Marco Rubio wants to be president of the United States this century. Much of coastal Florida probably won’t be underwater until next century. As with most political careers, timing is everything. 
 
 Rubio appeared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” and offered up this politico-pseudo-scientific analysis of global warming: 
 
 “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” 
 
 And just to show the Koch brothers that his heart belongs to those two Daddy Warbucks, he added: “I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy.” 
 
 Ostrich, meet Marco Rubio. 
 
 Such sentiments, of course, are designed to shore up Rubio’s support among the GOP crazies -- uh, sorry, tea party types -- who began to doubt his conservative cred after he pushed for immigration reform, as my colleague Brian Bennett reported. And also to keep the money spigot open from conservatives such as the Koches. 
 
 I recently wrote about an east Antarctic ice sheet that scientists fear will melt soon. Some readers made derisive remarks. But hey, they laughed at Noah too. 
 
 So, “mission accomplished”? 
 
 Um, maybe, maybe not. 
 
 You see, the news from scientists -- you know, the folks who actually study this stuff because they know something about it, and not politicians who use it to score cheap political points -- just keeps getting in the way. On Monday came headlines such as this: “Glacial Region’s Melt Past ‘Point of No Return,’ NASA Says.” And this: “West Antarctic Ice Sheet's Collapse Triggers Sea Level Warning.” 
 
 Yep, more ice melting. More water pouring into the world’s oceans. More water that will also pour into cities such as, ahem, Miami Beach -- which, as Rubio probably knows, is in Florida. 
 
 Now, I recently wrote about an east Antarctic ice sheet that scientists fear will also melt soon and start dumping even more water into the oceans. Some of you readers made unkind, derisive remarks. 
 
 But hey, they laughed at Noah too. 
 
 To be fair, Rubio didn’t go off the deep end. He didn’t deny that the climate is changing. He just said it’s not our fault, so why not adopt Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman approach: “What, me worry?” 
 
 Or, to put it in terms the Koch brothers would approve of: “Let’s make money while the sun is still shining.” Because, you know, there will be big bucks in building seawalls and dikes and the like as the water laps at our coastal cities in 100 years or so. 
 
 Still, it’s truly a mystery to me why so many Republicans cling to such a position. We all know the Republican Party says it is the “party of business.” But why must that mean it’s the “party of only the businesses we have now”? 
 
 Forget debating who or what is causing climate change. Accept that it is changing and that that is bad news for humankind. There’s plenty of money to be made in the businesses that will spring up from adopting sensible policies that address the problem. Sure, you may like oil, but isn’t solar and wind power a business too? Burning fossil fuels doesn’t just contribute to global warming; it’s polluting the air, which is bad for everyone. Isn’t there money to be made in figuring out cleaner alternatives? 
 
 Marco Rubio wants to be president. He wants to lead the country. Fine. But why can’t he and others of his ilk see that leadership means looking forward, not back? 
 
 The world is changing. The climate is changing. Rubio and his fellow Republicans made fun of President Obama and his “hope and change” agenda. 
 
 But they better realize that, at least when it comes to dealing with climate change, hope is not going to be enough. ||||| “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” said Sen. Marco Rubio. 
 
 Thus did the Florida Republican undermine his other assertion, to ABC’s Jonathan Karl: that he is prepared to be president. 
 
 Ruth Marcus is a columnist for The Post, specializing in American politics and domestic policy. View Archive 
 
 “Our climate is always changing,” Rubio further hole-dug. “And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that’s directly and almost solely attributable to man-made activity. I do not agree with that.” 
 
 Rubio certainly isn’t alone among Republicans in dissing the scientific consensus — “these scientists,” he said, flicking away reams of data as the fevered imaginings of climate true-­believers. 
 
 And his phrasing is cleverly careful, with caveats and straw men that allow him to stop short of outright denialism while comforting the party’s denialist base. 
 
 1 of 50 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Tom Toles goes green View Photos A collection of cartoons about the environment and global warming. Caption A collection of cartoons on the environment and climate change. Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Consider Rubio on CNN last week: “I understand that there’s a vast consensus of scientists that are saying that human activity is what’s contributing to changes in our climate.” 
 
 So far, so good, but does Rubio agree? He doesn’t say, but in an interview last year with BuzzFeed — an interview Rubio’s office flagged for me as emblematic of his views on climate change — Rubio suggested there was “reasonable debate” on the role of human activity. 
 
 With CNN, Rubio instead pivoted straight to the straw man: “I think it’s an enormous stretch to say that every weather incident that we now read about or the majority of them are attributable to human activity.” But of course, no reputable scientist is making that stretch. 
 
 Rubio has a more serious argument — that unilateral action will be unavailing, that the costs of responding to climate change exceed the benefits. But he undermines this point — and with it, his broader credibility — by refusing to acknowledge scientific reality. 
 
 Let’s look at the data — or, as Rubio would call it, “a handful of decades of research.” 
 
 The National Climate Assessment, 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 recounted on The Post’s Plum Line blog, 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,” 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. 
 
