EPA Chief Gina McCarthy Can't Answer Climate Questions
03/05/2015 06:53 PM ET
McCarthy gets ready to display her ignorance at a Senate hearing. View Enlarged Image
If the science of climate change was "settled," you'd think one of the generals in the war on global warming would have memorized the numbers that point to our planetary doom from a menace the administration says is a greater threat than terrorism.
But McCarthy was asked some pretty simple questions Wednesday at a Senate hearing Wednesday on her request for $8.6 billion to help fight the claimed imminent doom of climate change, and her performance didn't help her case.
One of the questions involved droughts and the claim that their frequency has increased due to warming that is said to be caused by mankind's increased production of greenhouse gas, such as carbon dioxide, the basis for all life on Earth but judged by the EPA to be a pollutant.
"Let me ask you this," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., inquired of McCarthy. "There was an article from Mr. (Bjorn) Lomborg ... from the Copenhagen Institute. He says, along with Dr. (Roger) Pielke from Colorado, that we've had fewer droughts in recent years. Do you dispute that?"
The seemingly clueless McCarthy pathetically responded that she didn't "know in what context he's making statements like that." Context? Truth has its own context, and the inconvenient truth that McCarthy wasn't aware of, or didn't want to face, is that Pielke and Lomborg are right.
Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado, told the Senate environment and public works subcommittee in July 2013 that droughts have "for the most part become shorter, less frequent and cover a smaller portion of the U.S. over the last century." Globally, he said, "there has been little change in drought over the last 60 years."
Sessions also asked McCarthy if we've had more or fewer hurricanes in the last decade. It was another question she said she couldn't answer because "it's a very complicated issue." Well, no, not unless basic math is a complicated issue. Sessions noted that we have in fact gone nearly a decade without a Category 3 storm or higher making landfall in the U.S.
The last hurricane to hit America as a Category 3 or higher was Wilma, which struck Florida on Oct. 24, 2005. Superstorm Sandy had wind speeds barely reaching Category 1 status when it slammed into New Jersey in 2012 and wreaked havoc.
Sessions inquired of the global temperatures that have virtually flatlined for two decades:
"Would you acknowledge that over the last 18 years, that the increase in temperatures has been very little, matter of fact 90% below most of the environmental models that showed how fast temperature would increase?"
McCarthy replied that she didn't know "what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to."
Sessions called her ignorance and inability to outline the danger we supposedly face from climate change, as well as her failure to justify the EPA's funding request, a "stunning development." So do we.
The science is indeed settled, but not the way climate zealots think. McCarthy's lack of knowledge and facts on her side only underscores the fact we have wasted billions on fighting a nonexistent threat and shackled our economy with lower growth and higher job loss.
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