With the start of international climate negotiations just days away, and with global allies and public interest organizations pressing the United States and China for emissions reductions, the White House and Beijing have spent the last two days in an apparently coordinated program of announcing critical steps to help push the world as close to a binding agreement on climate change as possible.

Today, China announced it would set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 relative to economic development. China said it would limit what it calls "carbon intensity" by 40 to 45 percent compared to 2005 levels, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The New York Times reported that the targeted emissions reduction was a "voluntary action" and taken by the Chinese government “based on our own national conditions,” the State Council, China’s cabinet, said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday the White House made public three important steps. First, President Obama will attend the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. His appearance on December 9 comes a day before he receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. President Obama will be among the more than 60 heads of state scheduled to participate in the Copenhagen negotiations, which occur from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18 and include delegates from 192 nations.

Second, the Obama administration said it is prepared to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 “in the range” of 17 percent below 2005 levels, and that the overall goal of the U.S. is to reduce emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels in 2025, 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

“For the first time, an American administration has proposed an emissions reduction target. When President Obama lands in Copenhagen, it will emphasize that the United States is in it to win it,” said Senator John Kerry, a Democrat of Massachusetts and one of the leading advocates of climate action on Capitol Hill. “This announcement matches words with action."

And third, the administration is establishing a U.S. Center in Copenhagen and sending its natural resources, environment, climate, and energy A-team to aid negotiators, hold news conferences, and present formal talks. The high-ranking delegation is meant to underscore what the White House said is “the historic progress the Obama administration has made to address climate change and create a new energy future.” Among the president’s senior aides scheduled to be in Copenhagen are Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, along with Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate, and Nancy Sutley, the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality.

India Yesterday, China Friday
Both announcements come after President Obama and India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, signed a series of cooperation agreements on Tuesday to launch a U.S.-India “Green Partnership” on energy security, climate change and food security. The three features of the U.S.-India announcements that are compelling are 1) a commitment to a strong outcome in Copenhagen, 2) collaboration on clean energy research and deployment, and 3) capacity building in India for climate adaptation and environmental governance.

The efforts by the Obama administration to collaborate with China and India appear clearly intended to establish President Obama's global leadership on climate action, a path he staked out for himself and the United States since the 2008 presidential election. Moreover, for weeks the Obama administration has plainly signaled its resolve to make the Copenhagen negotiations, if not the final step in writing a new climate treaty, a substantive conference with historic influence in securing the environment and advancing a global clean energy economy. Earlier this month, during the U.S. – China summit in Beijing, President Obama declared his intention to draw as close as possible to a climate agreement that has tangible results. “Our aim is not a partial accord or a political declaration,” the president said, “but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations, and one that has immediate operational effect. This kind of comprehensive agreement would be an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution to our climate challenge.”

Consistent with Domestic Legislation
The emissions targets made public this week by the White House are consistent with the proposed schedule of greenhouse gas emissions reductions contained in climate and clean energy bills that passed the House in June, and passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this month.

The White House, however, did not announce targets for financial commitments to help developing nations adapt to climate change and the low-carbon economy. That number has been anxiously awaited by the European Union, and many of the world’s developing nations. Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, took note today of the urgency of making those commitments as well. "The US commitment to specific, mid-term emission cut targets and China's commitment to specific action on energy efficiency can unlock two of the
last doors to a comprehensive agreement," De Boer said in a statement today. "Let there be no doubt that we need continued strong ambition and leadership. In particular, we still await clarity from industrialized nations on the provision of large-scale finance to developing countries for immediate and long-term climate action."

In responding to the White House announcement, American environmental and climate action groups generally expressed satisfaction in the president’s decision to attend Copenhagen. But almost all noted that the president needed to follow his administration’s strong presence in Copenhagen with a full-court press in Congress to pass domestic climate and clean energy legislation. Doing so, they said, will advance the work of clearing the skies of climate changing pollution and accelerating the clean energy economy in the United States. And a domestic law would help reach a legally binding and final global climate agreement next year.

“It's great that he's going to Copenhagen,” said Angela Anderson, the program director of the US Climate Action Network, a coalition of nearly 90 organizations based in Washington, D.C. “And he needs to keep Air Force One warm so that he can return to seal the deal.”

Get It Done in Washington
“It’s essential that President Obama communicates his personal commitment to ensuring Congress passes climate and energy legislation in early 2010,” added Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The world needs to hear that this will be a top priority for him and the Senate once Congress completes its work on domestic health care reform.”

The president’s Copenhagen travel plans also prompted criticism from opponents to climate action and clean energy, among them Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who considers climate change a scientific “hoax.” “It's clear that China, India, and the developing world, which will soon be responsible for the vast bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, will not accept mandatory cuts in emissions-despite entreaties from President Obama,” said Senator Inhofe in a statement today. “The U.S. Senate has made clear on numerous occasions that unilateral action by the United States is unacceptable, because it will harm our economy and have virtually no effect on climate change."

