EPA Chief Refutes Phil Jones' Admission that Science is Not Settled

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in Senate hearings yesterday staked out ground to the left of some of the world’s most prominent global warming alarmists, refuting their acknowledgement that the global warming debate is not over and that substantial global warming science is not settled.

“The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming,” Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “That conclusion is not a partisan one.”

However, Phil Jones – who is one of the world’s most prominent global warming alarmists, the gatekeeper of United Nations IPCC research, and the controversial figure at the head of the Climategate scandal – acknowledged in a February 13 BBC interview that he and many other climate scientists do not consider the global warming debate to be over and that many substantial scientific questions still need to be answered.

“I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this [that the debate is over]. This is not my view,” Jones told BBC. “There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.”

Jackson’s support for her assertion that global warming alarmism “is not a partisan” position would seemingly come from support expressed from a small number of Republican mavericks such as Senator John McCain, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Florida Governor Charlie Crist. However, an equal or greater number of Democratic politicians, including eight Democratic senators who last week wrote a letter to Jackson expressing serious concern with EPA plans to regulate carbon dioxide, have expressed trepidation over government plans to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.

Jackson’s scientific knowledge and objectivity appeared especially suspect this week when she responded to the Democratic senators’ letter by asserting global warming regulations were justified because of increasing drought and flooding events. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and recent studies in the peer-reviewed journals Climatic Change, Journal of Hydrology, Geophysical Research Letters, and International Journal of Climatology have all reported a decline in global drought as the planet has warmed. Similarly, stream gauges and recent studies in Geophysical Research Letters and Journal of the American Water Resources Association report no increase in flooding events.