Chu: Climate change evidence mounting



But he doesn't say what it is. There are a few hand-waving references to weather events but he quotes no studies or statistics to show that they are unusual -- because they aren't!

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday that scientific evidence of climate change is getting more and more powerful, comments that come as global warming legislation remains moribund in Congress and Environmental Protection Agency regulations are facing ongoing GOP assaults.

“Over the last couple of years, the dispassionate, hard science evidence has been mounting, increasing,” said Chu, speaking at an energy forum hosted by The New York Times.

Chu noted that “we don’t understand everything” and that in past years scientists have actually underestimated the pace of some changes, including sea level rise.

“It is rising even faster than we thought. The number of violent rainstorms have increased faster than we thought,” he said at the event in New York, adding that though there are “bumps and wiggles” that are not understood, trends are clear in the long term.

“The debate is how much will it change. There are feedbacks both positive and negative that we are trying to understand,” said Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

The vast majority of scientists say global warming is occurring and human activities are a key factor. A small minority call data on warming trends and the human contribution inconclusive or inaccurate.

That skepticism has become a mainstream position among Republicans, who also argue that regulations to curb climate change are unnecessary and would be economically harmful.

But climate aside, Chu said there’s a powerful economic case for the United States supporting the development of renewable energy sources and industries, noting that “the world is going in this direction.”

“Don’t you want to be selling rather than buying? You don’t even have to think about [climate] to say there are new technologies coming. It is our lead to lose. We are still the greatest innovative country in the world and here is a worldwide market that is going to grow and grow and grow,” he said.

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