Feingold hits GOP Senate foe over 'bizarre' climate change explanation

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) is taking aim at GOP opponent Ron Johnson’s claim that climate change more likely stems from sunspots rather than human activity.

"I'm not going to take a course in Ron Johnson science any time soon,” Feingold said in an interview Wednesday with WisPolitics.com, calling it one of several “bizarre ideas” that Johnson has.

“This notion that he knows better than most of the scientists in the world is a little preview of what you might get if he was your senator,” Feingold said.

Johnson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently that he “absolutely” does not believe the science behind human-induced climate change.

“It's far more likely that it's just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time,” he said, according to the paper.

Feingold said he supports climate legislation but does not back the cap-and-trade bill the House approved last year, saying it could harm Wisconsin ratepayers reliant on coal-fired power generation.

“We need climate change legislation but it should not be tilted toward the nuclear industry against the coal industry because that is unfair to the upper Midwest,” Feingold said.

“We are going to need some kind of climate change legislation but not necessarily cap-and-trade,” he later added.

Climate legislation is widely considered dead on Capitol Hill during this Congress, an assessment Feingold shares. “I don’t think it can happen this year,” he said.

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