Luetkemeyer aims at UN ‘junk science’
Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer
WASHINGTON — Missouri Republicans are in the thick of the Washington fight to defeat global warming legislation, and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer opened up a new front this afternoon with legislation to strip funding from the UN group overseeing climate research.
Along with a broadside against the United Nations, Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, introduced a bill prohibiting contributions from the United States to the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Folks in Missouri and across the country are tired of this never-ending spending spree, and my goal is to deliver some of our people’s hard-earned money back into their pocketbooks instead of spending it on international junk science,” Luetkemeyer said in a news release.
The panel in question, which included hundreds of scientists from more than 100 countries, famously authored a series of reports two years ago concluding that global climate change is “very likely” to have a human cause.
The panel predicted that global temperatures would rise by anywhere from 3.2 to 7.2 degrees by the end of the century, accelerating the melting of glaciers and the rise of the world’s oceans and leading to potentially catastrophic effects.
The panel was awarded the Nobel Prize for its work — something that doesn’t seem to impress Luetkemeyer. The first-term congressman observed that hundreds of international scientists have criticized the UN panel report.
“We all know that the UN is incompetent when it comes to spending money, and that is why American taxpayers should not be forking over millions more to one of its organizations that not only is in need of significant reform but is engaged in dubious scientific quests,” he wrote.
Given the strength of those accusations, we contacted Stephen Schneider, a biology professor at Stanford University and one of the authors of the reports in question.
Schneider said that every chapter of the reports had hundreds of reviewers, many of them cutting-edge scientists. He argued that many who have challenged the results have little expertise in matters related to climate.
“To characterize what we did as junk science is, frankly, a joke,” he said.
Referring to Luetkemeyer and others in Congress who have attacked the conclusions, he added: “That’s coming from people who wouldn’t know quality science if it sat on their laps and spoke to them.”
Stephen Schneider isn’t exactly the source you can go to for unbiased scientific reporting. Short of James Hansen, who has taken to getting arrested at coal plants, Schneider is the number two rent-seeker when it comes to getting global warming publicity.
Schneider:
“To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios,
make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.”
He’s a politician with an agenda now, grubbing after more money. The IPCC is a political organization that used a lot of questionable bureaucratic data massaging to reach their conclusions, which is why it’s so far off on its predictions. Seriously - are you going to buy the hundreds of reviewers comment? What type of process works like that? Hundreds of reviewers, and no one had questions, corrections? The report covered all the reviews? Please - that’s not science.
Try http://wattsupwiththat.com. It will shake the core of your belief climate change is settled. It will also bother you that you haven’t heard much of this anywhere in the mainsteam press.
Here’s one thing that isn’t “junk science”: Blaine Luetkemeyer putting more money back in the pockets of his constituents will undoubtedly lead to them purchasing more gas guzzling trucks and giant SUV’s, which will only lead to further global warming…
Man, is there anything we can do to get this dude back on the farm? How anyone could make Kenny who? look good is beyond me, but Blaine does it better than anyone else I could imagine.
Missouri Dems: next time, run a moderate Democrat. Send Blaine back home to his tractor.
Sad to see Bill Lambrecht has bought into this hoax.
A recent MIT study concluded that in the very BEST scenario, drastic efforts to reduce global warming would only reduce the projected world-wide global temperature by 0.2 degrees … 100 years from now!! And they gave the odds as infinitesimal that the best scenario would occur.
“Nobel Prize … something that doesn’t seem to impress Luetkemeyer.”
That’s all to his credit; Rigoberta Menchú was awarded a Nobel Prize and she’s universally acknowledged to be a fraud. Al Gore — fraud as well. Jimmy Carter… Yassir Arafat… Mikhail Gorbachev… and you should be impressed by these Nobel Peace Prize winners? Bwaaaa-ha-ha!
