Below are selected excerpts of the September 4, 2012 Politico article. To read full article go to here. (subscription required)
Romney: ‘Human activity contributes’ to global warming
By Alex Guillen
9/4/12 7:20 PM EDT
Mitt Romney says again in a new questionnaire that human activity contributes to climate change, while opening himself to fresh accusations that his stance has shifted since the early days of the presidential campaign.
Romney told the website ScienceDebate.org that “my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences.”
The response was part of a questionnaire that the website, working in partnership with Scientific American magazine, asked both Romney and President Barack Obama to answer on their science-related policies.
ScienceDebate called the answer a “shift” away from an October 2011 statement in which Romney had said, “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”
Earlier on the campaign trail, Romney repeatedly said that scientists largely agree that climate change is caused at least in part by human activity. Even then, though, he offered the caveat that “I don’t know how much our contribution is to that.”
Romney has consistently said that while the U.S. should reduce its carbon emissions, programs such as cap and trade would harm the economy while achieving little in the face of increased emissions from nations such as China. “The reality is that the problem is called global warming, not America warming,” he writes in the new questionnaire.
On Tuesday, a Romney campaign spokeswoman dismissed the notion that Romney had flipped on the issue, pointing to his previous statements — including a section in his 2011 book “No Apology” — in which Romney calls human activity a contributing factor to global warming.
However, Marc Morano, publisher of the skeptic blog Climate Depot, called the move a politically calculated shift.
“After several shifts in his position on man-made global warming, Romney now appears to be straddling a middle position designed to satisfy all sides of the debate,” Morano told POLITICO in an email. “Skeptics will applaud him for recognizing that the alleged ‘consensus’ is a fiction. Romney has come a long way since his climate views in his book where he accepted the alleged ‘consensus’ and got praised by [former Vice President Al] Gore.”
Romney’s response to the questionnaire says that “there remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue — on the extent of the warming, the extent of the human contribution, and the severity of the risk — and I believe we must support continued debate and investigation within the scientific community.
“Ultimately, the science is an input to the public policy decision; it does not dictate a particular policy response,” he said on the questionnaire.
To read the full Politico article go here. (subscription required)
Related Links:
Flashback 2011: Romney’s New Book touts his Gore like warmist views: Romney: ‘Scientists are nearly unanimous in laying the blame for rising temperatures on GHG emissions’ — Romney: ‘I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor’
Flashback 2011: Gore Praises Romney for Belief in Man-Made Global Warming: Gore: ‘Good for Mitt Romney — While other Republicans are running from the truth, he is sticking to his guns in the face of the anti-science wing of the Republican Party’
Flashback 2011: Climate Depot’s News Round Up About Mitt Romney’s climate advisor John Holdren
Romney mocks Obama’s pledge to control sea level: ‘Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet…My promise is to help you and your family’
Michael Mann freaks out: ‘How sad it is to witness such fallacious logic from a major party candidate for president’
Climate Depot’s Morano: ‘Kudos to Romney for an accurate framing of the global warming debate’
Listen Now: Climate Depot’s Morano on Heartland Inst. Radio: Obama vs Romney energy policies — Morano: ‘The GOP is finally wising up to the notion that wind and solar and green jobs are currently viable…The U.S. govt now serves as a venture capitalist, U.S. Senators, our Sec of Energy are now venture capitalists. And they are spectacularly failing…We don’t need to try to ramrod a technology that’s not ready now, that is not going to produce energy the energy we need…We cannot allow the false promise of so called renewable energy to cloud our judgment’
