The No. 1 Republican on the House Science Committee is calling ardent global warming supporters out as treating climate science as more like a religion.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed column published Thursday, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith goes after President Barack Obama's initiative to drastically cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Smith noted, according to the Journal, "that Earth Day provided a fresh opening for Obama to raise alarms about global warming based on beliefs, not science."
But the president has incited the issue emotionally by threats of catastrophic climate change, Smith says.
"Instead of letting political ideology or climate ‘religion’ guide government policy, we should focus on good science," Smith wrote. "The facts alone should determine what climate policy options the U.S. considers."
Smith added: "That is what the scientific method calls for: inquiry based on measurable evidence. Unfortunately this administration’s climate plans ignore good science and seek only to advance a political agenda."
Smith's opinion piece comes as Obama "turns up the heat" on the climate change debate in Florida as the nation celebrated Earth Day,
CNN noted.
"We do not have time to deny the effects of climate change," Obama said at an event held at the environmentally fragile Florida Everglades, CNN reported.
"This is not some impossible problem that we cannot solve," he said. "We can solve it if we have some political will."
While the president urged that climate change science should not be hijacked by political partisanship,
Vox said it was too late because such a divide is real and unlikely to subside.
"The problem is, global warming has become a deeply rooted partisan issue over the past decade. And the bitter irony is that Obama's climate speeches only ever seem to exacerbate that divide — not narrow it," Vox wrote, citing polls that showed the split on the issue among Republicans and Democrats.
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