Wyoming Legislature Visits Hurr-Durr Village; CO2 Coalition Hacks Invited To Speak, Scientists Not Welcome

Bonus News Flash - William Happer is . .. . apparently still alive!!

Sen. Cheri Steinmetz was clear: The committee chairwoman did not want to hear prevailing viewpoints about carbon dioxide and climate change. Those who accept what climate scientists have known for decades — that the planet is warming because of human-caused CO2 emissions — need not speak up, the Lingle Republican said. “If proponents of a different viewpoint wish to express that,” Steinmetz said, “they are free to have a hearing of their own.”

That left room for only alternative theories, those that deny or discount the world-changing effect carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are having on human beings, other species and the climatic conditions of the planet. Purported experts invited to testify, and other speakers, including each lawmaker who spoke, expressed either disbelief that climate change was happening, or a belief that it is inconsequential, even beneficial.

Flanking Steinmetz in the Wyoming Capitol extension building auditorium were four members of the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee: Sens. Dan Laursen (R-Powell), John Kolb (R-Rock Springs), Tim French (R-Powell) and Bob Ide (R-Casper). They nodded and smiled as they listened to presentations from speakers brought in from the CO2 Coalition. The group touted its theory — discredited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other climate scientists — that loading more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will not tip the planet’s climate into unlivable conditions.

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But the science is clear. In fact, human-caused climate change has pushed Wyoming’s annual mean temperature upward by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1920 to 2020, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. Wyoming’s highest elevations are warming even faster, already changing the seasonal pulse of water flows that the state’s economy is built around. Climate change, which is already changing people’s lives in Wyoming, will have a dramatic effect on temperature regimes all across the state, according to University of Wyoming climate scientist Bryan Shuman. A place like Jackson, he said, will go from virtually never touching 90 degrees to getting that warm with regularity.

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William Happer, co-founder and Chairman of the CO2 Coalition, in the red tie, arrives at the University of Wyoming in Laramie Feb. 14, 2024. (Dustin Bleizeffer)