Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s contemplating another White House run, said climate change was real, that humans helped it along and that it was the responsibility of the world to turn back the environmental tide.
“I’m one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that,” he said during a Wednesday night speech at an investment management conference
This does not make Romney a climate fanatic. Human activity is raising the level of atmospheric CO2. We are altering a parameter of the ecosystem, and the intuitive first-order effect of that alteration would be to trap more of the Sun’s energy. The foregoing is undeniable, but that’s only the first word, and the devil is in the details. The vast complexity of the ecosystem makes the question of how exactly this alteration affects global climate a very hard problem to solve, and the stupid politics makes it even harder to address (assuming there’s anything to address). If I side with the “deniers”, it’s not because I don’t believe in the problem, but rather because the “alarmists” have merely hijacked this cause to advance their political agenda of statism and micromanagement. We haven’t stopped CO2 from rising; we’ve merely damaged our economy and allowed China to eat our lunch and belch out endless CO2 while we go broke. That’s the crazy part, and I trust that Romney is not on board with it. But the underlying concern is legitimate, and should be addressed by honest scientists.
The only reason humans are around is that fluctuations in surface temperature and atmosphere composition have diminished compared to the pre-human era. Romney must be doing this to avoid being elected. A planet with a stagnant climate would be no more habitable than a fetid swamp.