Rubio's Changing Climate

The National Climate Assessment, earlier this month: "Evidence from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans ... tells an unambiguous story: the planet is warming, and over the last half-century, this warming has been driven primarily by human activity -- predominantly the burning of fossil fuels."

Just this week, two groups of scientists offered disturbing assessments about what they deemed the unstoppable melting of Antarctic ice sheets, driven in part by human-caused global warming and threatening catastrophic rises in sea levels.

But if Rubio doesn't believe the scientists, perhaps he might believe ... himself. As the Miami Herald recounted, "As the leader of the Florida House in 2008, Rubio presided over a unanimous vote in favor of directing the state Department of Environmental Protection to develop ground rules for companies to limit their carbon emissions."

The following year, Rubio described a cap-and-trade system as "inevitable" and pronounced himself "in favor of giving the Department of Environmental Protection a mandate that they go out and design a cap-and-trade or a carbon tax program."

According to the Herald, Rubio "hired a leading climate change expert" -- eek, a scientist! -- "from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to advise lawmakers."

Rubio claimed the following year that he was actually engineering a plan to stop cap-and-trade, but that was hardly a credible explanation for a convenient flip-flop as he ran in the Republican primary against then-Gov. Charlie Crist, a cap-and-trade advocate.

Since then, Rubio has moved from disclaiming scientific expertise to deriding it.

"I'm not a scientist. I'm not qualified to make that decision," Rubio told the Herald in December 2009 when asked whether climate change was the result of human activity. Climate change, by the way, isn't the only issue on which Rubio punted to scientists: When GQ asked in 2012 how old the Earth is, Rubio demurred, "I'm not a scientist, man."

Which is it, senator? You don't know as much as these scientists or you don't believe them?

Rubio's shift sadly mirrors his party's. As Paul Waldman recounts on washingtonpost.com, in 2012, the leading Republican presidential candidates had "embarrassing flirtations with climate realism."

The 2016 crowd, by contrast, ranges from skepticism to blanket denial. "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming,"Â asserted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. "The Earth's 4.5 billion years old, and you're going to say that we had four hurricanes and so that proves a theory?" offered Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

"Climate is always evolving," Rubio told ABC. Sadly, it's not the only thing.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.