Video: Pile of Science vs. Pile of Snow in Capitol Climate-Change Debate

State Rep. Kate Knuth (DFL-50B) argued on the Minnesota House floor Wednesday against a bill that would lift a state law banning utility companies from increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

Knuth, who represents a small part of eastern Fridley, brought a stack of scientific and government reports supporting climate change (get a glimpse of them at the 2:00 mark of the video clip).

These are some really useful resources in terms of how governments around the world are responding to climate change and the various scientific organizations—all of the scientific organizations, true professional organizations of science—coming together to talk about the impacts of climate change. I was trying … to find some government reports or some reports from scientific organizations to say that climate change really isn't a problem and that we don't really need to be worrying about it—there's nothing we can do. I was unable to find any.

Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-28B) responded:

Exactly when could we anticipate the 20-foot tall snowbank or snow pile in the Sears parking lot to melt and then evaporate? …. Maybe we're heading towards global cooling and more snow. … I've become increasingly perplexed at the efforts … to place policy in our statutes that revolve around this nebulous term called "climate change" of which no one can predict how it's going to change or what it's going to do. I think this is the wrong direction for us to be going. We need to stop this behavior. We need to stop the additional mandates in favor of these nebulous terms. …