view that global warming is a hoax:

The campaign of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. seized on Perry’s comments to portray the Texas governor as outside the mainstream with his climate change views. Huntsman himself does believe in the science behind global warming.

“We’re not going to win a national election if we become the anti-science party,” John Weaver, Huntsman’s chief strategist, said in an interview Wednesday. “The American people are looking for someone who lives in reality and is a truth teller because that’s the only way that the significant problems this country faces can be solved. It appears that the only science that Mitt Romney believes in is the science of polling, and that science clearly was not a mandatory course for Governor Perry.”

“The anti-science party”? Good grief. The science in the global warming debate is all on the side of the realists like Governor Perry, not the alarmists like Al Gore. It gets worse:

Anti-Romney non sequiturs aside, Weaver hasn’t been shy about chiding the GOP for its less electability-friendly impulses. He told Esquire in June: “There’s a simple reason our party is nowhere near being a national governing party … No one wants to be around a bunch of cranks.”

Why on earth is a man whose chief strategist thinks Republicans are “a bunch of cranks” running for President as a Republican?

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