Bill was beaten to this story - by almost an hour - by his Post-Dispatch colleague Jeff Wagman. Why does the Post-Dispatch have two reporters working to produce essentially the same item sneering at a Republican member of Congress? I do not agree with Luetkemeyer’s view, by the way. But this eagerness to get snarky about Republicans is evident, and none too attractive.
I’d like to see a so-called P-D reporter report on Russ Carnahan and his brother Tom’s windfarm outstate and how that effected his Crap and Traitor vote as opposed to what was best for his constituents.
Two stories? Because the Post is pushing the same junk science, far left, crap that Luetkemeyer and many, many others are railing against.
How much ‘crap’ is “global warming”? So much so, that the Kool Aide drinkers had to rename it: ‘climate change’
To believe that man can, effect the climate on a global scale is folly. To think that the US without India and China two of the largest polluters can have any effect is insane
I wish global warming wasn’t a Reb vs. Dem issue. And I wish all you ultra-conservatives would stop echoing Rush Limbaugh and denying something that is so completely obvious to most of the educated world. Polar ice is disappearing at an alarming rate and mountain glaciers are disappearing all over the world. You think it’s folly to assume that man can affect the climate on a global level? Why then are we seeing such rapid warming that has not occurred at any other time without being caused by a sudden, cataclysmic event? People like tsquare make me ashamed every time I vote for a Republican, but the Democrats can’t seem to come up with a decent candidate either. John McCain was finally a Reb who understood the dangers of global warming, but unfortunately the media swoon over Obama and the disaster that was GWB assured that he couldn’t make it to the White House. Now Obama is accelerating the sale of our country to China, so we have little recourse to make them change their polluting ways. Nonetheless, “they’re doing it, so why shouldn’t we?” is not a suitable excuse for matching their pollution. Maybe it’s true that we can’t fix the problem, but does that mean we should continue to make it worse? Don’t you people care what kind of world we’re leaving for our children? Or do you blindly trust that God will protect your 4-5 kids, since you carried out your divine duty to overpopulate the earth?
Nothing in this column that would educate readers as to exactly how MUCH the United States taxpayers have put into this committee over the years?
How about just annually? How much was appropriated last year?
What is Obama asking to be appropriated this year?
Luetkemeyer refers to this “never-ending spending spree,” yet we don’t know how much money this is.
Yet, we hear all about the supposed validity of those authoring the report.
Good reporting!
cjstl,
You indicate that Blaine is just putting more money back into the pockets of his supports. What do you think all candidates on both sides do? Did you see the USA Today report that the counties that voted for Obama have received almost twice as much money as those who did not? Surprise!!!!!!!! I am sure you are just as surprised by that.
The Climate Change folks say that the eastern side of Antarctica has lost much of the ice it has had for many year and that is proof that the earth is warming. They fail to mention that the western side has gained more in the last 20 years than the eastern side has lost. Why is that? One of the climate change sheep on a different comment board indicated that climate change was causing that as well. He said that the warmer temps caused more moisture in the air hence more precipitation. If that is true, then why is it not in the form of rain instead of ice? If all of the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting so fast, why have the oceans not flood the coast all over the world?
The Climate Changes every year. Some warmer, some not. Some times it is wetter, sometimes not. To believe that what the human race contributes in any significant way is ridiculous. The earth has warming and cooling cycles all the time. In the early 70’s we were told we were in the beginning of the new ice age. Oops!!!!! I guess all of those “experts” were wrong. I guess all the new “experts” are spot on and no more discussion is needed.
Wake up. We as humans can not even accurately predict the weather 10 days from now. How do you suppose these “experts” are predicting our climate over the next 10-100 years.
I agree that we would be very smart to use our renewable resources. But, we can not do it in a knee jerk reaction. T. Boone Pickens order 1000’s of wind turbines to create a wind farm in the Texas Panhandle. Now he does not have a way to get the power to the people who can use it so that project has been canceled. We have to come up with a plan, make sure it is viable, then execute it. Not throw money at a problem with no idea if it will work or not. (ie Stimulus Plan)