A day after he said there’s more research to be done on climate change, Jon Huntsman is back to siding with the scientists. But he’s also saying that there’s a segment of scientific “ambiguity” on climate change where “discussions continue.”
In other words, he’s gone from flip-flopping to speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
Let’s review the three phases of Huntsman on climate change.
1. Slayer of skeptics: Up until extremely recently, Huntsman was attacking his opponents for having any doubts about climate change. As he told Time, “All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them.”
It’s important to note here that while Huntsman was very clear that climate change is real — and even more clear that people who don’t think it’s real are crazy — he did not think the government should spend any taxpayer dollars doing anything about it.
2. Skeptic: On Tuesday, Huntsman said, “[T]here is — there are questions about the validity of the science, evidenced by one university over in Scotland recently. I think the onus is on the scientific community to provide more in the way of information, to help clarify the situation.”
So he raised the same concerns about climate science skeptics do, shouting out the widely debunked conspiracy that emails stolen from a British university proved that scientists were cooking up climate science results to fit their hypotheses.
3. Skeptical believer On Wednesday, Politico reported, Huntsman rejected the idea that he’s flip-flopped, claiming that “I put my faith and trust in science.”
He added this:
“Is there a one percent that has a disagreement? There’s a one percent that has a disagreement. Will those discussions continue, as they always do in the scientific community, to clear up those areas of ambiguity? I suspect so. But, as for me, I’m on the side of science on this one.”
So now the guy who once called said it was crazy to disbelieve climate science is saying it’s up to science to shoot down the tiny minority of skeptics who continue to believe the whole thing is a hoax.
Maybe it’s not a flip-flop-flip. But it sure sounds like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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