California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock opened a congressional hearing by reading a Washington Post article detailing the “unheard of” impacts global warming had on the Arctic ecosystem.
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and some place the seals are finding the water too hot,” McClintock read in a Wednesday hearing, adding that reports “all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.”
McClintock went on, then asked President Barack Obama’s top climate adviser Christy Goldfuss if “this the crisis you’re referring to?” — referring to a new guidance her Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) staff issued on accounting for global warming impacts of federal agency actions.
“It is a crisis we’re trying to address,” Goldfuss said, totally unsuspecting of what was about to happen. “I’m not familiar with that specific report…” Goldfuss added.
“Perhaps the reason is because it was November 2, 1922, that The Washington Post carried this article,” McClintock said.
It turns out McClintock was reading a Washington Post article from November 1922, not November 2015 as many listening, including Goldfuss, likely assumed.
