Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn)

House energy committee Vice Chair Marsha Blackburn took global warming denial to the next level this week by suggesting that humans were not even causing carbon emissions.

The same week that Pope Francis was scheduled to speak in Washington on the need to address climate change, Blackburn spoke to the BBC as part of a Radio 4 documentary, “Climate Change – Are we Feeling Lucky?”

Blackburn declared to BBC Radio 4 that the “jury is still out saying man is the cause for global warming, after the earth started to cool 13 years ago.”

After an interviewer pointed out that scientific data showed a substantial rise in temperature on the surface of the Earth, Blackburn countered that “we’ve cooled almost 1 degree (F)” in the last 13 years.

Blackburn said that she based her arguments after speaking to “different researchers,” but she declined to name them.

“There are some that feel like human activity is the cause for carbon emissions and because of that we need to revert to where we […]