Global Warming Politics

Climate Change and Barbara Cubin: Chasing the Conservative Hobby Horse

By Dan Whipple, 10-16-06

In the spring of 1994, Wyoming Republican Congressman Craig Thomas decided he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. This set off a scramble among the state’s Republicans to secure the party’s nomination to Congress, and the accompanying right to trounce whichever Democrat that hapless party produced as election fodder.

At the time, I was city editor for the Casper Star-Tribune. Barbara Cubin, a state representative whose chief legislative distinction up to that point had been distributing cookies shaped like penises to some male legislators, came into the paper on one media errand or another. Our chief political writer, Hugh Jackson, called out across to her across the cavernous newsroom, “Hey, Barbara, are you going to run for Craig’s seat?”

Cubin at first looked genuinely perplexed by Hugh’s question, but then brightened like a blossoming spring flower. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Do you think I should?”

“Hell, yeah,” said Hugh enthusiastically, no doubt salivating over the stories her candidacy would generate.

Cubin left the newsroom that day with her chin out, her stride brisk, her spine stiffened in a Congressional carriage. Ever since this incident, I’ve blamed Hugh for inflicting the Barbara Cubin incumbency on an unsuspecting nation. This is irrational, of course. But no one who knew Perky Babs, as we called her in those days, would doubt she was capable of deciding to run for Congress because of a reporter’s offhand question.

In the 12 years since she swept into Congress, Cubin has lived up to every expectation. Her career as a congresswoman has been, if anything, less distinguished than her service in the state legislature. An incident as creative as penis cookies would be a welcome sign of independence from a legislator who has trailed along in the back of the nattering pack. Cubin has loyally supported, then reliably abandoned, every paleoconservative hobby horse from the Contract with America to term limits to the balanced budget amendment to WMDs.

I’d like to examine Cubin’s misguided dedication to received wisdom by deconstructing her position on a single issue -- global climate change. I have covered climate change science for the last five years. A constituent recently wrote to Cubin urging action on this issue. Cubin responded in a letter full of misinformation and error. Cubin begins:

Dear ___:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the controversial "global warming"
debate. I appreciate your comments.

I believe we must leave our children and grandchildren a better world in
which to live, and I strongly support the underlying goals of our nation's
environmental laws like the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and those
that protect our National Parks and wildlife habitat. We must, however,
be careful that overly burdensome regulations do not handcuff our economy
denying Wyoming workers and families jobs and economic opportunities.
What we need to do is continue putting American creativity and innovation
to work. In the last 20 years, America has made significant progress in
environmental research, and these breakthroughs have been used to help
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Well, no. According to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in April, 2006, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased 15.8 percent between 1990 and 2004. This rise was the result primarily of carbon dioxide (CO2) from increased fossil fuel consumption. It is true that emissions of methane and nitrous oxide -- two important but lesser greenhouse gases -- declined. The U.S. economy expanded by 51 percent, so a case could be made that U.S. CO2 emissions expanded more slowly as a result of research and technological breakthroughs than they otherwise might have. But that’s not exactly what Cubin says.

When we look at the issue of global warming we must rely on sound science
rather than popular perceptions. While an active media campaign,
including former Vice President Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, has
been generating a great deal of public discussion on the topic, it is
important to remember that there still exists broad disagreement within
the scientific community on the extent to which humans actually contribute
to the Earth's temperature changes.

This is simply false. There is no broad disagreement, especially if you really rely on “sound science.” The evidence for consensus on the climate question fills up scientific journals, books and three separate reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But let’s look at a simple example that even a Congresswoman ought to be able to understand. The University of San Diego’s Naomi Oreskes examined 928 papers published on the question of whether the earth’s climate is warming, and whether humans are responsible for it. She found not a single one -- zero -- contradicting the essential global-climate premise -- that the earth is warming and humans activity is responsible for it.

"Not one, not a single paper, refuted the basic consensus statement that CO2 is increasing, that it is changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, and it's having discernible effects," Oreskes told me in 2004.

As someone with a scientific background, I appreciate that scientists must
take into account an enormous range of variables when generating and
analyzing global temperature models. To reconstruct global temperature
estimates, from prehistoric times to the present, scientists must rely on
proxy evidence, such as analyzing tree rings, ocean and lake sediments,
ice cores, glacial records and borehole samples. Scientists also disagree
on the role of volcanic and solar activity in affecting the earth's
surface temperature.

Cubin majored in chemistry in school and worked as a chemist before turning to real estate. She’s correct about the way past global temperature estimates are constructed. Scientists do not disagree about the role of volcanic and solar activity, however. Large volcanic eruptions tend to cool the atmosphere for a period. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, for instance, had cooling atmospheric temperature impacts for about two years.

Cubin is wrong about the sun. Climate contrarians like to hypothesize that changes in the sun’s brightness may be contributing to the warming earth. But solar activity has been been studied in detail. A paper in the journal Nature in early September of this year concluded that changes in the sun’s brightness over the past 100 years have been too small to significantly impact the earth’s climate. This research is only the latest in a long string of papers that have reinforced this conclusion. Tom Wigley is a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder who is respected for his calm, evenhanded approach to the issues. When I asked Wigley if solar irradiance could be discounted as a driver of the current warming, he said simply, “Yes. I’m very categorical about that final answer. I feel very confident about that.”