But Senator Kerry told a reporter for E&E News this week that the White House emissions target “lays the groundwork for a broad political consensus at Copenhagen that will strip climate obstructionists here at home of their most persistent charge, that the United States shouldn't act if other countries won't join with us. It is an enormous shot in the arm for those of us working overtime to get a comprehensive bill passed in the Senate. And the fact that the president will attend the Copenhagen talks underscores that the administration is putting its money where its mouth is, putting the president's prestige on the line."

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I had previously blogged on the anti-mature (ante-mature?) antics of the Senator from Oklahoma (see Sen. Inhofe explains he’s going to Copenhagen so that when Sen. Kerry says “Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill” then “I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won!’ ”).  Now this video has been posted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c93Fp_kmrz4&feature=player_embedded

Seemed like a fitting tribute to Friday’s big story, from the man who, just coincidentally, said on Wednesday in a lengthy speech on the Senate Floor, “I proudly declare 2009 as the ‘Year of the Skeptic,’ the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.”

While I hardly ever agree with Inhofe, there’s no denying that many scientists who question the consensus are finally being heard … thank goodness!

You can find some of those scientists in my category “Uncharacteristically Blunt Scientists.”  See also my 2008 post, “Disputing the ‘consensus’ on global warming.”  Certainly the majority of the scientific observations and studies since the 2007 IPCC report — which is typically labeled the “consensus” since every single member government must approve the summaries word for word, a process that inevitably waters down the language — makes clear global warming is coming faster and harder than the consensus had suggested.  You can find a variety of those studies here and below.

And, for clarity’s sake, yes, I draw a distinction between what I’d call the “basic scientific consensus” that the climate is changing and humans are the main cause and so on  — which is acknowledged by every major scientific body (click here for links) — and the “future impacts consensus” on what the world faces if we stay on our current emissions path, which recent analysis suggests has been underestimated and underanalyzed by the IPCC.   See, for instance, the presentations delivered at the recent “Four degrees and beyond” conference, one of which I blogged on here — UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

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Thousands and thousands of climate science advocates — including me — will be in Copenhagen next month trying to advance an international deal that gives the world a chance to avoid catastrophic global warming.

And then there will be the man even the Washington Post calls “the last flat-earther,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL).  Why is he going?  The Ada Evening News reported Monday:

Inhofe said he still intends to attend the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference.

“I’m always the spoiler at this thing. Last night I was on the Larry Kudlow show. He said, ‘Inhofe is the one-man truth squad going to Copenhagen.’ So when Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and all the left get up there and say, ‘Yes. We’re going to pass a global warming bill,’ I will be able to stand up and say, ‘No, it’s over. Get a life. You lost. I won,’ ” Inhofe said.

Sadly, the U.S. Constitution restriction — “No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years” — applies only to physical age.  The senior junior-high-school Senator from Oklahoma is proof of that.  What’s next for Inhofe?  Perhaps during the Senate floor debate he plans to say “La, la, la, la, I can’t hear you”?

Inhofe makes other equally revealing nonsense statements in the interview:

“The far left is trying so hard to get a cap-and-trade now,” Inhofe said

Yes, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are the “far left” — see Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman “will be working closely with the White House” to develop separate tripartisan climate bill to get 60 votes; Graham rebukes fellow Republicans saying, “The green economy is coming!”

That statement just shows you how far, far, far right Inhofe is.

Inhofe said the Committee on Environment and Public Works passed the John Kerry—Barbara Boxer global warming bill without any Republican votes.

“We set up the rules of the Environment and Public Works Committee way back in 1970—a long time ago. The rules say that you can’t report a bill out of the committee to go to the floor of the Senate unless there are two members of the minority there,” Inhofe said. “What we did was I told all of the Republicans not to go so they couldn’t have an official mark-up.”

It’s good that he finally admitted the truth that the GOP claim this was all about waiting for more EPA analysis was as bogus as everyone thought.  He just wanted to kill the bill.  But since that bill isn’t going to the floor, his whole effort was wasted.

The entire article makes clear that Inhofe channels Groucho “Whatever it is, I’m against it” Marx.  It opens:

Although the healthcare bill made it through the House of Representatives on Saturday, United States Senator Jim Inhofe said it would face a harder road in the Senate.

“We will kill it in the Senate,” Inhofe said. “I think the main thing I want to get across is it doesn’t really matter because it (the healthcare bill) is not going anywhere.”

That’s The Audacity of Nope.

Ironically — or is that “tragically”? — if we don’t have a climate bill, future generations are going to need a lot better health care:

The article ends with even more irony:

Inhofe said he has secured many funds for Ada, including $440,000 for a water tower for the city, $500,000 for the Ada Public Works Authority to treat Ada’s wastewater/sewer system, $250,000 for the Wintersmith Dam along with other funds for the city.

