May 26, 2011 08:43 PM UTC

At Least He's Not Your Congressman

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• by: Colorado Pols

California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher doesn’t believe that global warming is a man-made problem, but that hasn’t stopped him from offering ridiculous “solutions” to curbing the problem. Yesterday Rohrabacher channeled his inner Ronald Reagan, who famously said in 1981 that “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”

As Politico reports:

Looking for a solution to global warming? Maybe start clear-cutting many of the world’s forests, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher says.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs oversight subcommittee made it clear during a Wednesday hearing that he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming.

But if it were true – and most of the world’s scientists agree it is – Rohrabacher said he’s hit on an answer by tackling the 80 to 90 percent of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions “generated by nature itself”: Namely, yank down old trees and get rid of the rotting wood in rainforests.

“Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” the California Republican asked Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate diplomat and lead witness at the hearing. “Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?”

As you might imagine, Mr. Stern was apparently a bit perplexed by that question. “If he wants to talk about the effect of rotting wood or whatever, we’re happy to have someone come up who knows about it,” he said later. So what was Rohrabacher talking about?

Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said Rohrabacher is correct that 80 to 90 percent of gross greenhouse gas emissions do come from nature, with humans producing the rest. But it’s that small percentage that is changing the Earth’s climate – not to mention that trees help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in huge quantities.

“How he’s using it is totally off the wall,” Gulledge said. “It’s beyond the pale. It makes no sense.”

What say you, Polsters? Poll after the jump…

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