A slight difference in the methodology of evaluating these complex data samples can lead to vastly different conclusions. In fact, testimony presented in July of 2006 before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Commerce raised serious concerns on the extent of peer review and misuse of statistical methods in
generating the more alarmist global warming scenarios.

Hmm, where to start with this one. First of all, Cubin sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. So she ought to know that there is no “Subcommittee on Oversight and Commerce.” Perhaps this is a typo. The testimony she is talking about here was presented in two separate hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The hearing room was empty of Cubins at the time. Indeed it was empty of everyone except the witnesses and the chairman. While implying that she heard arguments that she didn’t hear, Cubin’s brief comment also reveals that she doesn’t understand either the science or its implications.

The hearing failed to draw an audience because it was about the statistical methodology used to construct a graph that is famous in the world of climate science -- though not much elsewhere -- known in shorthand as the “Hockey Stick.” In Cubin’s defense, there are not many people heroic enough to stay awake through a hearing on this topic, never mind through two hearings.

The graph, constructed for the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by the University of Virginia’s Michael Mann and colleagues, reconstructs the climate history of the past thousand years. It shows a relatively flat line until the beginning of the 20th century, when the temperature line trends upward, reaching a dramatically high point in the 1990s and 2000s. The line shapes up a little like a hockey stick. Hence the name. Maybe it’s not as clever as penis cookies, but what do you expect from paleoclimatologists?

Because the hockey stick is such a clear and evocative image of the rising global temperatures from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, it has become a prime target of climate contrarians. Given that the fundamentals of the argument are mathematical, it is hard to describe the controversy without putting everyone to sleep. Suffice it say that two Canadian analysts, Stephen McIntrye and Ross McKittrick, argued that the methods used by Mann et al. were incorrect. These objections had to do with the normalizing of principal component analysis. I can hear you snoring already. Principal component analysis is a commonly accepted statistical method of handling complex and noisy data not only to extract meaningful information, but also to make it easier to handle it mathematically.

Anyway, this controversy led to a congressional request that a third party assess the methodology. This third party, a group led by Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, reviewed the Mann hockey stick calculations, then presented their findings to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which is a beehive of politically motivated climate skepticism.

Wegman and his colleagues did find some problems with the Mann methods that derived the hockey stick. Mann nonetheless defended his approach in thesecond of the two hearings. The important point is that regardless of which method you use, the graph still comes up as a hockey stick. Several other groups of methematicians have reproduced the graph using various statistical procedures.

In any case, it doesn’t change the underlying facts. The average temperature of the globe has been rising as a result of human activity for the last 100 years. There aren’t any “vastly different conclusions” to draw regardless of how you tweak the methodology.

Wegman himself says in his testimony, “We do not assume any position with respect to global warming except to note in our report that the instrumented record of global average temperature has risen since 1850 ... by about 1.2 degrees centigrade (2.2 degrees F.).”


On August 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005
(P.L. 109-58, H.R. 6), which I supported. While this comprehensive
legislation generally focuses on setting a long-term energy policy for our
nation, the measure also establishes loans and loan guarantees to deploy
technology for greenhouse gas intensity reduction. Additionally, the act
requires the Secretary of State to provide assistance to developing
countries on projects to reduce greenhouse gas intensity and establishes
an export initiative for greenhouse gas reduction technology.

The 109th Congress continues to consider a wide range of legislation
addressing climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. H.R. 759,
The Climate Stewardship Act of 2005, was re-introduced by Rep. Wayne
Gilchrest (R-MD) on February 10, 2005. The bill would cap greenhouse gas
emissions by distributing emissions "allowances" to entities in the
electricity generation, transportation, industrial and commercial sectors.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would oversee the distribution
of the tradeable allowances. Non-compliance with the emissions caps would
result in economic penalties. H.R. 759 has been referred to both the
House Committee on Science and the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Energy & Air Quality. The same legislation was introduced in the 108th Congress as H.R. 4067, but did not reach the House floor for consideration.

Other proposed bills range from those focused primarily on climate change research to comprehensive emissions cap-and-trade programs for the six greenhouse gases covered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Additional legislation focuses on GHG reporting and registries, or on power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, as part of wider controls on pollutant emissions. As always, I will put the interests of Wyoming first should these proposals come before me in committee or on the House floor for a vote.

The congresswoman does not say whether whe will support any of these bills. Cubin usually interprets Wyoming’s interests consistent with the interests of the energy industry. Coal is a major sector of Wyoming’s economy, and a major contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Regardless of the ongoing disputes on global warming, I strongly believe
in a common sense approach to maintaining a clean environment, which must
also reflect the views of those individuals who are most affected by it.
Voices at the local level should not be drowned out by federal regulatory
overtones originating in Washington D.C. We must strike a balance with
our environmental laws, allowing reasonable and intelligent use of our
resources while still maintaining a clean and healthy environment.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me on this issues. If you
have additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact
my office.

With warm regards,


Barbara Cubin
Member of Congress

So, virtually every assertion of fact and inference in Cubin’s letter is wrong. The misinformation and misdirection about the issue of climate change are not unique to Cubin. They are pervasive in the D.C. policy establishment. Nor are they an accident. There is a large and well-financed lobby dedicated to undermining the clear implications of the overwhelming scientific consensus. They find a receptive audience among ostriches like Rep. Cubin, who prefer to hear what they want to hear, then argue about whether or not there’s a problem than face the realities of the situation.

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