GOP grapples with climate confusion

Ask 15 Republicans about climate change, and you’ll get 20 different answers. In March, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told a national conservative radio program that the Earth is “cooling,” not warming. Last week, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said global warming is real and hurting her state, acknowledging that “many believe” an international effort to reduce greenhouse gases is necessary. And on Sunday, Republican leader John Boehner dismissed as “almost comical” the idea that carbon dioxide is “a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment,” arguing that it must be safe because humans “exhale” it and cows deposit it. An EPA spokesman called Boehner’s comments “erroneous,” noting that whether a gas is a carcinogen doesn’t have anything to do with whether it causes global warming. The GOP’s scattershot messaging on climate change threatens to distract from the party’s primary attack on the Democrats’ global warming plan: that the cap-and-trade system will dramatically raise prices on business and consumers...POLITICO