Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the top Republican on the House Science Committee, isn’t pulling any punches when criticizing the Obama administration’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Smith called President Barack Obama’s global warming agenda a “religion” and not based on sound science.
Smith writes that Obama’s warnings of catastrophic global warming just aren’t coming true, and the claims peddled by the administration “sound more like scare tactics than fact-based declarations.”
“Instead of letting political ideology or climate ‘religion’ guide government policy, we should focus on good science,” Smith wrote in the oped pages of the Wall Street Journal. “The facts alone should determine what climate policy options the U.S. considers.”
“That is what the scientific method calls for: inquiry based on measurable evidence,” Smith wrote. “Unfortunately this administration’s climate plans ignore good science and seek only to advance a political agenda.”
Smith’s oped comes after Earth Day — a day environmentalists use to raise awareness about pressing environmental issues. In recent years, the eco-holiday has become almost exclusively about global warming and its ecological fallout. On Earth Day, Obama flew Air Force One down to the Florida Everglades to promote national parks and sound the alarm on emitting fossil fuels.
“The Everglades is one of the most special places in our country. But it’s also one of the most fragile,” Obama said in his weekly address video. “Rising sea levels are putting a national treasure – and an economic engine for the South Florida tourism industry — at risk.”
“So climate change can no longer be denied — or ignored,” the president added.
But Obama’s dire warnings about global warming come after the northeastern U.S. suffered one of its coldest winters in recent memory — indeed, as of Thursday, some 23 states still had snow on the ground this late into April.
The Obama administration recently proposed cutting U.S. carbon dioxide 26 to 28 percent by 2025 as part of the country’s commitment to a global agreement on emissions cuts. The deal was first announced last year along with a vague promise by China to peak emissions by 2030. Obama submitted the pledge to the United Nations earlier this year.
Republicans have hotly contested the UN pledge, saying it commits the U.S. to economy-crushing cuts to carbon dioxide emissions. Obama’s signature rule to cut emissions at coal-fired power plants is already being hit by legal challenges from states, and Republican lawmakers are advising states not to enforce the regulation until the courts have ruled on it.
“Climate alarmists have failed to explain the lack of global warming over the past 15 years,” Smith wrote. “They simply keep adjusting their malfunctioning climate models to push the supposedly looming disaster further into the future.”
“Following the U.N.’s 2008 report, its claims about the melting of Himalayan glaciers, the decline of crop yields and the effects of sea-level rise were found to be invalid,” Smith added. “The InterAcademy Council, a multinational scientific organization, reviewed the report in 2010 and identified ‘significant shortcomings in each major step of [the U.N.] assessment process.’”
“The intellectual dishonesty of senior administration officials who are unwilling to admit when they are wrong is astounding,” Smith wrote. “When assessing climate change, we should focus on good science, not politically correct science.”
“At least the United Nations’ then-top climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, acknowledged … the faith-based nature of climate-change rhetoric when he resigned amid scandal in February,” Smith wrote. “In a farewell letter, he said that ‘the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.’”
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