GOP Bob Inglis Goes 'On-the-Record' About Climate Change

Whatever you think about Bob Inglis (R-South Carolina), you've got to hand it to him for going out "on-the-record" on climate change and calling out his peeps for missing the commercial opportunity.

Here's a clip of his remarks via ThinkProgress:




And here are some of the best bits:

Kim Beazley who's Australia's ambassador to the United States tells me that when he runs into a climate skeptic, he says to them, "Make sure to say that very publicly, because I want our grandchildren to read what you said and what I said."

Tom Friedman gave me this great analogy yesterday -- Your child is sick. 98 doctors say treat him this way. Two say no, this other way is the way to go. I'll go with the two. You're taking a big risk with those kids. Because 98 of the doctors say, "Do this thing," two say, "Do the other."...

And I would also suggest to my Free Enterprise colleagues -- especially conservatives here -- whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey, what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don't. And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century. They plan on innovating around these problems, and selling to us, and the rest of the world, the technology that'll lead the 21st century.

So we may just press the pause button here for several years, but China is pressing the fast-forward button.

And as a result, if we wake up in several years and we say, "gee, this didn't work very well for us. The two doctors didn't turn out to be so right. 98 might have been the ones to listen to." Then what we'll find is we're way behind those Chinese folks.

Because you know, if you got a certain number of geniuses in the population -- if you're one in a million in China, there's 1300 of you. And you know what? They plan on leading the future.

So whether you -- if you're a free enterprise conservative here -- just think: it's a bunch of hooey, this science is a bunch of hooey. But if you miss the commercial opportunity, you've really missed something.

We have a lot of people who make a lot of money on talk radio and talk TV saying a lot of things. They slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and they're experts on climate change. And those folks substitute their judgment for people who have PhDs and work tirelessly to discover the data.