http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/10/dino-flatulence/[*QUOTE*]
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Rep. Rohrabacher: Global Warming May Have Been Caused By ?Dinosaur Flatulence?This week, Congress held its first hearing on the landmark IPCC report on
climate change. That report concluded that global warming is ?unequivocal?
and human activity is the main driver, ?very likely? causing most of the
rise in temperatures since 1950.
During the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) ? one of the 87 percent
of congressional Republicans who do not believe in man-made global warming
? questioned the authors of the report about a period of dramatic climate
change that occured 55 million years ago. ?We don?t know what those other
cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know,
or who knows??
Watch it:
Presumably, Rohrabacher was referencing a period known as the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Then, as in now, ?sharp rises in
temperature were initiated and driven by large spikes in greenhouse gases.
? It took over 100K years for the ocean, atmosphere, and temperatures to
return to their previous state. The result was a mass extinction event
that took millions of years to recover from.? But scientists believe that
massive methane releases from the ocean floors ? not dinosaur farts ? were
the cause.
In sharp contrast to Rohrabacher, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) delivered an
opening statement recommending mandatory caps on global warming pollution
and calling out conservatives for rejecting science. ?For twelve years,
the leadership in the House of Representatives stifled all discussion and
debate of global warming. That long rejection of reality is over, to the
relief of Members on both sides of the aisle.?
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Transcript:
ROHRBACHER: So, whether or not how dramatic this change will be, or is,
what it?s caused by, are things that honest people, I think, can disagree
with, and I really personally, having been a journalist, the first thing I
was always cautioned by when someone was claiming, well, everybody is on
my side, or everybody says this, or there is a total consensus, almost
always when people said that to me over my years as a journalist, it
wasn?t true. It was that there were honest people who disagreed and
significant disagreement on such issues.
We don?t know what those other
cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence,
you know, or who knows? We do know the CO2 in the past had its time
when it was greater as well. And what happened when the CO2 was greater
since then and now? There have been many cycles of up and down warming. So
with that said, I think that we?ve had a great discussion today.
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