Political Quotes

“I am glad the Senator brings up the phony-baloney doubt, especially with this extreme weather we have been experiencing. Some of my colleagues on the other side have pointed to the extreme snowstorms--at least one of my colleagues has--in the Northeast over the last several winters as evidence that global warming is a hoax. Again, this is completely misleading. Intensifying blizzards aren't due to the Earth getting cooler, they are due to increased moisture content in the air. Warmer air holds more moisture. Now, basically, it doesn't have to be that cold for it to snow. It just has to be 32 degrees or below. What is snow? It is frozen water. So it is about water. The atmosphere is now holding more water because it is warmer. Warmer air holds more water than colder air. The main point is that these increased natural disasters have real costs. A few months ago we had a hearing in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the Forest Service's management of the intense forest fires we had out West this year. In that hearing, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told me he is seeing longer forest fire seasons out West-- more than 30 days longer than what we used to have even a decade ago. Forest Service climate experts--and these are scientists--have said that a major contributing factor to these longer fire seasons and more intense fires is climate change. The cost of these fires, passed on to all levels of government and to society as a whole, is huge.…”