Christie has actually angered the likes of Marc Morano and Sen. Inhofe with his statements about global warming. He’s not toeing the standand anti-science GOP line.

In the past I’ve always said that climate change is real and it’s impacting our state. There’s undeniable data that CO2 levels and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are increasing. This decade average temperatures have been rising, temperature changes are affecting weather patterns and our climate. In order to best deal with climate change we have to understand its causes. That was the root of the question that I was asking at the time of my town hall meetings and it’s gotten a lot of attention. So in the last number of months since that time I’ve taken some time to develop a better understanding of the role that humans play in global warming and what impact human activity has on our climate. The last few months I’ve sat down with experts both inside the government and outside the administration in academia and other places, to discuss the issue in depth. I’ve also done some reading on my own on the topic as well. I’m certainly not a scientist which is the first problem.

So, I can’t claim to fully understand all of this. Certainly not after just a few months of study. But when you have over 90% of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts. Climate science is complex though and we’re just beginning to have a fuller understanding of humans’ role in all of this. But we know enough to know that we are at least a part of the problem. So looking forward, we need to work to put policies in place that act at reducing those contributing factors.

state.nj.us

I know some people are likely to point out that Christie made these statements while pulling out of RGGI, but Christie’s reasons for doing so (among others, because Pennsylvania and states outside of RGGI would just undercut NJ energy with cheap dirty energy) are a real problem with regional cooperatives and point to the need for a national energy strategy, which no one seems to be talking about.