Palin, McCain Disagree on Causes of Global Warming

Kate Troll, executive director of Alaska Conservation Voters and a member of a sub-cabinet advisory group, said she did not understand why Palin resisted the language environmentalists wanted until Newsmax magazine published an interview late last month in which the governor said: "A changing climate will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."

"Now I know why" the state doesn't have emissions reduction goals, Troll said. "It's very scary to have someone in the vice presidential seat who doesn't get the link to human activity, because if you don't get that, you don't get the connection to the rest of the story, of national security and global security."

Palin played down her skepticism last week in an interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, saying: "Show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that."

By contrast, when a General Motors employee asked McCain on July 18 whether "the science of man-made global warming has really been proven," the candidate said it had. "I've been all over, and I believe that climate change is real, and that's the preponderance of scientific evidence," said McCain, who also believes polar bears are endangered.

Hartig, the environmental commissioner, said his discussions with Palin "didn't get into the science, how much is man-caused." He sees that question as irrelevant, adding that the sub-cabinet is exploring how best to reduce greenhouse gases while looking at how to help Inuit communities that face the most immediate effects of global warming.

"We wouldn't be doing those things if we didn't think there's a point to it," he said, adding that the state has taken an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions.

Palin has not voiced an opinion on whether the federal government should cap carbon emissions, a cause McCain has championed for years. But she did resist the federal government's move to list polar bears under the Endangered Species Act.

Initially, Palin said her state's fish and wildlife department had conducted a review showing that the bears were not facing extinction. But Steiner, the professor, obtained an e-mail exchange showing that state officials concurred with federal scientists' predictions that all of Alaska's polar bears would disappear by mid-century if trends in greenhouse gas emissions continued.

Scott Schliebe, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist who oversaw the scientific analysis for the polar bear listing, said Palin and her deputies "had some strong views that were different from ours, and we thoroughly reviewed them. We didn't find their views had merit from the mainstream consensus of scientific thinking, which was backed by data."

Walsh, at the University of Alaska, said Palin has taken "a practical perspective," and he praised her for "casting a wide net of information." But when asked whether her policies have reflected the scientific information he and other climate researchers have given her, Walsh responded, "I haven't seen it yet."