Imagine that — Inhofe has brought in more than $1 million for water-related projects for the city.

Well, Ada is going to need those projects even more if the nation and the world actually listens to Inhofe and fails to take serious action on climate and clean energy, since on our current emissions path most of Oklahoma is projected to turn into a permanent dust bowl in the second half of this century.

Two years ago, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” on our current emissions path — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas and Oklahoma to California.  The Bush Administration itself reaffirmed this conclusion in December (see US Geological Survey stunner: SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050.)

But hey, the newspaper’s website notes it has been “Serving Ada, Oklahoma since 1904.”  So it’ll be able to rerun those old Dust Bowl stories — for a long, long time (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).

h/t Media Matters.

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Is that the sun we see?The mood was markedly improved on the final day of the Barcelona climate talks, as delegates, observers, and non-governmental organizations all brushed off the pessimism that dominated much of this week and announced that there is still hope for a global deal at the Copenhagen COP15 summit.

News that the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had advanced the Kerry-Boxer climate bill forward -- coupled with revelations that some progress was made in Spain on several key issues during the closed-door meetings between nations -- offered a ray of hope for a binding agreement to emerge in December.

Representatives from the United Nations, European Union, G-77, and even the laggard United States all confirmed that a fair, ambitious, and legally binding global agreement is still absolutely possible to achieve next month.

However, all agreed that the United States must come to Copenhagen with specific answers about how it will join the global fight against climate change. The major obstacle remains America’s unwillingness to put specific numbers on the table on an emissions reduction target and a dollar figure for its contribution to global financing to help poor nations adapt to climate-change impacts and build low-carbon economies.

U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer confirmed Friday that he believes “the United States can commit” to a specific emissions reduction target in Copenhagen.

“There was a number in President Obama’s election pledge, there is a number in the legislation that passed through the House of Representatives, there is a number in the draft legislation that the U.S. Senate will be considering early next year,” de Boer said.

Even without a finalized bill from Congress, Obama could deliver “a number which would not be alien” to what the Senate and House have in mind, de Boer noted.  That would pave the way for all parties to put numbers on the table and potentially reach a global deal in Copenhagen.

However, Alf Wills, lead negotiator for South Africa and spokesman for the G-77 group of developing nations, warned Friday that major industrialized countries must not greenwash such a deal if negotiators fail to produce a strong, binding agreement based on the science.

“We look forward to Copenhagen with optimism, but we will not accept a weak, greenwash deal,” Wills said.

“Without sound and deep emissions reductions, it doesn’t matter how much money is made available. Our lives, our economies, our lands and forests will be devastated," said Sudanese negotiator Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, who heads the G-77-plus-China group.

“It would be a failure unforgivable and unforgettable,” he said.

Speaking of failures, at the U.S. delegation press conference this afternoon, I asked U.S. deputy climate change envoy Jonathan Pershing what effect, if any, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Denial) might have on the process in Copenhagen, and whether GOP intransigence is hurting Obama’s ability to come up with a firm number on U.S. emissions reductions.

Pershing responded that the U.S. delegation traveling to Denmark will include “a wide variety of members of Congress as well as their staff,” from both parties, as is the tradition in international negotiations.  

“They are engaged with us in discussions about what they think will be effective, but U.S. policymaking on the international arena and negotiations is in the purview of the executive branch, and will remain that way,” Pershing told me.

It is promising to hear Pershing confirm that the Obama administration isn’t going to let GOP shenanigans control the U.S. position on international climate policy. But there is no doubt in the minds of the delegates wrapping up the Barcelona talks today that the continued momentum of the Kerry-Boxer Senate bill over the coming weeks could mean the difference between failure and success in Copenhagen. 

While finding agreement between 192 countries is admittedly not an easy task, there is no more important issue for world leaders to address this century. Climate change does not recognize national borders, and will threaten the national security and economies of all nations if left unchecked.

President Obama and other world leaders must now use every remaining minute this month to work toward a successful outcome in Copenhagen. Adios, Barcelona, thanks for the hospitality.

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WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats on Thursday pushed through a sweeping climate change bill, maneuvering an end-run around opposition Republicans who continued their boycott of deliberations.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the Kerry-Boxer bill by a vote of 11 to 1, with the seven Republicans on the committee absent from the discussion and vote.

The panel is among five other Senate committees which also will weigh in with their draft bills on slowing the pace of climate change before a bill receives a vote in the full chamber, possibly next year.

"We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott we have been able to move this bill forward," said committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) after the vote.

Republicans, who boycotted the deliberations for three consecutive days, said they would oppose the bill until they had a "comprehensive analysis" of the economic impact of the legislation from the Environmental Protection Agency.

