Press release today from the House Science Committee’s Republicans:
Today, in the first congressional hearing with authors of the Working Group II section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fourth assessment report, Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, the Science and Technology Committee was told that many different factors will determine the impacts of climate change and adaptation will play a significant role in reducing negative impacts.
“One issue that most of us agree on is that our country will experience impacts from climate change and we need to be ready to adapt to them,” Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX) said. “I have faith in American innovation in finding solutions to help us adapt to theses changes. In the long run, the key to addressing climate change will be clean, affordable, and reliable energy technologies.”
curiously (or not so), this was precisely the point that the prez of the American Petroleum Institute made at Columbia’s first State of the Planet conference when I questioned him about climate change. That was back in 2000, way before anybody cared about the subject. 😎 His response was that there might be climate change and we might be causing it, but that he had far more faith in the power of innovation to get us out of it than of government regulations.
Hall also seems to be slightly confusing mitigation and adaptation. But OTOH the parable of the talking pig comes to mind (wherein it is observed that a careful critique of the pig’s grammar is perhaps missing the most important point).