Climate-change report arouses skepticism

Dianne Nielson, the state's energy adviser, Wednesday briefed the Legislature's Public Utilities and Technology Interim Committee on the report of Governor's Blue-Ribbon Advisory Council on Climate Change.

The report provides options for decreasing greenhouse gases, which are blamed for contributing to global warming.

Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, said a recent NASA report indicates that 50 percent of global-warming data may be wrong.

But Jim Steenburgh, a member of the governor's council and the chairman of the University of Utah's Department of Meteorology, said there are always corrections to climate-change estimates, and so far, the corrections have been relatively small "compared to how big the change is" in the Earth's rising temperatures.

Jenkins asked Nielson if climate change is attributable to human activities. She said humans are contributing to global warming, and "we can turn this around" in terms of Utah's impacts.