By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Wednesday, April 15, Congressman Gary Palmer (R-Hoover), a member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, commented on the President’s unilateral commitment to the UN to reduce carbon emissions by 28 percent in the next decade.
US Representative Palmer said in a written statement, “I have a long history of advocating for common sense environmentalism while fighting environmental alarmism. This hearing demonstrated that our current path is based on alarmism. As Dr. Curry testified at the hearing, climate has always changed and always will change, and the models that proponents of vastly reduced carbon emissions rely upon to justify their preferred policies, have proven inaccurate.”
Rep. Palmer said, “The unilateral, arbitrary commitment by the Administration, if implemented, will have devastating effect on our economy, especially on lower income Americans. The Administration has also relied upon unconstitutional executive overreach in efforts to attain this goal. Congress should consider every possible method of fighting back against this overreach to solve an uncertain problem.”
Dr. Judith Curry is a Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and is the former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science and the President of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN).
Dr. Curry wrote: “Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change:
• The hiatus in global warming since 1998
• Reduced estimates of the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide
• Climate models predict much more warming than has been observed in the early 21st century.”
Dr. Curry continued, “We have made some questionable choices in defining the problem of climate change and its solution:
• The definition of dangerous climate change is ambiguous, and hypothesized catastrophic tipping points are regarded as very or extremely unlikely in the 21st century.
• Efforts to link ‘dangerous’ impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by evidence.
• Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command and control’ solution
• It has been estimated that the U.S. INDC will prevent 0.018oC in warming by 2100.”
“The inadequacies of current policies based on the Precautionary Principle are leaving the real societal consequences of climate change and extreme weather events (whether caused by humans or natural variability) largely unaddressed.”
Dr. Curry is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union. Funding sources for Curry’s research have included NSF, NASA, NOAA, DOD and DOE.
President Barack H. Obama has claimed vast new powers over American industry in thousands of page of new regulations written by his US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Congressman Gary Palmer represents Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District and has been openly skeptical of President Obama’s environmental policies; both as a candidate and in his former position as President of the Alabama Policy Institute (API).
