There is a lot here for conservatives to dislike:

Some of the most compelling evidence of global warming comes to us from NASA. No longer do we need to rely on guesswork and computer modeling, because satellite images reveal a dramatic disappearance of glaciers, Antarctic ice shelves and polar ice sheets. And I’ve seen some of this evidence up close. A few years ago I traveled to the area of Svalbard, Norway, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. I was shown the southernmost point where a glacier had reached twenty years earlier. From there, we had to venture northward up the fjord to see where that same glacier ends today – because all the rest has melted. On a trip to Alaska, I heard about a national park visitor’s center that was built to offer a picture-perfect view of a large glacier. Problem is, the glacier is gone. A work of nature that took ages to form had melted away in a matter of decades.

To lead in this effort, however, our government must strike at the source of the problem – with reforms that only Congress can enact and the president can sign. We know that greenhouse gasses are heavily implicated as a cause of climate change. And we know that among all greenhouse gasses, the worst by far is the carbon-dioxide that results from fossil-fuel combustion. Yet for all the good work of entrepreneurs and inventors in finding cleaner and better technologies, the fundamental incentives of the market are still on the side of carbon-based energy. This has to change before we can make the decisive shift away from fossil fuels.

Actually, it’s worth noting that carbon-dioxide is not the worst greenhouse gas.  Methane emitted through livestock flatulence and defecation is actually 20 times worse than carbon dioxide.  But SUV’s are a more politically convenient target than cows, so I guess McCain will ignore that bit of inconvenient truth.

As for glaciers/ice caps melting, I don’t think anyone is trying to argue that the globe isn’t warming.  Global temperatures are, absolutely, getting higher.  What’s being disputed is mankind’s impact on that warming.  Are fossil fuels really to blame, or is the current warming trend just part of a global warming/cooling trend that has been taking place for millions of years before man even walked the earth?  How do we explain past rises and declines in global temperatures which took place at times prior to the advent of the automobile?

These questions, and literally hundreds of others, have not be answered in an decisive way by the global warming faithful and that’s what’s most troubling about McCain’s speech.  He wants to base broad, landmark public policy on science that is still very much up in the air.

McCain would saddle us with new taxes and regulations that would burden our lives with no guarantees that those taxes and regulations would succeed in their objectives.  Or any evidence which would suggest that those objectives need to be met in the first place.

McCain isn’t a stupid man.  He has to know about these questions, yet he’s pushing ahead anyway.  Which means that he’s just getting behind the issue as a way to get himself into office or he’s using it as an excuse for a government power grab.

Neither of those two options are attractive.