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February 12, 2008 07:50 PM UTC

Lundberg Declares Climate Change "Junk Science"

  • 32 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post reports:

A state lawmaker said Monday that the research underlying Gov. Bill Ritter’s Climate Action Plan is flawed.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s predicated on junk science,” Rep. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said.

Lundberg said it has not been settled scientifically that manmade carbon-dioxide emissions contribute to global warming.

Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and one of the plan’s authors, said the carbon dioxide/global warming connection is widely accepted as scientific fact.

“You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth,” he said.

Lundberg’s comment came at a presentation to a handful of Republican lawmakers sponsored by the Independence Institute, a conservative Golden-based think tank. At the presentation, the group released a report assailing Ritter’s plan…

We’re a little busy today, so we’ll let you take care of the evisceration.

Comments

32 thoughts on “Lundberg Declares Climate Change “Junk Science”

  1. Too many Nobel winners and other leading scientists are saying that global warming is a reality.  To fly in the face of their logic is just plain dumb.

    Teddy Roosevelt would have had you believe that conservatives believed in conservation and preserving our natural resources – too bad that thought has been lost.

  2. Great quote,

    “You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth,” he said.

    Lundberg clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That said I think the governor’s office needs to be asked their opinion on the rising evidence that biofuels are high in greenhouse gas emmmissions and have other negative effects on the environment and world food markets.

    There was a good article in the NY Times recently that touched on some of these issues,

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02

  3. (Assuming, of course, that ignorance is bliss.)

    The basic physics underlying the role of increasing carbon dioxide in causing warming was understood over 100 years ago. (Check out this paper, by an eventual Nobel Prize winner: Arrhenius, S. 1896. On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.)

    Climate change is not some liberal conspiracy.

  4. the gases China or India puts out in 7 hours. I love the fact that my energy bill is increasing needlessly so Ritter can get him some national ink, oops he didn’t even get that.  

    1. Well, at least you acknowledge that greenhouse gases are an issue of concern. Why else would you care about China and India?

      Either greenhouse gases are an issue and China and India are big polluters or global climate change is junk science.

      Which way would the right like to take this discussion? You can’t have it both ways.  

    2. Curiously, my energy bill keeps dropping – because I’m using less energy than I did a year ago! In other words, the solution to your energy bill concerns is in your hands!

    3. due to the fact that multi-national oil and gas companies can now sell off the state’s natural gas in the MidWest, driving up local prices as we are forced to compete with our locally abundant but nationally scarce commodity on the open market, allowing those same multi-nationals to pocket record profits, laughing while their conservative apologists run cover.

  5. Even if we are not the cause of global warming, does it matter?

    We are still dumping poisons into the air we breathe and the water we drink.  I wonder why cancer is on the rise.

    We are dependent on the Middle East for our fuel.  I wonder why we are at war.

    We are depleting the finite resources.  I wonder when we will find renewable alternatives.

    The planets temperature is rising and the attitude that we are not responsible is plain foolish.  Even if we are not the cause, we are not helping the situation.

    I think it is equivalent to saying it is OK to beat a man with a bat because he is dying of cancer anyways.

    Since when did political ideology replace common sense and stewardship?  

    As we move into the age of preventive medicine we need to move into the age of preventative ecology.

    What do you expect though from a country that was founded on the idea of manifest destiny and the christian ideal that the earth was created for us to exploit?

    I for one believe the Earth is alive, and we are just manifestations of its living energy.

    As always, good luck America!

    My country used to be….

    1. Does it matter what it’s called?  Hard for trees to live=hard for us to breathe=hard for us to live.  It’s hot or cold, so what?  We’re not trying to keep things green so that hippies have a pretty place to hold music festivals.

      I’m with you, is living suddenly anti-Christian and/or against the Bible?

  6. I question why Gov. Ritter wants to wreck our economy when both China and India are doing absolutely nothing to curtail their green house gases. Does anyone really think Colorado going to 20% renewables is going to do anything to stop green house gases world wide when China and India puts out more gases in 7 hours than Colorado would curtail in a year. I know many of you will say “we have to start somewhere and if it saves just one hydro carbon its worth it!”

    The Ritter administration is acting like everyone should live in a hemp house that is 100% green. The reality is many Coloradans are struggling to meet ends meet and the Governor with his “new energy economy” is hurting Coloradans by raising our energy costs.

    can someone explain why they said in the 70’s-80’s we were headed for an Ice age?

    Colorado is experiencing its largest snowpack since 1997.

    My energy is increasing and no  

    1. You’ve said that twice now, would you care to substantiate that wild accusation?

      Going green certainly has not harmed California.

      Check the chart here,

      http://www.solveclimate.com/si

      Source: http://www.next10.org/environm

      Key Findings

         * Californians, per capita, pay lower utility bills – less than half of what residents in Texas pay.

         * Tougher building and appliance standards saved the state $56 billion by 2003 and are expected to save another $23 billion in the next five years.

         * Energy efficiency allowed the state to avoid building 24 power plants in the last 30 years. Good for climate, good for public health.

         * Among states, California has the second lowest emissions per capita while generating the nation’s tenth highest gross domestic product per capita.

    2. If everyone is going to wait until absolutely everyone else has done everything first, nothing will happen. This country is one of the richest on the planet and emits more per-capita than anyone else. We should go first – and do so proudly.

