On Global Warming Christie Tells It Like It Is

From Matt Rooney and our friends at the Save Jersey blog:

You may’ve missed this the other day, Save Jerseyans, but some WNYC reporter asked Chris Christie at his Lavallette presser whether NJ Transit had been under-prepared for climate change ahead of Superstorm Sandy. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently the reporter had never ridden NJ Transit before or she’d know that its problems predate the global warming fad!
Virtually everyone in the country, however, knows that the Governor of New Jersey has a very low tolerance for dumb questions; he responded NO to the WNYC question, “cause I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change…”

Well, first of all, I don’t agree with the premise of your question because I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change,” Christie said, as residents and officials from Lavallette clapped. “But I would absolutely expect that that’s exactly what WNYC would say, because you know liberal public radio always has an agenda. And so since I disagree with the premise of your question I don’t feel like I have to answer the rest of it.” (You can hear the full audio at the bottom of this post.)”

Fair enough! But the global warming cultists won’t tolerate dissent; they waited all of 5 seconds before injecting politics into this week’s tornado disaster in Oklahoma. Daily Beast contributor Michael Tomasky heard about the exchange and was positively apoplectic, accusing Christie of having “joined the yahoos” for simply stating the obvious… that there’s no one (including him) can cite specific evidence that Hurricane Sandy had anything whatsoever to do with climate change. Tomasky nevertheless lamented Chris Christie’s lost opportunity to move the GOP in a “sane” direction.
Here’s the only truly “sane” position in this tired debate, Save Jerseyans: we don’t know. Climate change science remains unsettled. And most of the original “hard” evidence upon which contemporary global warming theory is based was apparently fabricated.

Is climate change real (a phenomena distinct from global warming)? Of course; the only real debate involves the ever-important issue of causation.
We do know that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. We also know from the fossil record and other reliable indicators that our planet has undergone a myriad of warming and cooling cycles over the course of many millennia. Sometimes changes are quite dramatic or sudden, and give the age of our planet, most of these changes transpired long before automobiles, factories, and aerosol cans entered the picture. The often mysterious processes of energy emitters like our own Sun — more powerful than all of the fossil fuel producers on the 3rd rock from our solar system’s star combined — are increasingly viewed as more likely culprits for weather fluctuations.
Could human processes play a role? Maybe, but for advocates to pretend the evidence supporting their position is nearly as conclusive as it is for other prominent scientific theories like evolution is simply not true. Follow the money as in all things, folks. Academic and government researchers can’t get grant money by claiming the absence of a problem; alarmist tactics can lead to big grants, and when the same statists who love government expansion in every other aspect of our lives can use global warming to rationalize “carbon taxes,” then that’s just an added bonus!
But let’s not allow silly little things like facts to get in the way of an opportunity to criticize the Republican Party’s strongest 2016 contender. Oh and by the way… for Memorial Day Weekend 2013, the “high” temperature in Lavallette for Saturday is expected to reach only 62 F; the low will be 48 F. Even New Jersey’s most liberal beachgoers will need a fleece of their own to brave the sands.