ClimateWatch.org

And now for a message on global warming from your Georgia Legislature: Don't sweat it.

Climate scientists and environmental activists like former Vice President Al Gore are alarmists. They use flawed statistical models to predict a catastrophic future of thawed glaciers, super-charged hurricanes, swamped coastlines and scorched crops.

That was the conclusion of three of the four panelists at a state House hearing on Tuesday titled "Climate Change: Fact or Fiction?"

While other states are looking for ways to reduce the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, Georgia officials are not convinced there's a problem they can do anything about.

"In the media, we hear the gloom and doom side," said Rep. Jeff Lewis (R-White), chairman of the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee that held the hearing. "There is alternative information out there."

Georgia's hearing, held on a 98-degree day during a record-setting heat wave, showcased three of the nation's leading skeptics on climate-change science. They don't even all agree that the Earth is significantly warming, a question long considered a scientific slam-dunk. And together they ridiculed the worst-case scenarios presented this year by an international panel of more than 2,000 climate scientists.

"I believe this issue is being driven by hysteria right now," said Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think tank with Libertarian leanings.

The hearing came a few weeks after a global warming discussion at the National Conference of State Legislatures annual meeting in Boston. Lewis said he felt the NCSL meeting was stacked with the "extreme side" preaching that global warming will have a catastrophic impact.

At that meeting, Georgia was one of eight states that voted against a resolution in support of California's right to pass more aggressive environmental laws than the federal government to reduce greenhouse gases.

Eric Schaeffer, who directs the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project advocating stronger enforcement, said Georgia is lagging behind many other states in dealing with global warming.

"You've got a very conservative group of politicians running things. That doesn't mean they necessarily reflect the rank-and-file thinking," said Schaeffer, who resigned as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's civil enforcement section in 2002.

Michaels, the scientist from UVA, said climate change is real. But he said the likely impact — the dramatic rise in sea level, the extent of the loss of the glaciers of Greenland, the jump in severe hurricanes — has been exaggerated.

Many of the suggestions to reduce CO2 would cost a lot of money and provide very little change, he said.

"If you care about warming, you should care about affluence," Michaels told lawmakers.

Michaels argued that people with more money will invest in companies that produce things like hybrid cars that use less fossil fuel.

John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said temperature data does not support predictions that greenhouse gases will cause a massive warming of the Earth's climate over the next century. In fact, he said temperatures in Georgia and Alabama have declined over the past century.

"I plow through the data from scratch. I don't see the catastrophes happening," Christy said.

Members of the Republican dominated panel said they appreciated the skeptics viewpoint.

"What this has done is it has affirmed my assumption coming in here that there are too many opinions on this subject" to draw a conclusion, said Rep. Clay Cox (R-Lilburn), a member of the House committee.

The hearing was followed by a lunch for lawmakers, sponsored by Georgia Natural Gas and AT&T.

It was a rare state-sanctioned discussion on global warming, a topic Gov. Sonny Perdue has steered clear of even as his counterpart in Florida, fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, is leading the charge to slash that state's greenhouse gas emissions. Last month, Crist signed an executive order requiring utilities to produce more power from renewable sources and lower emissions.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, another Republican, wrote an opinion published this year in The Washington Post urging fellow conservatives to take the lead in the global warming debate by pushing for market-based solutions.

Dennis Creech, executive director of Atlanta-based Southface, a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving energy and water, said after the hearing he could've suggested a more balanced panel for the legislators.

"Just look at surrounding states," Creech said. "They're all not in denial mode. ... [Energy saving] measures are going to save our economy, not cost us."

About two-thirds of Georgia's electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants, the single largest producers of greenhouse gases. According to the Environmental Integrity Project, Schaeffer's group, Georgia Power operates the biggest carbon-emitter in the country at Plant Scherer near Macon, and the third biggest, at Plant Bowen in Cartersville.

But the conversation may be changing. Just last year, Southern Co. seemed content to highlight the uncertainties surrounding climate change. This year, the company, which also owns Alabama Power and Mississippi Power, published a climate change pamphlet acknowledging the need to reduce greenhouse gases and pointing out the company's efforts to that end, including research on cleaner coal technologies and new nuclear plans.

Leonard Haynes, Southern's executive vice president of supply technologies, renewables and demand-side planning, said last week, "The Earth is getting warmer. I don't personally know if it's man-made or a natural phenomenon, but we'll need to take into account greenhouse gas emissions because we're going to have to reduce them."

Also, the State Energy Strategy, a package of proposals presented to Perdue last year by his hand-picked advisers, includes a strong statement on climate change and the need for the state to act by creating an inventory of the state's greenhouse gases.

The advisory panel was chaired by a leading proponent of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Lee Thomas, the retired president and chief operation office of Georgia-Pacific Corp.

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