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In January, Tyla Matteson, Sierra Club's Political and Legislative Chair, distributed a short survey on climate change to all 140 state legislators. She received responses from 21 Delegates and 7 Senators, and as she stated to the legislators, we posted their names and responses here.
With a 20% return, we now have a sampling of elected officials across the board, from various localities in Virginia, rural and urban, to include criteria of gender, race, and age. We will be happy to accept legislator's surveys past the deadline.
You can also read Tyla's remarks on the survey here, which includes this interesting occurrence:
Our survey spurred an interesting response from a group called the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, who apparently sent letters to the legislators, disparaging our survey. The letter said greenhouse gases contribute to global warming as much as do variations in solar radiation, and temperatures will not likely rise in the next five years. Therefore we should wait five years and see what kind of cycle the sun is going through. One answer this group proposes to solve the problem is with geo-engineering, to replicate a volcanic eruption, shooting reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce temperatures.
In response to this far-fetched idea, Ross Gelbspan wrote that other researchers predict seeding the atmosphere would trigger a global drought, after studying the effects of the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991. Ross Gelbspan is the author of well-known books on climate change, The Heat is On, Boiling Point, and maintains the website, www.heatisonline.org.
User comments or postings reflect the opinions of the responsible contributor only, and do not reflect the viewpoint of the Sierra Club and/or the League of Conservation Voters. The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any posting. The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters accepts no obligation to review every posting, but reserves the right (but not the obligation) to delete postings that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate.
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