Yes, well maybe not the most direct bearing on the current presidential campaign or the most scintillating topic either, but I have heard a couple Republicans speak to the matter of Global Warming recently. The views have on both occasions seemed to me to be shortsighted. I believe it was in a debate that Mitt Romney seemed to seize on the name, "global warming". Since it is "global" the US shouldn't do anything unless everybody else does too. This is not shortsighted? I don't want to write a thesis and research all the supporting data, but I doubt it would be difficult to prove that the US has been among the very top industrial leaders over the last century. Following from that, I wouldn't think it would be hard to prove us as one of the leading nations in greenhouse gas emissions. I would then further argue that this would allot us a larger share of the problem than most other countries. Additionally, this seems to give us more of an interest in dealing with the problem given the assumption that we would want to continue as a leading industrial nation.

Just tonight Tom DeLay appeared on Chris Matthew's Hardball. He maintained there is no scientific proof that there even is global warming and further stated that it was arrogance to even think that man could influence the climate. If there actually is global warming I would have to characterize these statements as shortsighted almost by definition.

First to the no scientific proof. A little quick Googling comes up with the Global warming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia entry...

The global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 100 years ending in 2005.[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations"[1] via the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[2][3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[9][10]

My own admittedly non-expert understanding is that there are a couple problems involved here. First, the effects are cumulative, so that driving to work today will not cause severe flooding in Nova Scotia. But with hundreds of thousands of people doing this over decades it might become another matter. This is especially true since some of these things last a long, long time. Again, in my limited understanding, where Mr. DeLay is more correct is that there is no good scientific handle on how close we actually are to the cliff. Or, when do reach the point where there is no way to stop Nova Scotia being flooded.

A good book I would recommend to Mr. DeLay that I did a selected reading of recently was "Billions And Billions : Thoughts On Life And Death At The Brink Of The Millenium" - Carl Sagan. Sagan was in fact a scientist and I think most would agree he knew a thing or two about the greenhouse effect. The concerned chapters were I thought a good introduction and might be worth a browse anyhow.

Just to be safe for a incoming president wishing to be seen by future generations as actually farsighted it might be best not to dismiss this issue out of hand. Go Gore Green on this one. At least try to listen to some people close to the issue and attempt to make a reasoned estimation of what effort and/or encouragement of industry effort should be made to address the concerns.