 Read more from Ruth Marcus’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook. ||||| Against the backdrop of the climate change summit in Denmark this week, U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio is hammering rival Charlie Crist's "cap-and-trade scheme" — though he voted for a bill backed by the governor requiring state officials to devise such a plan. 
 
 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. 
 
 Now he's questioning whether global warming is man-made. 
 
 "Rubio is a total flip-flopper," said Gerald Karnas, Florida director of the Environmental Defense Fund. "Under his leadership, progressive energy legislation passed the House." 
 
 Rubio said Thursday that his position on cap and trade — which allows companies that don't reach emission caps to trade pollution credits — hasn't changed. The Florida law's requirement that the plan return to the GOP-led Legislature for final approval appeased the business lobby and, Rubio said, was guaranteed to stop it in its tracks. 
 
 "It has worked out as it was designed to work out, which was to stop a cap-and-trade system in Florida," Rubio said Thursday. 
 
 "That's a bit disingenuous," said Jay Liles of the Florida Wildlife Federation, who lobbied for the bill along with Karnas and other environmental activists. "For Rubio to say that all along he knew it wouldn't really come to pass is illogical. He set the stage for (cap and trade) to happen." 
 
 The Crist campaign also called out Rubio on the bill this week, part of a growing counteroffensive against Rubio's bid for conservative voters who could swing the GOP primary for Florida's open Senate seat. The Club for Growth, which runs attack ads against moderate and liberal candidates nationwide, cited Crist's support for cap-and-trade legislation when it recently endorsed Rubio. 
 
 Rubio did raise concerns about the potential costs of cap-and-trade as soon as Crist made climate change a priority of his new administration in 2007. In a column in the Miami Herald that year, Rubio pointed to a think tank's estimate that emission caps would hike consumers' utility bills by an estimated 25 percent to 50 percent. He advocated tax incentives for energy-efficient companies and investments in ethanol and other biofuels instead. 
 
 By 2008, as Crist's poll ratings held strong, Rubio called a federal cap-and-trade system "inevitable" and said Florida should be at the forefront. He hired a leading climate change expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to advise lawmakers and appointed Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts Harvey Ruvin — who sounded the alarm on climate change years ago — to a statewide energy board. 
 
 "The legislation was passed to move forward on cap-and-trade policy, and certainly Marco Rubio didn't stand in the way of that legislation passing and my understanding was that he was supportive of the process," said John Reilly, the MIT expert. "He certainly seemed to accept the science of climate change." 
 
 That was before the economy crashed, global warming took a back seat, and critics said "cap-and-tax" would doom American businesses in a recession. Now, the former West Miami lawmaker is raising questions about whether climate change is man-made. 
 
 "I'm not a scientist. I'm not qualified to make that decision," Rubio said Thursday. 
 
 "There's a significant scientific dispute about that." 
 
 The recent disclosure of e-mails suggesting some scientists manipulated data to hype global warming has emboldened skeptics, though there is mounting evidence that man-made pollutants have contributed to rising temperatures. 
 
 Crist garnered national publicity for convening a climate change summit with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and issuing executive orders in 2007 that set targets for greenhouse gas emissions. 
 
 Rubio maintained Thursday that the legislation he supported had the effect of neutering Crist's executive orders. "We took the power out of his hands and put it into the hands of the Legislature," he said. "If we passed no legislation, his executive orders would have become law." 
 
 That's not true, said Mike Sole, Crist's appointed secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. "An executive order would not have been able to implement a cap-and-trade system on its own. We needed the legislative authority," Sole said. 
 
 The department could present a cap-and-trade plan as early as January, but Sole said it's not ready. Since Crist began campaigning for the U.S. Senate and weathering attacks from conservatives, he has backed off his cap-and-trade crusade. 
 
 "Cap and trade is complicated," Sole said. "We need to make sure it's a good fit for Florida and that we do it in a smart way."
– Just what does Marco Rubio think about climate change? It's tough to tell, given the array of stances he's taken over the years, writes Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post. On Sunday, he said he didn't "believe that human activity is causing ... dramatic changes" to our climate. Last week, he said there was a "vast consensus of scientists" who say we are causing climate change, though he didn't say he agreed. And last year, he referred to a "reasonable debate" over the matter. All this sounds different from the Rubio of 2008, who, the Miami Herald notes (via the Tampa Bay Times), oversaw a unanimous Florida House vote for rules on carbon emissions. Not to mention the Rubio of 2009, who said he backed a cap-and-trade mandate. Others agree with Marcus on Rubio's flip-flopping: Yesterday, he addressed his Sunday comments, and "it appeared he was trying to keep one foot in the climate change camp and the other in the deniers’ camp," writes Eleanor Clift at the Daily Beast, noting that it looked like an effort to position himself for both the 2016 primaries and the general election. Rubio's stance may not matter—at least in terms of his career, notes Paul Whitefield, who puts it in this way in the Los Angeles Times: "Marco Rubio wants to be president of the United States this century. Much of coastal Florida probably won’t be underwater until next century."