California Gov. Jerry Brown sent a letter to Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson on Thursday, along with a flash drive containing the latest science on climate change, challenging him to “review the material.”
Brown quoted recent comments made by Dr. Carson: “I know there are a lot of people who say ‘overwhelming science,’ but when you ask them to show the overwhelming science, they never can show it… There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused. Gimme a break.”
In his letter, Brown urged Dr. Carson to “use your considerable intelligence to review this material.” The flash drive contained the 2015 “synthesis report” of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Ironically, the period covered in the report includes revisions to account for data showing a “pause” in global warming over nearly two decades, which sophisticated computer models of climate change failed to predict.
There is scientific consensus that the planet is warming, and there is also consensus that production of greenhouse gases by human use of fossil fuels may be a factor–though how, and to what extent, is not well understood.
What is clear is that the alarmist predictions on which politicians like Brown have based their costly policies–such as a ridiculous claim that rising sea levels could force the relocation of LAX airport–have failed to materialize.
Brown may have been smarting from his defeat in the California legislature last week, when moderate Democrats voted with Republicans to stop a draconian climate change bill that could have raised fuel prices dramatically. In defeat, Brown vowed to wage a “life-and-death struggle” to “change…our industrial economy.”
That, critics charge, is the environmental lobby’s real goal–not to save the planet, but to control and shape the economy.
Dr. Carson’s campaign told CNN that the candidate would keep an open mind.