Recently, Roger Pielke Sr., Senior Research Associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at the University of Colorado Boulder, participated in the March 8, 2011 House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing, Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation.

His succinct testimony, reprinted below, provides a viewpoint on climate change science that is (refreshingly) different from the somewhat limited one espoused by the IPCC. While the IPCC sports blinders that prevent it from seeing much beyond human emissions as being the primary culpable agent of climate change, Roger sees the much bigger, more complex, picture. And Roger suggests that a response considered for the big climate change picture would likely be much different from that being considered for human emissions alone.…

[Editor note: Marita Noon is the Executive Director at Energy Makes America Great Inc., the advocacy arm of the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy. CARE works to educate the public and influence policymakers regarding the role of energy in freedom and the American way of life.]

At least 18 states have legislation proposed or pending—44 bills—relating to renewable energy mandates, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council. Within the last couple of weeks, I have had wary legislators from two different states ask me about such mandates. I have spoken to energy groups opening with, “How many of you know what an RPS is?” … Nothing…. “It stands for Renewable Portfolio Standard.” … Still blank.

The RPS is a silent little killer of the American economy. “Silent” because, despite widespread activity, its presence is nearly unknown.…

Back in October 2009, my post “A Cherry-Picker’s Guide to Temperature Trends” examined the many different statements that could be made to describe the tendencies of global temperatures over the past 20 years. I concluded that anything from rapid cooling to a faster than expected warming could be supported by carefully picking through the available data.

Now, more than a year later, and after one of the “warmest years on record,” I’ve updated my analysis so that any new statements characterizing global temperature can be evaluated against the complete set of recent observations.

In general, I find that statements such as “global warming has stopped” should be tempered, at least for the time being. But I conclude that my original article’s summary remains more or less* applicable:

What I can say for certain, is that the recent behavior of global temperatures demonstrates that global warming is occurring at a much slower rate than that projected by the ensemble of climate models, and that global warming is most definitely not accelerating.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has found another disguise for lining the pockets of “alternative energy” producers with consumers’ dollars directed there not by rational economic choices but by government mandate.

Once a supporter of cap and trade, Graham now supports a “Clean Energy Standard” that would require utilities to generate increasingly high percentages of electricity from “renewable” sources like wind, solar, and biofuels, from nuclear, and from coal using “carbon capture and sequestration”—catching the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted when coal burns and forcing it, under pressure, into deep geological formations for long-term storage to keep it out of the atmosphere.

A variation on that theme suggested by Entergy Corp. head Wayne Leonard in the Wall Street Journal suggests that we begin with the seemingly innocuous step of increasing U.S.…