Just Blaine wrong on climate change

Last year's global average temperature was the 10th warmest since 1850. In fact, eight of the past 10 years, and 13 of the last 14, are among the warmest on record.

So naturally, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican member of Congress from Missouri's 9th district, has concluded: "We are undergoing a period of worldwide cooling."

Luetkemeyer was a farmer, insurance man, banker, state representative and state tourism director before being elected to Congress last November. His college degree is in political science, not climate science.

Nevertheless, he has now proclaimed the data behind concern over global warming to be "international junk science."

Last week, he introduced a bill that would prohibit U.S. financial contributions to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's most authoritative scientific body. The IPCC won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for compiling and publishing mountains of scientific data on global climate change.

But Luetkemeyer — who freely admits he hasn't read any of it — thinks its junk science.

The good news is that his bill will go nowhere; as a freshman member of the minority party, Luetkemeyer has very little influence. The bad news is his bill is an embarrassment — to himself and his constituents.

It's true that average temperature during each of the past three years was slightly lower than in 2005. That's what scientists call annual temperature fluctuation.

But to anyone who can actually read a graph — a group that apparently doesn't include Luetkemeyer — the larger trend is unmistakable.

The 1990s were the warmest decade since at least 1850.

Yet 2008 — the year Luetkemeyer says proves "we are undergoing a period of worldwide cooling" — was warmer than all but two years of the 1990s.

The Arctic ice pack is shrinking by about 12 percent per decade. Greenland is losing at least 36 cubic miles of ice cover each year. Sea levels are rising. The reason: Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are at their highest levels in at least 650,000 years.

Just since 1950, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by about 35 percent.

Last week, Luetkemeyer issued a press release to trumpet his ignorance. He claimed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has "debunked global warming theory." In fact, the EPA global warming website links to the very U.N. agency for which Luetkemeyer would cut funding.

He claims that "more than 700 international scientists" have signed a report disputing global climate change. Some of the 700 are legitimate scientific contrarians. But one of them is Chris Allen, a weatherman at a Kentucky TV station. He has no college degree; the only "scientific articles" he's ever written are on the station's weather blog. Another is Edward Blick, a Biblical creationist from Oklahoma who believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old and "global warming is hatred against humanity."

Luetkemeyer told Post-Dispatch reporter Bill Lambrecht that "the IPCC has 50-some scientists." But the latest IPCC report was the product of "more than 500 lead authors and 2,000 expert reviewers" and summarizes the findings of thousands more researchers.

That fact can be found in the preface of the document Luetkemeyer dismisses as junk science. This proves that on little, easy-to-check facts, just as on big, complicated issues of climate science, Luetkemeyer is just Blaine wrong.

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