Maryland Senator Gung Ho for Global Warming

Cardin, Fellow Senators Vow Action on Climate Change

Progress on climate change can be made in this Congress and workable solutions for reducing greenhouse gases and other factors in global warming exist, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin said Tuesday at a press conference for the newly formed Senate Climate Action Task Force.

Led by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the Democratic senators, plus one independent, vowed to “wake up Congress” to the dangers of climate change through speeches, press conferences and legislative action in the coming weeks.

“Water level rises are increasing. Representing a coastal state like Maryland, we see that. We see the impact of that,” Cardin said.

Does it look to you like the rate of sea level rise is increasing?  Me, neither.  It's been going up since the end of the last ice age, and it's not likely to stop until the approach of the next.

Over the last 100 years, the Chesapeake Bay has risen more than a foot, and it could rise up to 5 feet more by the end of the next century.

If the Bay’s levels rise another 5 feet, approximately 3,700 miles of state and county roads will be under water, according to a 2013 Capital News Service analysis.

 Of course, at the current rate of sea level rise, that will take 500 years.

Dr. Richard Lindzen, the rogue professor of atmospheric sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes that politicians have jumped on the global warming/sea level rise band wagon because of the power that having a global "emergency" to point to grants them.

“The changes that have occurred due to global warning are too small to account for,” he told WBZ-TV. “It has nothing to do with global warming, it has to do with where we live.”

Lindzen endorses sensible preparedness and environmental protection, but sees what he terms “catastrophism” in the climate change horror stories.

“Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. The opportunities for taxation, for policies, for control, for crony capitalism are just immense, you can see their eyes bulge,” he says.

“Even many of the people who are supportive of sounding the global warning alarm, back off from catastophism,” Lindzen said. “It’s the politicians and the green movement that like to portray catastrophe.”

I think that's right.