NEWS

Pence ‘open-minded’ on climate change

Seth Slabaugh
seths@muncie.gannett.com

MUNCIE – When he was running for Congress in 2000, Mike Pence called global warming a myth created by environmentalists in their “latest Chicken Little attempt to raise taxes and grow centralized government power.”

“The chant is, ‘the sky is warming, the sky is warming.’”

He also asserted that the earth was actually cooler in 2000 than it was 50 years ago, and that greenhouse gases were real but mostly the result of volcanoes, hurricanes and underwater geologic displacements.

In reality, U.S. average temperature has increased 1.3 degrees to 1.9 degrees since record keeping began in 1895, and most of the increase has occurred since about 1970, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, (USGCRP), which is mandated by federal law to conduct a National Climate Assessment every four years, most recently in 2014.

“It's a shame that some politicians seem to need to find excuses not to believe our best experts on the planet on this topic,” Jeff Dukes, director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center, told The Star Press. “Basically, climate scientists around the world are in agreement that warming is occurring, and nearly all agree that the warming is largely driven by society's greenhouse gas emissions.”

Early in his career in Congress, Pence described himself as a “profound skeptic” of global warming. “The theory of global warming is just that — a theory,” he told The Star Press in 2003.

Today, Pence, the governor of Indiana, indicates he is more broad-minded about climate change, but he remains skeptical.

“The governor continues to keep an open mind about the science behind the cause of climate change but does not believe that it has been fully resolved yet,” his press secretary, Kara Brooks, told The Star Press.

While climate change in the past was driven exclusively by natural factors like explosive volcanic eruptions, “since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution humans have been increasingly affecting global climate change, to the point where we are now the primary cause of recent and projected future change,” USGCRP reported in 2014.

Disagreement in the scientific community includes how fast warming will occur with a given rate of greenhouse gas emissions, Dukes said.

“The first 14 years of this century were all in the top 15 warmest years on record, globally,” he said. “Also, 2014 was likely the hottest year on record, according to several agencies, with our region — a portion of the central U.S. — being one of only a very few in the world that did not have above-average temperatures.”

The scientific community in a number of assessments, the most recent being the National Climate Assessment, provides “high certainty and confidence on climate change impacts already being felt,” Dev Niyogi, the state climatologist for Indiana, told The Star Press. “Examples (in the Midwest) include changes in precipitation amount, intensity and type — rain versus snow — and heat waves, as well as an increasing trend for frost free conditions — a longer growing season.”

If the planet is warming up, how does Niyogi explain the last two bitterly cold Indiana winters?

“There is a large body of efforts under way to understand the reasons for recent weather events including the winters and droughts,” he said. “For any specific event it is difficult to confidently attribute a single cause, and it is a combination of climate variability due to oceanic factors such as El Nino/La Nina and Arctic oscillations.”

Asked whether he views Pence as a climate change denier or skeptic, Jesse Kharbanda, director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, said, “I think he’s at very best a climate skeptic. I think the best mark of whether you seriously care about climate change is in action, and Indiana is the only state in the Midwest other than Ohio that does not have a climate action plan.”

Just three years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated all 92 Indiana counties as natural disaster areas due to losses caused by extreme drought, Kharbanda noted.

“We think it’s economically very irresponsible for our state government to ignore this issue,” he said. “There’s not even a dedicated page on IDEM’s (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) website for climate change. I really question how much importance they give it.”

Extreme heat, heavy downpours and flooding from climate change will affect infrastructure, health, agriculture, forestry, transportation, air and water quality and more in the Midwest, according to the National Climate Assessment. Climate change will also exacerbate a range of risks to the Great Lakes, including blooms of algae, declining beach health and ice cover declines.

While the Midwest is expected to see longer growing seasons that will increase yields of some crops, those benefits will be progressively offset by extreme weather events, according to the assessment.

Surface air temperature is the most widely cited measure of climate change, but other impacts include reduced glacier extent, earlier snow melt, reduced lake levels due to evaporation, increased humidity, rising ocean temperatures, rising sea levels and changes in extreme weather, according to USGCRP.

No Indiana agency has a plan that specifically addresses any effects of climate change, Amy Smith, a spokesperson for IDEM, told The Star Press.

“Indiana has revised its rules to include greenhouse gases as a regulated pollutant, as required by federal law,” she said. “Where required by federal law, Indiana has also ensured that greenhouse gas emissions from certain major sources are properly permitted.”

In addition, several state agencies including Homeland Security and the Department of Natural Resources partner with utilities, cities, industry and others during floods and droughts, “two climate issues likely to affect Indiana,” she said.

“With regard to policy steps, the governor believes that our state and nation would be best served by a true all-of-the-above energy strategy that incorporates all energy resources, including wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, energy efficiency, biomass, and coal, in order to power our economy and provide the quality of life Hoosiers expect,” Brooks said.

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.