Pawlenty Flips On Climate Change With Sudden Right Turn

Minnesota Public Radio:

President Obama is promising new steps toward capping greenhouse gas emissions, but Gov. Tim Pawlenty is backing away from his earlier support for new regulations to slow global warming.

Since 2006, Tim Pawlenty has been touting clean energy initiatives as a way to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the whole story: Minnesota Public Radio

Comments

[Calinative]

10:45 AM on 10/06/2009

Pawlenty can see the writing on the wall.

Global warming will be the albatross Democrats will wear for a long time.

[WillWilson]

04:36 PM on 09/30/2009

I've posted a graph of our energy use from various sources over the last two centuries (from the US DOE's 2006 Annual Energy Review) online at:

http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=116

the reality of global warming and ecological consequences:

http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=95

and increasing sea levels:

http://www.sciencetime.org/blog/?p=125

We use lots of energy, with too many emissions of greenhouse gases, and still have about 300 years worth of coal. Our concern is surviving a changing climate. We depend on the present climate for growing crops right where farms just happen to be. With climate change comes not just warming, but broader variations in things like last frost date, first frost date, and rainfall patterns. Food production depends on these climate measures. As the climate changes, insect pests and plant pathogens find new habitable areas of the globe, perhaps in these agricultural areas. Nobody can predict whether such things will happen, but if they do, and food production fails, I would call that a problem. So, what is an acceptable risk? How confident are you that no problems will arise? Humans experienced potato famines, changed eastern forests through release of the chestnut blight, and so on. Climate change brings on new risks. Are you comfortable with a 10% risk of agricultural collapse? 1%? 50%?

The sooner we find new, clean sources, the better.

Will Wilson

[RomeoMD25]

08:37 PM on 09/27/2009

There’s lots of money out there for those wanting to ‘prove’ global warming, most of it from the government. Not so much for the skeptics.

[Chic Bowdrie]

11:59 PM on 09/24/2009

What's most troubling to me is not that Gov. Pawlenty flip-flopped, but why. I too think that cap and trade is going to be bad for the economy and we need a vital economy to generate replacement of foreign oil. But that is not the main reason we need to forget about cap and trade which basically means more money out of pocket for the folks. That CO2 causes global warming is far from proven and claims of a scientific consensus are not true.

I found the following resources helpful in coming to those conclusions: Meltdown (P. Michaels, 2004), Unstoppable Global Warming (Singer and Avery, 2007), Chilling Stars (Svensmark and Calder, 2007), Climate Confusion (Roy Spencer, 2008), Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future (Pilkey, 2007) and Cool it! The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Bjorn Lomborg, 2007)

[realpolitic]

03:02 PM on 09/25/2009

All your your resources are written by professional skeptics, almost none of which are climate scientists. You guys on the right should actually have courage enough to read the actual science like the IPCC reports. They are really not that difficult. it would be interesting for you to train your mind to form conclusions without someone telling you what to think.

[realpolitic]

08:29 PM on 09/24/2009

Pawlenty can veer sharply to the right in his climate change stance to attract the hard-core conservative base, the same folks who think Sarah Palin is the next messiah, but by doing so, the Republican Party becomes equivalent to the modern day know-nothing party. They deny climate change, income disparities, and just about any other societal problem. Their solution to problems is to ignore them. However, the more Pawlenty tries to capture the rigth-wing hysterical base of his party, and the more he ventures into crazy land, the more he becomes just another fixture on the late night comedy shows like Palin was. There are still some in America who are not biblical literalists. Thank God!

[RomeoMD25]

07:38 PM on 09/24/2009

I see the campaign to confuse people by labeling CO2 as "pollution" and "emissions" has been effective. The portions of the bus smoke that will harm you include carbon monoxide and other toxins and particulates (aka actual pollution). I believe carbon monoxide will kill you by seizing oxygen molecules from your bloodstream in order to transform itself into the more stable and inert CO2.