But Boxer said further analysis by the agency was not necessary, and maintained that the EPA's environmental impact assessment of a similar bill approved in June by the House of Representatives was sufficient. "We found that, after questioning the EPA extensively, that the Republicans' demand for another EPA analysis now would be duplicative and a waste of taxpayer dollars," she said.

Committee rules require the presence of at least two members of the minority party, but Boxer sidestepped the boycott using parliamentary procedures that allowed her to pass the bill by a simple majority of members present, a tactic Republicans decried as a "nuclear option."

At a press conference earlier this week, she signaled the tactical maneuver ahead.

"What they're doing is highly unusual. And what we're doing in response is highly unusual," she said, adding that her actions were completely "by the Senate rules."

Meanwhile, the lone Republican at Thursday's vote, ranking committee member James Inhofe (Okla.), in a two-minute declaration said his party's position had not changed.  "We still are asking for the same thing," he said.

Republicans also criticized the Democrats' bill as doing too little to promote nuclear energy and said it's likely to lead to a spike in energy prices.

One Democrat, centrist senator Max Baucus (Mont.), who serves as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, broke with his party as the lone Democrat to vote against the bill, saying that its goals for reducing greenhouse emission levels were too ambitious.

The Senate legislation faces a long and contentious process ahead, and must be reconciled with a House bill that calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 83 percent by 2050.  The Senate's bill calls for a 20 percent cut by 2020.

Both bills would create a cap-and-trade regime, aimed at setting the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocating quotas to companies.  Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.

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There've been some weird goings-on in Congress around the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill over the past few days. So let's take a step back and try to get a handle on how the story is unfolding.

In the House, the development of the Waxman-Markey bill was a relatively orderly process. Waxman took control of the Energy committee early in the session and selected Markey, who'd been fleshing out a progressive bill in his special committee, as his wingman. Together they introduced a bill and then worked it past the committee members, making concessions when necessary, mostly behinds closed doors, always tightly in control of the process. The idea was to do the bulk of the negotiating in-committee so that the resulting bill could pass on the floor without undue fuss. In the end that's just what happened.

Boxer desperately wanted to play the same role in the Senate. It didn't work out in early 2008 with the Lieberman-Warner bill, but she's been working overtime to make it work this go-round. One recurring theme of last week's three-day hearing marathon was Boxer's refrain that she's going to work with other senators, that the bill will change, that she's open to feedback. She practically hung out an "Open for Business" sign. She clearly wants to run this bill and emulate Waxman's success.

Just as badly, lots of other people don't want her to. Baucus made it clear early on that his committee would mark up a bill too, and then other committees jumped in. Inside EPW, James Inhofe desperately wants to give Boxer a black eye. That's why he and the rest of the committee Republicans boycotted the markup of the bill on Tuesday and Wednesday and show every sign of carrying on with that boycott. It now looks like EPW is going to pass a bill out of committee without a Republican ever having touched or debated it and without substantial markup of any kind. [UPDATE: Yep, the bill passed out of committee on Thursday morning without any GOP involvement.]

That bill will be a dead letter. Already there's an undercurrent of anxiety in Washington that a bill can never pass as long as it's associated with an unpopular lady senator who runs one of the body's most liberal committees. The Senate isn't like the House. There is no party discipline among Democrats; in fact, Democratic senators are fond of explicitly disclaiming party discipline. It's a chamber full of large, jostling egos and not a little old-boy sexism. They're not about to let a combative liberal woman run the show.

So a bill that's Pure Boxer won't fly. That's why you saw, on Wednesday, the Senate's perceived centrists -- Kerry, Graham, and their new buddy Joe Lieberman -- swoop in and and open a "dual track" of negotiations, in consultation with the White House. (Lieberman lives to do this kind of thing.) Graham seemed to rebuke his colleagues on the EPW Committee: "If you can't participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?" he asked. But at the same time he, along with fellow moderates Gregg, Snowe, and Collins, signed a letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson reiterating the Republicans' essentially preposterous demand for another five weeks of study of the bill.

An EPA official testified to EPW on Tuesday that such a study would be expensive, time-consuming, and utterly unnecessary. There's no substantive rationale whatsoever for demanding it. Remember, though, this isn't about substance -- it's the Senate. It's about perception. And what moderate Republicans are signaling here is: "Whoa, slow down the crazy liberal lady!"

Similarly, by stepping in, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are letting the political establishment know that the Very Serious grown-ups are back in charge. (It's pretty telling that Kerry feels the need to craft another bill alongside the one with his name on it.) They will go to the White House, close the door, and hash out what kind of bill can really pass.

In short, it seems that Boxer's high-water mark of influence on the bill has passed, and with a fizzle rather than a bang.

