James R. Carroll

LCJ

WASHINGTON – If a politician were told that, after lengthy study and analysis, more than 97 percent of political observers concluded that that politician was going to lose, do you think such a warning would spur a campaign to immediate action?

Of course. Unless the politician was delusional.

Well, consider this: Precisely that overwhelming percentage of scientists involved in climate research have concluded that there has been “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average global temperature in recent decades and that human-generated greenhouse gases are mostly responsible.

But while it is evident that the science of climate change, also known as global warming, is convincing and conclusive, it is not an exaggeration to say that the politics of an issue that will determine the fate of the planet is quite unsettled.

Last week, the Obama administration released a landmark, 800-page climate assessment report that essentially told the public that climate change is a threat and is affecting every part of the nation (and, of course, the rest of the globe). The sea levels are rising, floods and storm surges are more severe, rains are more intense in the Northeast, droughts and wildfires more pronounced in the West. The changes are affecting or will affect, among other things, where we live and work, how healthy we are, what we grow and what we eat and what other species will thrive or perish, including us.

Kentucky and Indiana can expect stronger storms, more heat waves and worse air and water quality, the report said.

The report was produced by scientists and other experts from state, local and federal governments, universities, the private sector, environmental groups and industry, including oil companies. It was reviewed by the National Academies of Science.

“Climate change is here and now, and not in some distant time or place,” said Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, one of study’s authors. “The choices we’re making today will have a significant impact on our future.”

Because this report came with the imprimatur of the White House, however, it generated political criticism.

President Barack Obama has been renewing his efforts to bring public attention to climate change. And the Environmental Protection Agency is expected in June to issue final regulations governing carbon emissions from power plants, a prime source of greenhouse gases.

But this is not without extreme controversy, of course, in states that mine coal or are dependent on coal for power. In Kentucky’s case, it is both.

And so Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other lawmakers, as well as coal-affiliated groups, repeatedly have attacked Obama for a “war on coal.” The climate change report gave them new fodder.

The president is likely to “use the platform to renew his call for a national energy tax,” McConnell predicted last week. “And I’m sure he’ll get loud cheers from liberal elites — from the kind of people who leave a giant carbon footprint and then lecture everybody else about low-flow toilets.”

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-1st District, and two of his colleagues on the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a joint statement denouncing the report as “short on details” and part of “an agenda against affordable and reliable energy.”

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group headed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan of Inez, Ky., blistered the White House for “unsubstantiated scare tactics and hyperbole.”

Other lawmakers, however, want a fuller airing of the report’s dire warnings. House Democrats on the energy and commerce panel, including Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, asked the chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., for a full hearing on the climate change assessment.

“We have different views about what policies are appropriate to respond to climate change,” the Democrats said. “But we share the view that we should be listening to the best scientists and making informed decisions.”

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. Follow Carroll on Twitter @JRCarrollCJ. He can be reached at (703) 854-8945.