Climate change, or the lack of it, became an important issue this week in the 2014 17th Congressional District race, as the challenger attended a conference on it, while the incumbent introduced legislation to control its purported harmful effects.
Dr. David J. Moylan III, a South Manheim Township Republican and Schuylkill County coroner, spent Monday through Wednesday at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change in Las Vegas, Nevada, a forum for those challenging those who say people are changing the world's weather for the worse.
"It was an eye-opening experience," Moylan said Friday. "I got the whole gist of it."
On Friday, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Moosic Democrat serving his first term, introduced the Safeguarding America's Future and Environment Act, legislation that would safeguard the country's natural resources from what he said are the increasingly harmful effects of climate change.
"Climate change poses an immediate and long-term threat to the natural resources and environmental landscape that many local communities depend on for a livelihood," Cartwright, a member of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, said.
Moylan, who serves as Schuylkill County coroner, is challenging Cartwright in the heavily Democratic 17th District, which includes all of Schuylkill and parts of Carbon, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe and Northampton counties. Although Schuylkill is the only county entirely in the 17th, the majority of its population is in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties.
Originally called global warming, climate change reflects the idea that man-made greenhouse gases have altered the world's weather for the worse. Advocates say action is needed to control such gases before they harm civilization, while skeptics say human impact on the weather is minimal and not worth the cost of proposed changes.
Moylan said the conference, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, showed him that climate change still needs to be researched.
"Far from being settled science, as the president and (former Vice President) Al Gore would have us believe, people of good faith and extensive scientific background disagree on the interpretation of the information," Moylan said. "This would have major (effects) on what our national energy policy should be."
He said the planet is not getting warmer.
"There seems to be a well-documented pause since 1997 in the temperature measurements," which is why what was once called global warming is now called climate change, according to Moylan. "We need to keep studying this. It is not settled science."
Also, computer models and actual effects are not conforming to the hypotheses of alarmists, he said.
"If the observations don't confirm your hypothesis, it's null and void," Moylan said.
He said climate change actually occurs on a regular cycle and pushing for massive change is not in the country's best interest.
"If we're going to change our energy policy on what seems to be poor science, it's going to have devastating economic consequences," Moylan said.
On the other hand, Cartwright, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said legislators should concentrate on battling climate change's effects.
"In Pennsylvania alone, outdoor recreation generates $21.5 billion in annual consumer spending and supports 219,000 jobs," he said. "This legislation will proactively develop a ... plan to protect our lands and waters, such as the Delaware River and Pocono Mountains, from a changing climate."
His bill would require federal natural resource agencies to plan and implement a long-term national climate change adaptation strategy in coordination with state, local and tribal governments. Additionally, it would encourage development of state-specific adaption plans.
Nineteen environmental organizations have endorsed the legislation.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who now is ambassador to China, introduced parallel legislation in the Senate.