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A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center

A Cool Reaction to Warming Trend


Americans For Prosperity, a conservative group, has found a unique way to attack Democrats for the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: global warming alarmism.

The group notes that the stimulus package calls for “spending billions of dollars” for “green energy.” That much is certainly true. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill did include $16.8 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and as we’ve previously discussed there was an additional $11 billion for a so-called smart grid.

But when the group argues that money is being wasted because global warming is a “hoax,” it ignores overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The consensus in the scientific community is the opposite. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there was a “very high confidence” of man-made warming in its 2007 report. Even the long-skeptical Bush administration released a report in May 2008 that said “it is likely that there has been a substantial human contribution to surface temperature increases in North America.”

AFP says it is spending $140,000 on airtime for the ad in Virginia and on Fox News.

The first ad shows an actor portraying an arrogant man named “Carlton the wealthy eco-hypocrite”:

And the other features an actor portraying an angry man:

The second ad sums up the group’s campaign succinctly by saying that Global Warming is a “hoax.”