    3. According to Bezdek, Wendling & DiPerna in a 2006 paper in the Journal of Environmental Management, environmental protection regulations were directly responsible for creating 5 million jobs in 2003 (contributing $300 billion of “economic activity.”)

      These jobs include computer analysts, clerks, factory workers, accountants, etc., as well as the professional scientific, technical, and information services that many communities claim to be trying to attract.

    4. The breathless story in the magazine Newsweek certainly did suggest an imminent ice age was upon us.

      There were two principal research studies that the journalists were trying to interpret.

      1) One suggested that based on long term oscillations in prehistoric climates, the earth was heading for an ice age sometime in the next 10,000 years! (Hardly imminent, but then a carefully reported story would not be good copy for a weekly magazine.)

      2) The other principal research account noted that industrial age pollution could have two potential effects on climate — particulates (eg, soot) would have a cooling effect, whereas CO2 would have a warming effect. Based on trends, these researchers suggested that, with business as usual, particulates would continue to be dominant, leading to cooling. (They also suggested that if CO2 became dominant, temperatures would warm).

      A few years after their report, the Clean Air Act was passed. Hardly business as usual! The result being that particulates were cleaned up. (And their predictions of what the CO2 effects would be still fall within the IPCC estimates!)

      Thus, the imminent Ice Age myth is based on a couple of mis-characterizations of scientific research by the popular media. That it still gets repeated is a sign of desperation. A 40 year old story in a popular magazine does not call into doubt the results of thousands of increasingly rigorous scientific research studies since then.

    5. Does anyone really think Colorado going to 20% renewables is going to do anything to stop green house gases world wide when China and India puts out more gases in 7 hours than Colorado would curtail in a year. I know many of you will say “we have to start somewhere and if it saves just one hydro carbon its worth it!”

      That’s really like saying that I had a doughnut for breakfast, so for lunch I’ll have two extra value meals from McDonald’s.  Can you supersize those?

      The energy czar in our great state is former Rep. Tom Plant, while in the leg. he sponsored a bill to help low income families make cheap upgrades (paid for by tax payers) to help with energy costs.  Things like weather stripping and new bulbs, he would never expect a family to do more than they could afford.  He’s so great.

  7. My energy bill is increasing (over $130 per month) and I have taken dramatic steps to make my home more energy efficient.

    This is money I am not spending on my children, there is no two ways about it.

    Xcel just passes on the increase to us the consumers.

    Sorry for the rant just sick of folks who want to save the world with other people’s money.

    1. So they have air to breath and water to drink.

      You are very correct in the idea that the best thing to do is conserve.  It is the low hanging fruit.

      But we as a nation need to apply our efforts to developing the new generation of technology that will eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.  Then I would suggest we share this technology with China, India, etc. so that we have a planet worth living on.

      Funny thing about money, you can’t eat it, you can’t drink it and you can’t breath it.

      Maybe if we quit spending as much on things designed to destroy (bombs, bullets, planes, boats, nukes, etc.) we could find a little more to spend on the “green” technology we are guaranteed to need.

      The reason why we have not yet, because many of those is power want to squeeze out the last drops of oil profit.

      As Ralph Nadar said, “If they could put a meter on the sun, we would all be using solar energy.”  (No I am not a big Ralph Nadar fan, but this is a very truthful statement.)

    2. Are your posts truly reflective of your (lack of) understanding?  How has Gov. Ritter driven up your gas prices?  Xcel–as they like to point out–is passing on the cost of the gas that comes to them out of the pipeline.  The gas that comes to them out of the pipeline is going up (relative to where it was at in CO previously) because the oil and gas companies that are pulling it out of the ground in CO and WY can now ship it off to Chicago (thanks to RMX etc.) driving up local prices as well, which Xcel then passes on to you.  It has squat to do with Gov. Ritter, your strange fantasies aside.

  8. Is how Republicans basically take pride in saying “I’m an idiot.” You can argue about the cost/benefit of various approaches but to declare that the science is unclear on this – all I can thing is this guy shouldn’t be given responsibility for anything, much less our laws.

  9. When hooking readers trumps clarity, newspapers fail. This header guarantees that a certain percentage of readers will take it on faith that the plan IS junk science. The Pols headline is much better.

    also noted (more eloquently) in WPP’s latest post.

    1. There is what people on one side of an issue say, what those on the other side say, and the facts.  The headline acts like facts don’t matter.  They should to a newspaper.

      Republican Representative Clueless About Science would be an equally accurate headline.

  10. Representative Lundberg thinks the earth is 6,000 years old.  Really, when you’re thinking “go to guy on science issues” Lunberg’s name isn’t one that comes to mind.

  11. Professor Lundberg?

    Representative Lundberg thinks the earth is 6,000 years old.  Really, when you’re thinking “go to guy on science issues” Lunberg’s name isn’t one that comes to mind.

    Well, if Benson drops out, maybe he can be the next president of CU?

  12. Lundberg isn’t qualified to comment on the science of air pollution. And his party is biased and corrupted by the polluters.

    This is also the man who was the lone holdout in the 62-1 vote to censure Bruce for kicking a reporter. He’s pro-kicking and pro-polluting.

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