By Anita Kumar
Washington Post Blog

Yes. Well, sort of.

Republican Bob McDonnell said today that he believes the world has gotten warmer but declined to blame manmade carbon emissions.

“I think it’s a real concern, and we need to find ways to be able to reduce (carbon dioxide) emissions,” he told reporters after a rally with Sen. John McCain in Virginia Beach. “Well, there’s some debate that various scientists are going on. I think the temperature of the earth, from the science I’ve seen, has gone up and what we need to do is promote reductions” in cardion dioxide.

But does he believe manmade carbon emissions created the problem?

“Look, it’s not going to affect my policy decisions. What the policy decision needs to be is to find ways that are creative to be able to reduce” carbon dioxide, he said. “I am going to accept the science that’s out there, and the science is that we need to do everything that we can to reduce (carbon dioxide) emissions in the atmosphere.”

McDonnell said he also supports paying for alternative energy research through the proceeds the state receives from offshore drilling,

McCain said during last year’s presidential race that global warming needs to be taken seriously and today, while standing next to McDonnell, he said that reducing carbon emissions should be a goal no matter whether people accept or reject climate change as fact.

“I think it’s important we err on the side of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and taking measures that are necessry to do so,” he said.

Democrats including Creigh Deeds have accused McDonnell and the entire Republican ticket of failing to believe in the concept of global warming.

McDonnell sidestepped a question about climate change at this week’s debate but he did say the state needs to reduce carbon emissions as well increase energy sources, including coal, natural gas, nuclear and off-shore drilling.

“Prominent Republicans such as John Warner, Lindsay Graham and even John McCain have said that climate change is a scientific fact,” Deeds’s campaign manager Joe Abbey wrote in a press release this afternoon. “But when asked what he believed, Bob McDonnell couldn’t form a coherent answer. Either that’s because he knows that he and the rest of the Republican ticket are far outside the mainstream on this issue, or because Bob McDonnell’s real position is ‘say anything to get elected.’”

Earlier today, while campaigning with Deeds, Gov. Tim Kaine said that young voters are particularly energized by their desire to see politicians address climate change.

Deeds again criticized McDonnell for insisting that he supports the so-called cap and trade bill in Congress that caps greenhouse gas emissions, even though Deeds has said repeatedly that he does not.

“Bob has worked very hard to federalize this issue. He’s spent millions of dollars scaring people in Southwest Virignia, telling them I’m for cap and trade. I’m not for cap and trade,” Deeds said. “I understand the bill that passed in Congress and I’m not for that bill.”