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Rick Santorum speaking at GOP Leadership Conference Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Flickr

InsideClimate News reports today that a number of prominent U.S. climate scientists who identify themselves as
Republican say their attempts in recent years to educate the GOP
leadership on the scientific evidence of man-made climate change have
been futile. Now, many have given up trying and the few who continue
notice very little change after speaking with politicians and their
aides.

“No GOP candidates or policymakers want to touch the issue, and those of us trying to educate them are left frustrated,” Kerry Emanuel,
an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and a registered Republican, told InsideClimate News. “Climate change
has become a third rail in politics.”

Heading into the 2008
presidential election, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican
nominee, warned about the dangers of global warming. He was one of a
group of moderate Republicans who used to be leading climate action
advocates, acknowledging the scientific consensus on climate change and
the need for federal policies to address it.

But with the rise
of the Tea Party movement in 2009, skepticism or even flat-out denial of
global warming has become part of the party’s core message. And no
candidate now vying for the GOP nomination can admit to the scientific
consensus, much less advocate for measures to curb climate-altering
emissions, no matter what positions they might have taken in the past.

In fact, past support of policies to regulate carbon dioxide, a global
warming gas, is being used to question the fitness of candidates to
become the party’s nominee. During a speech this month at the
Conservative Political Action Conference, Rick Santorum tore into his GOP presidential rival,
former Gov. of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, for buying into man-made
warming and supporting the nation’s first cap-and-trade program known as
the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Romney later opposed the scheme
but Massachusetts did participate, and it has benefited from the nearly $500 million in economic activity the program has brought to the state.

A
Tea Party favorite, Santorum has called global warming “a facade,” “a
hoax” and an example of the “politicization of science.” Both Romney and
Newt Gingrich, another candidate for the party’s nomination, have
stepped away from their previous stances that humans are contributing to
global warming in order to convince restive voters and donors that they
are conservative enough to be the party’s luminary.

The GOP’s
hardening stance in favor of climate skepticism, however, is not
reflected among the country’s leading scientists, no matter the party.
Roughly 98 percent of U.S. climate researchers are convinced that rising
emissions from human activities is hastening climate change, according
to a 2010 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While
it’s rare for scientists to disclose their political affiliations,
InsideClimate News tracked down a handful of leading climate and
environmental scientists who have done so and are registered Republican
or have a majority of their values in line with the party. All accept
the consensus that Earth is warming mainly from the buildup of
greenhouse gases produced from the burning of fossil fuels. And all say
their attempts to talk with GOP politicians and their aides about
climate dangers have largely fallen on deaf ears. Calls and emails to
the campaigns of Santorum, Romney and Gingrich for comment were not
returned.

Scientists tell their stories: GOP Not Listening to Its Own Scientists on Climate Change

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