By Ralph Schwartz
I posted yesterday about how the appearance on Tuesday, March 26, of former Western Washington University prof Don Easterbrook in the Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee flies in the face of accepted climate-change science. Easterbrook has made a career out of dubious, non-peer-reviewed reports that refute global warming.
Easterbrook’s appearance was announced and welcomed by one of the Whatcom County state senators, Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale. He’s the chairman of the committee.
The other senator representing part of the county, Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, was chairman of the previous version of the committee. Now he’s ranking minority member.
One of the cornerstones of Ranker’s work in the senate has been on legislation to address the problem of carbon emissions, which cause global warming. He’s prime sponsor of Gov. Jay Inslee’s bill, SB 5802, which would establish a five-member workgroup to find ways to reduce carbon emissions in the state.
A statement from Ericksen yesterday said Easterbrook’s appearance would be to challenge the assumptions that went into the governor’s bill.
In a phone interview today, Ranker made some statements about Easterbrook’s upcoming appearance:
“This isn’t a debate. This is the facts. We have a decreased snowpack. We have the health of our forests deteriorating. We have rising sea levels and we have ocean acidification. … The idea that we are going to have a debate about whether or not this is happening is extremely discouraging to me.”
Ranker said Ericksen should invite a current, “extremely qualified” faculty member from Western or the University of Washington to provide another scientific viewpoint — or as Ranker put it, “to lay out the facts.”
“I was told ‘no,’” Ranker said.
Senator Ericksen (R – ALEC) is just putting on an utterly cynical dog and pony show. Ericksen’s corporate masters want as many distractions as possible while they poison us all as they squeeze out they last of the fossil fuels.
Easterbrook has a connection to the ExxonMobil and Koch Industries funded Heartland Institute, which helped write ALEC’s Model Bill Behind Push To Require Climate Denial Instruction In Schools
Why complain about the testimony of a person even if you disagree with him?
It’s not like there aren’t millions out there that believe him.
Anyway, facts aren’t changeable to suit your party affiliation and no amount of testimony can alter that.
Mr. Ranker’s job – before Ericksen pounds him down with the gavel – is to point out weaknesses in what’s being advanced and offer the strengths of his own position.
Just when I was going to complain about the quality of discourse here (“Ericksen’s corporate masters”), along comes rubiebegonia to say something with which I agree.
Ranker: ““This isn’t a debate. This is the facts. We have a decreased snowpack. We have the health of our forests deteriorating. We have rising sea levels and we have ocean acidification. … The idea that we are going to have a debate about whether or not this is happening is extremely discouraging to me.”
Not every thinking person has drunk the Kool-aid, Mr. Ranker. There’s been no warming for seventeen years, there is no measurable ocean acidification, and sea levels are actually falling in some places. Total global ice is at recent highs.
Recalled writing this article back when ( http://www.nwcitizen.com/entry/coming-up-the-weather?search=&category=&author=7 ).
Even with some four more years of media bombardment by a faction no less corrupted than Easterbrook’s, it’s still a contest between fact and fictions.
Alas, only time will tell, and even then, like too many other issues, true believers will surely remain beyond doubt.
I may be just an old curmudgeon, and died in the wool contrarian, but I’ll believe Al Gore and his pals when the vineyards in Greenland are wiped out by drought!
I’m a TVW junkie and I watched every minute of the ocean acidification study group presentation.
They either did a bang-up job of data mining and fraud
or they had some pertinent observations that might not agree with some of those expressed here.
The next time you buy a bag of oysters from Taylor Farms, ask them about its affects on their yield.
How do we get Kevin Ranker to run against Rick Larsen?