Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced recently that he would be willing to accept a scaled down version of his Global Warming Bill, AB 649/SB 450, as long as it contained the 25-percent by 2025 enhanced renewable portfolio standard.
No surprise here. As I stated last week, the Global Warming Bill is still alive. I expect any scaled down versions, compromises or individual bills to contain the most expensive and economically damaging provisions of the original package.
I would not be surprised if there is an attempt to pass some version of the global warming bill in April. I will watch closely and keep you informed of any developments.
Meanwhile, the man-made global warming crowd gets more ridiculous. Thomas Friedman, respected opinion writer for The New York Times, stated in a recent column that top climate-science experts should stop using the term “global warming,” and instead use “global weirding.”
First we had “global warming,” then “climate change,” and now “global weirding?” The change in terminology is another attempt to explain the fact that the climate seems to be cooling, when proponents desperately want it to get warmer. Is it any wonder public opinion is turning more skeptical of the constant rhetoric and expensive policy initiatives?
Friedman’s column also tries to make it impossible to disprove global warming using commonsense logic. He states, “The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.” So, are we to believe that both precipitation and lack of precipitation, warmer weather and now colder weather all prove that man-made global warming exists?
The British press continues to report on the Climategate scandal. The Sunday Mail Online reported that Phil Jones, the former director of the esteemed Climate Research Unit, now admits there has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years.
Another British publication, The Times Online, quoted a former lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as stating: “The temperature records cannot be relied upon as indicators of global change.” This statement was in response to some of his newer research, that shows that changes in land use around weather stations has not been properly taken into account.
Each individual Climategate revelation does not disprove global warming. Taken together, however, the revelations certainly paint a picture of data manipulation for political purposes. With the “science” falling apart, is it so surprising that Gov. Doyle and legislative Democrats are marketing their global warming bill as “The Clean Energy Jobs Act?”
Rep. Jim Ott (R-Mequon) represents Wisconsin’s 23rd Assembly District.
