After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) blamed climate change for California’s raging forest fires, House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D.-Calif.) newly created global warming committee tried to prove Reid’s contention true.
In an October 24 news conference Reid told reporters, “One reason that we have fires burning in Southern California is global warming.”
Soon after, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which Pelosi formed in one of her first acts as Speaker, scheduled a Thursday morning hearing devoted to “examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires."
The committee’s website features a “skeptic watch” and labels California as a “global warming impact zone.” Other listed U.S. impact zones include Alaska, Florida and the Midwest.
At his hearing, Chairman Rep. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) said global warming was not the sole cause of the wildfires but was a contributing factor. He said, “Global warming does not cause an individual fire or hurricane, and global warming is not the cause of the California fires.”
Rather, “Global warming’s contribution to wildfires is more subtle and more complex, and scientists and the firefighting community are just beginning to tease out this complex climate record from those factors which may be influencing these natural disasters in unnatural ways,” Markey’s written testimony said.
He noted that it was important that authorities determine which fires were caused by a “young boy playing with matches…from what started with lighting or a power line collapse or some other common cause of such fires.”
Ranking Member Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wisc.) expressed strong dissent from Markey. He said “global warming alarmists” were making Hurricane Katrina and the California fires “the poster children for global warming.”
“Global warming alarmists are using these natural disasters to promote regulations that will have little or no effect on these forces of nature,” Sensenbrenner said.
Republican Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) showed concern that court appeals had prevented forest services from removing dried-out, dead trees before the fires occurred, which were easily ignited when strong winds blew the fires across California.
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