Dutton Report Special: June 21, 2007

Talent Pool Deep In Sacramento

Since arriving in Sacramento in 2002, I have been very impressed with the level of talent shown by the staff members who work in the State Capitol.

I’ve been particularly impressed by the knowledge, professionalism and work ethic of the young people who come to the capitol for a variety of reasons. They range from those who want to get a glimpse of what it takes to be a lawmaker to those who hope to make a career out of being part of the legislative process.

But no matter the goal, every one of these individuals has to start somewhere and all of them begin by finding a foot in the door. Some seek a college internship, while others apply to the Senate or Assembly Fellowship Programs.

Throughout the last five years in Sacramento I’ve been privileged to have young staff members work for me from virtually every program made available.

This year, for example, our office was fortunate to receive a Senate Fellow. Each year only 18 individuals from throughout California are selected to participate in the Senate Fellows program. Those Fellows are then assigned to Senate offices where they are immersed in the legislative and public policy issues and become key staff members for their respective members.

Eric Eisenhammer, 24, and a resident of Agoura Hills has been working in our office since last December as part of the Senate Fellows Program. Among his responsibilities has been conducting research for various pieces of legislation, representing our office in meetings with constituents and other groups seeking my support on bills or issues, and writing pieces that are turned into press releases and/or opinion pieces.

Eric received his degree in Business Administration and Finance from California State University, Northridge. He has been accepted into the Master’s Degree Program at Pepperdine University. We congratulate him in this most recent achievement and wish him well as he finalizes his post-fellowship plans.

Eric has been a valuable member of the Dutton team since joining it last year and will be missed when his Fellowship ends. I think he would agree with me that his time here has been valuable and he would recommend not only the Fellows program, but the many other internship programs available in Sacramento. Anyone interested in participating in one of the Fellowship or internship programs can call my Sacramento office at 916-651-4031 to get more information.

Having said that, I want to share a piece recently written by Eric that highlights not only his writing abilities but touches on a subject that generates plenty of debate on both sides of the aisle – Global Warming.

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Global Warming Is All Hot Air

by Eric Eisenhammer

Now is a bad time to be a polar bear. Not good for Santa Claus either. Not good for anyone who likes to play in the snow for that matter. Or so we are led to believe.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger met recently with Utah Governor John Huntsman to discuss global warming. The two governors announced that Utah will join California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in the Western Region Climate Action Initiative. The initiative’s intention is to mirror AB 32 signed into law last year that aims at reducing greenhouse gases.

According to global warming alarmists, human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are growing rapidly, creating a gaseous blanket over the planet which traps the sun’s rays and increases the earth’s temperatures. Environmentalists, led by former Vice President Al Gore, warn that unless we dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, the ice caps will melt, species will go extinct and low-lying areas will flood.

Power plants that burn coal or natural gas, automobiles, and factories are all sources of CO2, so any effort to reduce emissions would substantially affect our quality of life. We’re lectured about the need to combat global warming by celebrities, politicians and the media, yet we must ask whether the global warming hysteria is based on sound science or propaganda.

I believe global warming is simply a case of propaganda winning over sound science. We’ve cried wolf for so long that everyone now accepts global warming as fact without knowing the facts.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in February of this year concluding that humans were responsible for global warming and that warming will lead to heat waves, increases in typhoons and hurricanes and melting of the polar ice caps. The media reported that the IPCC report came from over 2500 of the world’s leading scientists and represented a broad scientific consensus. Yet what they failed to report was that many of the 2500 contributors to the IPCC report were not scientists at all and some of the scientists listed disagreed with the report’s conclusions.

In fact, 17,100 American scientists, two-thirds of whom have advanced degrees, have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s Global Warming Petition, stating “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

Despite alarmist’s claims that CO2 is the main driver of climate change, in actuality, CO2 makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere. Of that 0.04% only 3.2% results from human activities. Recent research has suggested that the role of greenhouse gases in climate change has been overestimated. Instead, atmospheric soot, land use changes and solar variation are all factors in recent temperature increases.

In the absence of certainty on what causes global warming, computer climate models showing further temperature increases are rendered meaningless. In fact, temperatures on earth have fluctuated over time. There have been times when the climate was substantially cooler than today (ice ages) as well as times when the temperatures have been warmer. The father of the greenhouse theory, James Hansen of NASA and the world’s most renowned climatologist, Richard Lindzen of MIT, both agree that even if nothing is done to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, the earth’s temperature will only increase about one degree Celsius over the next 50-100 years.

It now appears more clearly than ever that any warming on the earth’s surface is caused by changes in the sun and not humans. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia said that Mars, which has no human life that I know of, is warming at the same rate as Earth. He said the long-term increases in the sun’s heat accounts for almost all the climate changes seen on both Earth and Mars.

Despite this new information we are still shown videos of ice falling from glaciers as "proof" that global warming is causing the ice caps to melt. We are never told that ice is constantly moving – the footage proves nothing. We're never told that the ice caps in some areas of Antarctica are actually getting thicker. In his “documentary,” Al Gore estimated that melting ice caps would cause rises in sea level of over 20 feet, leading to catastrophic floods.

However, a 2005 study published in the Journal of Glaciology showed the contribution to rises in sea levels from the three ice sheets was only 0.05 millimeters per year over a ten year period from 1992 to 2002. CO2Science.org explains it this way: “At the current sea-level-equivalent ice-loss rate of 0.05 millimeters per year, it would take 100 years to raise global sea level by just 5 centimeters, and it would take fully 20,000 years to raise it a single meter.”

To understand the global warming hype, one must look to those who have a vested interest in sounding the alarm. Environmental activists use global warming as a scare tactic to raise funds for their organizations; the media uses global warming to win larger audiences and readership; scientists use global warming to win $6.5 billion in research grants the US budgets every year for global warming research; companies receive tax breaks and favorable media coverage for introducing eco-friendly products; and, politicians use global warming as an excuse to expand the reach of government while currying favor with environmentalist campaign donors and voters.

In truth, polar bears, Santa and anyone who loves the snow are all safe from global warming. The only global warming we should be concerned with is the hot air that comes out of the mouths of people like Al Gore.

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