By Peter Galuszka
Here’s some red meat for global warming deniers: A draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there’s “near certainty” that humans cause global warming.
This is the group of hundreds of scientists and other experts who review global warming data under the auspices of the United Nations and are the ones deniers, especially gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli and some ‘local bloggers,” love to attack.
In their latest draft, the scientists retreated “slightly” from their earlier predictions. They had said that the planet could rise by a low number of 3.6 degrees. Now they say it is 2.7 degrees.
That’s the low. If the number is closer to 5 degrees, there will be enormous consequences for planet earth by the start of the next century.
Climatologists, including former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann who figured in Atty. Gen. Cuccinelli’s witch hunt for emails, have criticized the report saying that experts have been bullied by politicians into softening their estimates. Mann said that the IPCC “has once again erred on the side of understating the degree of the likely changes.”
The larger point is that global warming is real and that humans are the most recent cause – however politicized the reporting process is.
Cuccinelli, meanwhile, seems to have gotten a lot more hay out of playing tough guy with Mann. His gubernatorial platform for Virginia’s economy is going nowhere, The Washington Post says.
In an editorial today, the Post notes that Cuccinellui’s slender plan does call for cutting business taxes by one third and personal income taxes by 13 percent. That would mean $1.4 billion lost in state revenue.
Sounds great. Also less filling. What Cuccinelli does not really say is what happens after you cut the revenue. Obviously services would have to be cut, but what businesses would want to move to Virginia if their workers have to contend with crappy schools and roads. Cuccinelli doesn’t address the problem.
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, meanwhile, took time out yesterday to announce a $600 million plus budget surplus. Sounds great. But then, the government and his wife Maureen were also spending part of their day talking to federal prosecutors about whether they should be charged in connection with the Star Scientific case.
(Image from Style Weekly)
