I just love conspiracy theories. And so, apparently, does Rep. Mike Noel.
The Kanab Republican thinks there's a big fat conspiracy -- by scientists, the government, news organizations, you name it -- to keep the other side of the global warming debate out of circulation. The other side being, of course, that there's no convincing proof that global warming exists.
Oh, and that the conspiracy is a front to control world population.
The vehicle for the message is House Joint Resolution 12, which wants the EPA to can its policies, programs and regulations regarding carbon dioxide (CO2) and its role in global warming until "a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated."
The resolution's sponsor, Republican Rep. Kerry W. Gibson, an Ogden farmer, spoke passionately about how the EPA's proposals would hurt Utah farmers and ranchers, a warning seconded by Randy Parker, CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation. Others weighed in on how coal mining and other extraction industries also would suffer.
The show really got started when Noel took the microphone, saying that more Utahns than not doubt that global warming is real and that the "media" takes a "one-sided slant."
Express your doubts, he said, and "you'll be attacked personally, you'll be maligned personally. It's happened to me."
But Noel really got heated when Joe Andrade, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Utah, calmly said that he worried that passage of the resolution would slow down the movement to find new, clean energy sources such as nuclear, solar and wind.
Noel asked Andrade: "Are you stating on record that CO2 is a pollutant?
Andrade: "I'm saying that CO2 has a unique molecular structure which absorbs infrared radiation, and that that is in part responsible for the effects you're concerned with, Rep. Gibson is concerned with...."
Noel: "I want to get this on the record: Are you saying we have to rid the planet of carbon dioxide?"
Andrade: "Of course not!"
Noel: "It's not a pollutant, then it's not going to kill you. It's not going to kill plants. Is that correct? I have a degree too, Professor."
Finally, the exchange devolved enough that the committee chairman broke it up.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Noel said. "It got out of hand."
A little later, though, Noel referenced a 1970s textbook, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment , that now is out of print. It was written by biologist Paul Ehrlich, his wife Anne and the physicist John Holdren, now science and technology adviser to President Obama.
Ever more loudly, Noel cited the book's "drastic measures" to control population, including forced abortion, sterilization, forcing single mothers to give up their child for adoption or to marry, and mass sterilization. (In the book, the authors say that voluntary population-limiting methods are a far better choice, a conclusion Noel neglected to mention.)
In his mind, caring about the earth's growing population somehow conflates with global warming, although I'm not quite sure how. But as Noel put it, if you can't see the connection, "you're absolutely blind."
Well, OK, I'm blind. I do believe that the climate is changing, that the earth is warming, that glaciers and Arctic ice are melting, that the Interior West could one day become unlivable.
And I still love hearing conspiracy theories -- the U.S. brought down the World Trade Centers, we never put a man on the moon, Obama's a Muslim socialist with no U.S. birth certificate.
I just don't have to believe them.
Correction: The U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause is found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3. I misidentified its location in a Feb. 4 column.