-----

Addendum: I should emphasize: this is all perception. Is Boxer really a crazy liberal? No. Was she jamming a liberal bill through her committee too quickly? No, the bill was relatively modest, similarly to the intensely analyzed House bill, and she was being almost absurdly solicitous of the feedback of the committee's Republicans. Is Boxer too abrasive to do the delicate work of shepherding a bill through the Senate? Well, there may be something to that. In Congress it's all about staff, and D.C. rumor has it that Boxer's staff director, Bettina Poirier, is a controlling and alienating presence. EPW has been hemorrhaging key staff for a while now, and more than one Senate staffer has a tale of being misled or bypassed entirely by Boxer's staff during negotiations over the bill. All those stories feed the general sentiment that Boxer just shouldn't be the one running this. Fair or not, that's the perception, and perception is reality in the Senate.

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Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

On Tuesday, the U.S. Chamber sent a letter to Sens. Boxer (D-Calif.) and Inhofe (R-Okla.) about the climate bill. It seemed to be singing a new tune on climate policy, leading Sen. Kerry to wonder whether the letter reflects a real change in the Chamber's position. 

While we welcome the U.S. Chamber's desire to sound more constructive, reading in between the lines -- and reading the lines themselves -- raises big questions about how much the Chamber's objectives have really changed -- setting aside their obvious need to strike a more conciliatory tone. Which prompts us to contemplate how we'll know when the Chamber does decides to engage the climate debate constructively.

The letter starts off with a more positive tone than many are used to the Chamber taking:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes climate change is an important issue for this Congress to address. The Chamber stands ready to work with Congress to resolve this issue in a bipartisan manner that recognizes regional differences, the state of the technology, and the compelling need for a solution that minimizes overall economic impact.

Hey, sounds good so far. Then the Chamber references the recent oped by Sens. Kerry and Graham, saying:

There are many good ideas out there that can serve as a solid, workable, commonsense, and realistic foundation on which to craft a bill. The Chamber commends Sens. Kerry and Graham for their recent New York Times editorial on the need for comprehensive climate legislation. The Chamber welcomes the call for a new conversation on how to address the issue, and believes their editorial can serve as a solid, workable, commonsense foundation on which to craft a bill. Many other important details are needed, but the Chamber agrees that the objectives outlined in that editorial, coupled with their clear recognition that "this process requires honest give-and-take and genuine bipartisanship," can move this important policy objective forward in a bipartisan manner that garners strong business community support.

Overall, the letter does a fine job of suggesting that the U.S. Chamber is prepared to take on a more constructive approach. But, here's where you have to read between the lines. The Chamber embraces several of the principles listed by Sens. Kerry and Graham, except for the one calling for "aggressive reductions in our emissions of the carbon gases that cause climate change."

So here's something that isn't new. The U.S. Chamber's criteria for climate policy traditionally exclude the main point of having one: reducing global warming pollution. The press release the Chamber issued about the letter really emphasizes the point, as Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber's executive vice president for government affairs, says:

The Chamber believes the Senate has an opportunity to promote a workable bottom-up plan that starts by addressing the fundamental building blocks-rather than the top-down approach of targets and timetables it has taken thus far.

And the Chamber tweeted this as well -- sending out this short message last night:

Josten on climate legislation -- need a workable bottom-up plan not top-down approach of targets and timetables.

Tweets are a good way to get a sense of what the messenger thinks is really important, since there's no room for beating around the bush. Which raises the question why, if the Chamber's main point is that it doesn't want top-down "targets and timetables," why did they exclude mention of that from their letter to the Senators?  

Digging in here, the Chamber's press release and tweet talk seem to be implying that we won't have the technologies we need to cut carbon emissions.  This is what's meant by their language on "state of the technology" and their call for a "bottom-up" and "building blocks" approach.  But analysts have repeatedly found that the goals in legislation are achievable with clean energy solutions, which is why EIA and EPA have documented that the costs are negligible because the building blocks exist today and the bill includes provisions to ramp up the use of low-carbon blocks (efficiency, renewables, ccs, even nukes are given a path). 

Is the chamber trying to draw up a seat at the table just so it can press a reset button by making phony claims about how the bills are actually designed? If the chamber wants to be taken seriously, it needs to start by being honest about what the bills actually do.

The letter also includes the Chamber's usual litany of reasons it will reject a climate bill, reasons which can be so broadly interpreted that they can be used to reject anything the Chamber staff decides it doesn't like.

Disappointingly then, the new letter raises as many questions as it answers. We can't answer those questions -- only the Chamber can, by its actions in the weeks ahead.

Now we do take heart that at least the Chamber recognizes the need to appear be constructive on this issue. But we're all ready to fast-forward and get to the point where the Chamber actually does engage in a constructive manner. But how will we know if we're getting there? If the Chamber starts addressing some of the following questions, it'll help us sort out the reality from the illusion:

Does the U.S. Chamber consider emission reduction targets and timetables to be essential to include or exclude from a climate bill?

If the U.S. Chamber thinks targets and timetables should be included, what does it believe should be the basis for setting emission reduction targets and timetables?

