Sen. Boxer sets committee hearing on climate change

Washington -- Sen. Barbara Boxer sought Thursday to rally support for federal action to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, eliciting testimony that catastrophic climate change is under way and Republican denials that the atmosphere is warming.

At the helm of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Boxer invited Republicans to submit any evidence they liked into the official Senate record, as Republicans brandished charts showing that atmospheric warming has slowed recently.

Dianna Furchtgott-Roth, an economist at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, said even if the planet is warming, it would be cheaper to control the sun's radiation through "geo-engineering" and "solar radiation management" that "diminishes the warmth of the sun's rays" than to cut back on fossil fuels.

Boxer said the Manhattan Institute has received $2 million from the Koch Foundation, set up by Koch Industries, a privately held oil and gas conglomerate.

A Democratic effort

The hearing was part of a campaign by Senate and House Democrats to raise the profile of climate change after a failed 2009 effort led in the Senate by Boxer to pass "cap and trade" legislation. The defeat contributed to Democrats' loss of their House majority in 2010, costing San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi the House speakership.

Democrats lay low on the issue until Obama won re-election last year. Wednesday's hearing was Boxer's second on climate change this year. She and other Democrats are focused this time on a refundable carbon tax.

Ranking committee Republican David Vitter of Louisiana complained that Boxer had not invited administration officials to explain President Obama's Climate Action Plan, which was issued last month and would begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Republicans have denounced it as a "war on coal."

Boxer said she had not invited administration witnesses because Republicans had refused until Thursday to confirm Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA would be responsible for writing new power plant regulations. Republicans focused on evidence that global air temperatures have not risen as rapidly in recent years as expected, and said extreme weather events such as Superstorm Sandy and the continuing drought in the West were the result of natural climate variation.

Climate change report

Heidi Cullen, chief climatologist at the independent group Climate Central and a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, said the rise in global average air temperatures has slowed but that is because the ocean is absorbing the heat.

Cullen said there is a "clear link" between climate change and an increase in extreme weather such as droughts and heat waves in the West and floods in the Northeast, as well as Superstorm Sandy, which struck the East Coast last year.

The Arizona wildfire that killed 19 firefighters last month was the result of "one of the most extreme heat waves on record," Cullen said.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., formerly the ranking Republican on the committee and Boxer's chief sparring partner on climate change, mocked the hearing as "a lot of theater. But it's going to be fun and it will be good to start talking about it again."

Boxer replied: "Is this the second act?"