Barton: Palin wrong to call for Obama to boycott Copenhagen

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said Sarah Palin was wrong to call for President Barack Obama to boycott the Copenhagen climate talks on Friday.

Palin, who calls the case for human-induced global warming “junk science,” said in a Washington Post op-ed Wednesday that Obama should stay away from the talks aimed at crafting a global climate change accord. Obama plans to attend Dec. 18.

Barton, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, shares Palin’s view of the state of climate science, and noted he likes and respects the former Alaska governor.

“I think the president has every right to go to Copenhagen. He has made environmentalism a part of his agenda. I have no problem with that,” Barton said in an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program to be aired Sunday. 

Barton said he is “appreciative” of the fact that Obama is attending and that the U.S. “needs to be engaged.” But Barton also said he hoped Obama is “open-minded” enough to see a need to take a “step back” and “check the facts” around climate science.

Barton is among the leading congressional skeptics on global warming and strongly opposes requiring emissions curbs. He argues that now-infamous e-mails among scientists hacked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. have highlighted faulty evidence of warming.

“What I am interested in is the truth. What I am interested in is getting the facts. What I am interested in is true, honest research, and then we will make some policy decisions, but we certainly don’t need to do that now,” he said.

White House officials and Obama himself in recent days have called the scientific case behind human-induced global warming overwhelming. "There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades,” Obama said when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize this week.

The board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this month reaffirmed its view that climate change caused by human activities is occurring.

Watch the interview here.