What emission reduction targets is the Chamber prepared to support and on what timetable?

When will the U.S. Chamber lay out an actual proposal for climate legislation?

We'll let you know what we hear.

This post originally appeared on Switchboard.

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Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

The GOP's approach to climate and clean energy policy has remained the same for decades - obstruction and obfuscation (see "Senate GOP propose 25% ‘Do-Nothing' energy tax on Americans").  Now, led by James "the last flat-earther" Inhofe, they are trying to stall climate legislation as long as possible, on the flimsiest of excuses, presumably because they want to make sure that there is no Senate vote on the bill before Copenhagen.

The excuse this time is that EPA supposedly hasn't issued a full analysis of the bill - even though EPA has issued an analysis of the bill (see "EPA releases economic analysis finding cost to U.S. households of under $10 a month, bill consistent with global effort to stabilize at 2°C warming") pointing out that it has only moderate differences from the heavily-analyzed House bill (Waxman-Markey), none of which would significantly affect the economic conclusions.

The best evidence this excuse is just a pretense is that the GOP never accepted the conclusions of the EPA's detailed analysis of the House bill (see "New EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey: Consumer electric bills 7% lower in 2020 thanks to efficiency").

TP reports on the GOP delaying tactics:

Senate Republicans have endorsed Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) plan to boycott the legislative markup of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), scheduled to begin tomorrow. Inhofe's GOP compatriots on the environment committee hope to block action by refusing to participate in the markup on the pretext that the Enviromental Protection Agency's economic analysis of the bill is not "complete." In a letter sent to committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ranking member Inhofe and his counterparts on five other committees said any attempt to begin the markup before acceding to his demands "would severely damage" its chances for passage:

"We understand that there may be an attempt to report S. 1733 from the Committee not only without a satisfactory analysis, but also without sufficient opportunity to address the bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on the measure. As we are sure you will understand, from our viewpoint, such an approach would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation's climate and energy policies

The signatories are the top Republicans on the six Senate committees that will consider this legislation - environment, energy, agriculture, commerce, foreign relations, and finance. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX, ), like Inhofe, flatly deny the reality of climate change. However, several of the signatories have claimed concern about the threat of global warming - Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Dick Lugar (R-IN), who in 2006 warned of the "significant long-term risks to the economy and the environment of the United States from the temperature increases and climatic disruptions that are projected to result from increased greenhouse gas concentrations." Evidently their commitment to partisan obstruction is greater than their concern for the future of the nation.

Download the letter here.

The Sierra Club has posted the "Top Ten Excuses for not showing up for work on the Clean Energy Jobs bill." Boxer has extended the amendment deadline to Tuesday night, according to a Washington Times newsletter, and will hold off on the markup of the legislation, saying:

We're going to be very patient. We're going to wait for them to come. We're going to sit there every day and ask them to please come back to the table. We're not going to rush this through because we don't think that would be the right thing to do.

E&E News (subs. req'd) reports this morning that Boxer is going the extra mile to accommodate the GOP obstructionist delayers:

Hoping to avert a partisan meltdown, Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) yesterday offered an olive branch to Republicans who are planning to boycott today's markup of a sweeping global warming bill.

Boxer still plans to begin the markup at 9 a.m. with opening statements. But she agreed to suspend the markup at 2 p.m. for an open-door meeting with U.S. EPA officials to answer committee members' questions about the economic modeling of the legislation, she noted in a letter late yesterday.

EPW Republicans, who ignored yesterday deadline for filing amendments, also now have until 5 p.m. today to submit any suggested changes to the bill.

"We think this is going the extra mile for our friends on the other side, and we really hope they'll return to the table," Boxer told reporters. "They have every reason to do that."

Boxer added that she still retained the right to advance the 959-page bill without Republicans, though she would not say how long she would wait before ending the markup. "I never put a finishing date on any markup," Boxer said. "I never have."

She added, "I will tell you this, we're going to be very, very patient."

But the GOP delayers don't want answers to questions - they want delay:

Committee Republicans huddled last night to discuss Boxer's offer on the question-and-answer session with EPA. Matthew Dempsey, the panel's GOP spokesman, said he expected Republicans to respond shortly before the start of today's markup.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) first made the information request to EPA in July on the economic implications on the climate bill, placing a "hold" on Robert Perciasepe's confirmation to be EPA deputy administrator until he got answers. Voinovich declined to say whether he would attend the question-and-answer session, which he had heard about only moments earlier when Boxer approached him on the Senate floor.

But Voinovich did say he had no plans to back down on the boycott until he gets a more complete assessment of the climate bill from EPA.

"I think we've made it pretty clear that we want a complete analysis of the bill," he said. "It's been made clear to her that's what we want. I think it's a sensible approach because of the fact this is probably the most important piece of legislation this committee has undertaken since the Clean Air Act itself, maybe even more important."

