As Batman Rises, Icebergs Fall and Romney and GOP Ignore Climate Warnings
 
WASHINGTON (July 18, 2012) – A section twice the size of the island of Manhattan has broken off of the Petermann glacier in Greenland due to warmer ocean temperatures in the latest event in what has been a dangerous, destructive and troubling season of extreme weather. Heat waves have gripped the United States, breaking records. Extreme storms have knocked out power and cost lives. Wildfires have consumed parts of the West. And international events like flooding in Japan have left many scientists worried that the worst effects of global warming are already upon us.
 
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have rejected the science of climate change and actively worked to prevent solutions, like American-made wind and solar energy, from being deployed.
 
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and the co-author of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that passed the House in 2009, issued the following statement:
 
“This massive new iceberg is yet another blockbuster event in what is fast becoming an historically troubling extreme weather season. Batman may be rising in theaters, but icebergs and heat records are falling across the globe as our folly of global warming inaction is finally coming back to haunt us.
 
“When Republicans like Mitt Romney reject the science surrounding climate change, and block the solutions to this grave challenge, they become complicit in the acceleration and intensification of extreme weather events around the world and here in America.
 
“We must take action to reduce the carbon pollution that is warming our planet, melting our ice caps, and wreaking havoc with our weather. If we do not, we will go down as the most shortsighted generation in history.”
 
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