Kudlow, Rubio question climate change

After the devastation of Hurricane Michael and a recent United Nations report warning of a looming climate crisis, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday questioned the extent of human contribution to rising global temperatures.

“I think they overestimate,” Kudlow said of the U.N. report, which found that policy changes must proceed at an unprecedented pace in the next 12 years to stop temperatures from rising more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above Earth’s preindustrial temperature.

“I’m not denying any climate change issues,” Kudlow said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’m just saying, do we know precisely ... things like how much of it is manmade, how much of it is solar, how much of it is oceanic, how much of it is rain forest and other issues?”

Rubio, R-Fla., speaking on CNN about the effects of Hurricane Michael, said that sea levels and ocean temperatures have risen in a “measurable” way and that humans have played some role. But he questioned how big that role is.

“I think many scientists would debate the percentage of what is attributable to man versus normal fluctuations,” Rubio said on “State of the Union.”

The established scientific view is that the majority of warming is caused by humans, and the recent report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reinforced this conclusion.

The study found that “human activities” are estimated to have caused 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of warming since the late 19th century.