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Comment by 7R33SandR0P3S on December 9, 2009 at 3:37pm

Republicans Plan to Form Counter-Delegation at Climate Conference

A GOP counter-delegation is forming to undermine the Obama administration's work on an international climate change agreement in Copenhagen, warning that the president is poised to make commitments he can't keep and drawing heightened attention to controversial leaked e-mails.

At least a half-dozen Republican senators and representatives are planning to head to Denmark next week, as part of the overall U.S. congressional delegation, which includes plenty of Democrats as well.

Read the full report

Comment by truth on December 9, 2009 at 12:33pm

Glad to see you back in these parts Tex!!

Comment by 7R33SandR0P3S on December 9, 2009 at 10:36am

The e-mails, however, demonstrate that a cabal of supposed 'cream-of-the-crop' climate scientists were indeed successful in getting editors of journals that had published contrarian views fired and that they conspired to boycott journals that did not bend to their wishes -- therefore ensuring that such views would not be adequately represented in IPCC Assessment Reports," Sensenbrenner wrote.

But supporters of putting curbs on fossil fuel emissions say that despite the questionable nature of the e-mails, they don't undermine the science, and point to the latest data from the very agencies wrapped up in the scandal.

"Global warming deniers are trying to say this is all a trick, but the truth of the matter is that our world is getting hotter, faster," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and a co-author of legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Markey cited data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which concluded that this decade had an average global surface temperature about 1 degree fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

Data from NOAA as well as NASA and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia are used by the World Meteorological Organization, the U.N.'s weather agency. Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the WMO, announced at Copenhagen on Tuesday that 2000-2009 "is very likely to be the warmest on record, warmer than the 1990s, than the 1980s and so on."

"There is a mountain of evidence proving global warming is a fact, but the defenders of the fossil fuel status quo are using a molehill of a scandal to distract the world. The deniers will not win, because they are wrong," Markey said.

Obama is headed to Copenhagen next week for the end of the conference. After the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday issued a scientific finding on the danger of carbon dioxide, several Republicans say they fear Obama will make pledges at the conference that will try to bypass congressional approval.