Change: Newt Yanks Climate Change Chapter From New Book

Is this the kind of change you can believe in? Gingrich is solid on many issues, but global warming isn't one of them.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Newt Gingrich says he has killed a chapter on climate change in a post-election book of essays about the environment. But the intended author of the chapter, who supports the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change, says that’s news to her.

Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech, confirmed in an e-mail interview that she had been asked to write a chapter on climate change for the former House speaker’s book. She said she was approached by former Palm Beach Zoo CEO Terry Maple, Gingrich’s coeditor, at an annual meeting of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Asked to confirm her chapter was dropped, she replied, “I had not heard that.”

The climate-change issue arose on Thursday night at a Gingrich campaign stop in Carroll, when a woman expressed concern about the chapter. She said she had heard about it on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. As she began to tell Gingrich who the author of the piece would be, Gingrich interrupted. “That’s not going to be in the book,” he told her. “We didn’t know that they were doing that, and we told them to kill it.”