Did D.C.'s blizzard bury climate change legislation?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/12/AR2010021203910.html

Did D.C.'s blizzard bury climate change legislation?

Sunday, February 14, 2010

The Post asked political and environmental experts whether the record snowstorms buried climate change legislation this year. Below, responses from Christine Todd Whitman, Kenneth P. Green and Steven F. Hayward, David G. Hawkins, Douglas E. Schoen, Emily Figdor and Ed Rogers.

...

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN

It shouldn't, but it will. Among the reasons winter storms will make this issue more politically challenging are overreach and simplification -- on both sides of the debate. "An Inconvenient Truth" brought the issue of climate change to the fore, but many of the charts implying that the world's end is near were overly dramatic.

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KENNETH P. GREEN AND STEVEN F. HAYWARD

The corpus of climate legislation was already cooling before Snowmageddon. The cold wind that buried its chances this year didn't come off the snow burying Washington: It came off horrific unemployment reports, lackluster economic growth, massive Tea Party rallies and vicious town hall meetings. After the breakdown in Copenhagen, the explosion of "Climategate" and the election of Scott Brown, the Democrats' rapid pivot to focus on jobs was inevitable.

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DAVID G. HAWKINS

Just as a group of cancer-free, cigarette-smoking 75-year-olds does not disprove that smoking causes cancer, a handful of snowstorms does not counter the massive evidence that we are changing the Earth's climate. What is that evidence? We know the gases produced when we burn fossil fuels trap heat in the atmosphere; emissions of those gases have grown enormously in the past 100 years; the concentrations of those gases in the atmosphere have grown in lock step; global average temperatures have increased over the same period, and natural influences on temperature can explain only a small fraction of that increase. We also know that the resulting changes in climate have already had detectible impacts on ecosystems, droughts, precipitation patterns and other features important to human well-being. People who hype the snowstorms to oppose action on climate are charlatans.

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DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

The recent bout of wintry weather and the overall political climate have almost certainly killed climate-change legislation this year.

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[sharesunited]

1. No, it was the claimed evidence of hoax contained in hacked e-mails.

Dear Oklahoma: Fire Inhofe.

[FBaggins]

2. No. It was long dead before that.

The economy killed it.

[The Croquist]

5. Agreed

As I posted 6 or more months ago, the economy will always trump the environment.

[Birthmark]

3. Every year we waste is lost

And we have no idea if this is a critical year, a year that pushes us past a "tipping point." Every delay is a roll of the dice --which appear at this point to be loaded against us. The reason we delay makes no difference to the physics involved. If we don't cut our contribution to GW *fast* we are going to be in very serious trouble.

[timeforpeace]

4. Changing it from Global Warming to Climate Change signaled it was dead.

[marshall]

6. Scientists certainly aren't known for their skills at wordsmithing

And they keep lousy records. They should all have assistants who help them with the day to day tasks of communicating and keeping track of what they are doing.