Rick Perry and Al Franken exchange heated words on global warming

Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Senator Al Franken confronted each other at a hearing after Perry’s recent statements regarding the skepticism about climate change. Perry appeared on CNBC where he claimed that carbon dioxide is not the primary factor in climate change.

Franken stated at the hearing that “100 percent of peer-reviewed scientists have a consensus, and that is that this (climate change) is happening.” which leads to a further discussion where Franken misquoted Dr. Richard Muller and said that “humans are entirely the cause” of global warming.

As Dr. Muller later explained he did, in fact, conclude that humans carbon emissions are the cause of 90% of global warming, but, in the mentioned debate Franken challenged Perry to explain his statements that CO2 is not the primary driver in global warming. Perry explained that he believes there are other natural events that also contribute and suggested a red-team approach and sit down between scientists.

Franken stated that the red team/blue team approach is exactly how science works suggesting that there’s an open debate between scientists until a consensus is reached. Franken then reminded Perry about the BEST project – a group of skeptical scientists that was hired by the Koch brothers to challenge the mainstream science regarding climate changes.

These scientists, led by Dr. Richard Muller confirmed that mainstream science is correct. Perry pointed out that he doesn’t believe that global warming was 100% due to human activity.

This isn’t the first time that Franken and Perry were in such a heated debate about climate changes and debates like this can be very infuriating to climate scientists with skeptics continuing to ask for more evidence for global warming.