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Climate Depot’s Morano on Romney: ‘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 debate’
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 …