Again, from an economic perspective, the bill isn't much different from the House bill, which has been analyzed to death, not just by EPA, but CBO and EIA:

And as Boxer herself wrote yesterday:

I want to make sure you are aware that EPA has confirmed that the extensive analysis and supporting materials provided to the Committee are totally sufficient and appropriate for our legislative process. In fact, EPA reports that the analysis provided on the Kerry-Boxer bill and Chairman's Mark exceeds the analysis typically conducted prior to a markup. EPA has also indicated that this economic analysis reflects hundreds of thousands of pages of backup documentation. It is far more analysis than the 10,000 pages of documentation on the Clear Skies bill that this Committee received in a prior Congress before markup of that legislation.

Even so, one key swing GOP Senator is siding with this delay:

Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) later said that his signature should be seen as a warning signal to Democrats should they expect to get his help in winning over other GOP moderates.

"It would not be constructive as far as progress on the bill is concerned," Lugar said. "I suspect that there'd be no particular reason for many members to support it."

My recommendation is to give in to GOP delaying tactics, while continuing to point out how absurd they are.

I see no upside in offending Senate moderates, since this bill will have to be bipartisan to succeed, and we need time over the next couple of weeks for Graham and Kerry and the White House "to discuss a possible compromise."

Boxer should have the EPA do a "complete analysis" before the mark up - and then watch as the GOP hypocritically denounce the conclusions of it anyway.

Related Links:

China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

Darren covered this over at ClimateWire, but I'm not sure a straight news story can really capture the toxicity and absurdity of what the Inhofe is planning to do on the climate bill next week.

Some background: when the Waxman-Markey chairman's mark was released, the EPA undertook an exhaustive five-week analysis of its economic impacts. (It found that the costs to household would be modest and the bill would actually lower electricity bills.) When the action moved over to the Senate and the Kerry-Boxer chairman's mark was released, the EPA determined that the bill was 90 percent identical to the Waxman-Markey bill, and thus that another full, five-week modeling run was unnecessarily duplicative. Instead, it took two weeks to analyze the differences between the bills and whether they would substantially affect the economic impacts. (They wouldn't.)

That's seven weeks of analysis total. But not enough for Inhofe (who will, of course, vote against any bill regardless). He's demanding that the EPA do another full, five-week modeling run, and unless he gets what he wants, he's threatening to lead Republicans in a boycott of the markup next week.

Now, remember: the bills are 90 percent identical, and the 10 percent differences don't alter the overall costs. So we already know exactly what a modeling run would show. We know! Everyone knows! Inhofe knows. It's a pure, unadulterated waste of time and government resources.

Here's Boxer's response, from E&E:

EPW Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is expected to notice the Tuesday markup later today despite the boycott threat. Boxer yesterday told reporters she is "going to use every tool at our disposal to get this done."

She added, "My chief of staff and chief counsel tell me that we can go next week, according to the rules, according to what we've got available. And that's our intention. That's our plan. And that's our hope."

Boxer did not go into specifics on how she would move the bill, but there appear to be several options. For starters, Boxer and Senate Democratic leaders could use Senate Rule 14, which allows the majority to discharge legislation out of a committee and bring it directly to the floor.

Democrats could also break with a long-standing EPW Committee precedent that requires two minority members to be in attendance for a markup to even begin. According to the committee rules, Boxer appears to have an exception available that would pave the way for votes on both amendments and the overall bill so long as a majority of the committee's members are present.

Going this route, according to one former Senate Democratic aide, could spell trouble for the overall legislation as Boxer and her allies continue their search for 60 votes among moderate Democrats and Republicans. "That product is totally toxic," the former staffer warned. "It's basically worthless."

This last 'graph is key: the danger here is not so much that Inhofe can block markup, but he can make the entire process so toxic that any hope of Republican support is lost -- and the bill won't pass without some Republican support.

So it's classic Inhofe: a petty procedural ratf*ck designed to poison the waters and prevent and reasonable engagement with the issues at hand.

Oh, and don't be misled -- like Politico was -- by efforts to make more moderate Rs like Voinovich and Alexander the public face of this effort. Voinovich submitted the request to the EPA weeks ago, but this has all the marks of Inhofe, the Wormtongue who whispers poison into his colleagues' ears.

See also Steve Benen, Enviroknow, Kate Sheppard, and Brad Plumer.

Related Links:

China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

It must be very lonely being the last flat-earther.

Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, committed climate-change denier, found himself in just such a position Tuesday morning as the Senate environment committee, on which he is the ranking Republican, took up legislation on global warming. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was in talks with Democrats over a compromise bill — the traitor! And as Inhofe listened, fellow Republicans on the committee — turncoats! — made it clear that they no longer share, if they ever did, Inhofe’s view that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

… Agitated, his utterances disjointed, Inhofe went on: “Now, I also was — was kind of — I don’t want any of the media to think just because I had to sit here and listen to our good friend Senator Kerry for 28 minutes, that I don’t have responses to everything he said.”Nobody doubted that Inhofe had a response. The doubt was whether the response would make any sense.

