Newt Gingrich says he doesn't buy the established science of global warming. Gingrich recalls 'global cooling'

Newt Gingrich doesn't buy the established science of global warming, especially when there were warnings in the 1970s of a new Ice Age.

"Now many of those scientists are still alive, and they were absolutely convinced," the GOP presidential contender said Wednesday during a campaign visit to Manchester, N.H. "I mean, if Al Gore had been able to in the 1970s, we would have been building huge furnaces to warm the planet against this inevitable coming Ice Age."


The former House speaker warned of government overreaction to an issue that he suggested may just be a passing fad.

"Now, if you were a left-wing intellectual, climate change is the newest excuse to take control of lives, and you want a new bureaucracy to run our lives on behalf of the newest thing," he said.

Environmental groups say Gingrich is just carrying water for energy interests that have funded his 527 group American Solutions, including Peabody Energy, American Electric Power, Plains Exploration & Production and Arch Coal. Conservatives are also hounding Gingrich over a 2008 television commercial he appeared in with Nancy Pelosi — on behalf of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection — where the two sit on a love seat in front of the Capitol urging action on the issue.

Gingrich says the ad was his way of engaging in debate with Democrats on the issue, but global warming skeptics still want an apology.

While that's not happened, Gingrich hasn't shied away from taking on climate science during his presidential tour of early primary states.

In New Hampshire, he said he’d like to see hearings on this month’s newest National Academy of Sciences report that found "climate change is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems."

"I’m not discrediting or disputing the National Academy of Sciences," Gingrich said. "I’m saying a topic large enough to change the behavior of the entire human race is a topic that is more than science and deserves public hearings with very tough-minded public questions, and we’ve had almost none of that on either side."

"You have the people over here saying it’s not true," Gingrich added. "You have the people over here saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen Thursday.’ You have almost nobody saying in a practical, calm way, ‘Let’s walk through the material and find out what the facts are.’"

Gingrich drew applause from the crowd in the room with his overall remarks, which were punctuated by what he said are his two lingering questions about climate change.

"To what degree are we certain that we don’t have patterns we don’t understand yet, that may or may not involve human contributions?" he said.

"And the second question I'd ask, are we better off to think through — and nobody in the scientific community would even think this — are we better off to think through how to cope with it than we are to think through how to avoid it?" he said. "It may well be that it is dramatically less expensive to adjust to a change in climate than it is to try to stop the entire planet from changing."

Climate scientists have long faced questions about how they reconcile the 70s-era warnings about a pending Ice Age. Those reports were based on a slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking sunlight. While media reports did hype the issue — Newsweek and Time put it on their covers — there also was nowhere near the onslaught of scientific reports and international response from world leaders to academics compared to the mounting evidence on global warming.

"It was a little blip in a long trend of temperatures going up, and there are going to be those," Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said of the 1970s cooling period. "It's a trend line."

Claussen, a former top State Department climate official from the Clinton administration, said Gingrich’s question about adaptation misses the mark.

"We have to adapt, but if we don't reduce emissions, we're going to find it's too severe to adapt to," she said. "We have to do both."



"You have the people over here saying it’s not true," Gingrich added. "You have the people over here saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen Thursday.’ You have almost nobody saying in a practical, calm way, ‘Let’s walk through the material and find out what the facts are.’"

Gingrich drew applause from the crowd in the room with his overall remarks, which were punctuated by what he said are his two lingering questions about climate change.

"To what degree are we certain that we don’t have patterns we don’t understand yet, that may or may not involve human contributions?" he said.

"And the second question I'd ask, are we better off to think through — and nobody in the scientific community would even think this — are we better off to think through how to cope with it than we are to think through how to avoid it?" he said. "It may well be that it is dramatically less expensive to adjust to a change in climate than it is to try to stop the entire planet from changing."

Climate scientists have long faced questions about how they reconcile the 70s-era warnings about a pending Ice Age. Those reports were based on a slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking sunlight. While media reports did hype the issue — Newsweek and Time put it on their covers — there also was nowhere near the onslaught of scientific reports and international response from world leaders to academics compared to the mounting evidence on global warming.

"It was a little blip in a long trend of temperatures going up, and there are going to be those," Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said of the 1970s cooling period. "It's a trend line."

Claussen, a former top State Department climate official from the Clinton administration, said Gingrich’s question about adaptation misses the mark.

"We have to adapt, but if we don't reduce emissions, we're going to find it's too severe to adapt to," she said. "We have to do both."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 2:42 p.m. on May 27, 2011.