Unlike CO, CO2 is harmless and does not make anyone cough. As long as there is enough oxygen is in the air, the ratio of Nitrogen and CO2 doesn't much matter to people as far as breathing goes.

[Richard2]

10:58 AM on 09/24/2009

Science isn't politics. Politics isn't science.

It is nonsense to say that someone has made a "sudden right turn" on an issue of science.

Would you say that Andrew Revkin has made a "sudden right turn?"

[RomeoMD25]

05:28 AM on 09/24/2009

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal gas that trees and other plants need to survive, just like oxygen (O2) is the principal gas
that humans and other animals require.
Trees absorb CO2 and release O2-- animals inhale O2 and exhale CO2. See how nice this all works!

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not to be confused with its poisonous evil cousin carbon monoxide (CO), which can kill humans and
animals in just a few minutes. Life as we know it could not exist without carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/18/natural-gas-lobby-steps-i_n_291285.html

[Rmath]

12:10 AM on 09/24/2009

This miserable little man will say or do ANYTHING to ingratiate himself to the right wing of the GOP.

[RomeoMD25]

07:21 AM on 09/24/2009

Imagine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn't marry. That might generate the odd headline, no?
When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it's usually newsworthy.
So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?

Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC's last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.

Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN's World Climate Conference--an annual gathering of the so-called "scientific consensus" on man-made climate change --Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."Latif pointed out, the Atlantic, and particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling instead. And it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 10 to 20 more years.

[katy61]

11:31 PM on 09/23/2009

For all of you "climate change" supporters, have you ever asked yourself why is it suddenly called "climate change"? Go back just a couple years ago and all you ever head was Global Warming, that has now been replaced by "climate change". Of course the change in language occurred after much of the science began to show that we are not, and have not been warming at all. The people at the top of the political, financial windfall that stems from fear of "global warming" are betting that you are stupid enough not to notice fact, if they just change the name. They are sure it will work, after all no one ever asks what happened to the ice age we were destined to enter in the 70s. I believed it then, not this time. But if you do, how about some common sense approaches that cost nothing. Why can't Washington use Go To Meeting and email, internet and webcam . Why leave the carbon footprint as well as the taxpayer cost. Why do they not limit their home sizes to 2000 sq ft. Why do we need to waste the energy heating and cooling wasted space? Why not eliminate private pools, tennis courts etc.. after all there are plenty of public community options. I could go on forever, but you get the point

[monstermash9]

03:25 PM on 10/06/2009

For all you "round-earthers" and "helio-centrists," do you ever wonder why NOW they call the earth spherical and that NOW it revolves around the sun? These politicians are hypocrites because have you ever noticed that they use FLAT maps!!! Why not eliminate ALL maps! We should all listen to what katy says about climate change, even though the collective consensus of scientists with doctorates who have spent their entire lives studying the environment say otherwise. I'll bet katy has the inside scoop that these "elitists" don't have, like the little green men that visit katy at night.

[sueinmn]

11:05 PM on 09/23/2009

http://www.change.org/actions/view/petition_to_recall_governor_pawlenty

Help keep this going! He gets a copy fro every signature signed!!
T-Paw will do ANYTHING to get the GOP nomination for pres. Hes will sell out his own family to go there! Family values of course!

[QOTW]

10:54 PM on 09/23/2009

Poor nice-but-dim Tim, destined always to be the bridesmaid and never the President.

[fumes]

10:16 PM on 09/23/2009

flip-flopper!

a trace gas is plummeting toward it's trace gas tipping point (TGTP)..

and this guy is having second thoughts.

[realpolitic]

08:12 PM on 09/24/2009

Fumes, how do all deniers show up at the same articles each day? Do they get a memo about what articles to post under? Not you!

[unhhockey]

10:10 PM on 09/23/2009

What a little twit.

[AllShookUp]

09:07 PM on 09/23/2009

"What people think now will be very different than what people think 10 or 15 or 20 years from now . . ."

Funny, it only took him 2 years to achieve that goal -- he was for it before he was against it. I'm not surprised.