That’s Dana Milbank in his regular “Washington sketch” column writing about yesterday’s Senate climate hearing.  Milbank is being kind not to count his fellow WashPost colleagues George Will and Fred Hiatt in calling Inhofe (R-OIL) the last flat-earther (see “WashPost recycles another denier WSJ op-ed, this time from coal apologist Bjorn Lomborg. Funny how two new senior Post editors came from the WSJ” and “Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie“).

If you’ve been dissed by the WashPost as being too head-in-the-sand on global warming, you must be buried up to your toes.  Milbank shows just how out of the mainstream, how devoid of sense Inhofe has become by quoting from his fellow Republicans on the science:

“Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming,” admitted Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). “If fire chiefs of the same reputation told me my house was about to burn down, I’d buy some fire insurance.”

Hmm.  Lamar, if fire chiefs of the same reputation told me that I was about to burn down my own house by throwing gasoline and coal all over the furniture, I’d stop doing that first.  And who the heck is going to sell an arsonist fire insurance?  So we appreciate the shout out to scientists, but let’s work on our metaphors.

An oil-state senator, David Vitter (R-La), said that he, too, wants to “get us beyond high-carbon fuels” and “focus on conservation, nuclear, natural gas and new technologies like electric cars.” And an industrial-state senator, George Voinovich (R-Ohio), acknowledged that climate change “is a serious and complex issue that deserves our full attention.”

Then Milbank skewers Inhofe again:

Then there was poor Inhofe. “The science is more definitive than ever? You keep saying that because you want to believe it so much,” he said bitterly. He offered to furnish a list of scientists who once believed in climate change but “who are solidly on the other side right now.” The science, he said, “already has shifted” against global-warming theory. “Science is not settled! Everyone knows it’s not settled!”

Ouch!

Though none of the committee Republicans are supporting her cap-and-trade plan for carbon emissions so far, Boxer made it clear that her primary grievance is with one Republican. “Since John Warner retired, I don’t have a Republican partner on the committee, but I am appreciative for the productive conversations I’ve had with Senator Alexander, about nuclear energy, and for the wide-ranging conversations and meetings I had with Senator Voinovich,” Boxer said, pointedly omitting Inhofe.Inhofe began by expressing surprise that Boxer would even use the term “global warming,” asserting that “people have been running from that term ever since we went out of that natural warming cycle about nine years ago.” And he turned with a fury on Graham, his fellow Republican, for an “apparent compromise will also entail a massive expansion of government bureaucracy.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the first witness, turned up the temperature further on Inhofe. He gave a Gore-like tour of climate catastrophe: “the science is screaming at us to take action . . . pine beetles have destroyed 6.5 million acres of forestland . . . 180 Alaskan villages are losing permafrost . . . we have columns of methane rising now in the ocean.”

Kerry went on like this for an extraordinary 26 1/2 minutes….  At various points, Kerry signaled an end with “I’ll just close” or “I’ll just end on this note” but continued on. This infuriated nobody as much as Inhofe, whom Kerry repeatedly singled out for a lecture. “Senator Inhofe, you just talked about the costs of doing some of this,” he said. But “the cost of doing nothing,” Kerry countered, “is far more expensive for your folks in Oklahoma.”

Inhofe, who glared back at Kerry, still seethed a few minutes later when he interrupted the chairman. “You know, I sat here for 25 minutes listening to Senator Kerry talk about me, and I didn’t have a chance to respond,” he complained. “I will, however.”

“I so appreciate it,” Boxer said.

Inhofe molested the majority by having committee staffers put up on the dais a series of 3-by-5-foot posters with messages such as “Congressional Budget Chief Says Climate Bill Would Cost Jobs” and “U.S. Unemployment High/Why Kill More Jobs With Cap & Trade?” But this failed to cool Inhofe’s temper, and by the time his turn came to question the administration witnesses, Inhofe was so steamed that he used his entire five minutes to vent.

He described the Democrats’ proposal as “the largest tax increase in — in history!”  Agitated, his utterances disjointed, Inhofe went on: “Now, I also was — was kind of — I don’t want any of the media to think just because I had to sit here and listen to our good friend Senator Kerry for 28 minutes, that I don’t have responses to everything he said.”Nobody doubted that Inhofe had a response. The doubt was whether the response would make any sense.

Double ouch.

Okay.  I printed that last bit twice.  I just wanted to make it clear that this is settled science:  Inhofe is a flat earther whose responses make no sense.

Related Links:

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Today's hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee -- the first of three days of hearings on the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill -- didn't contain any big surprises. As Keith Johnson notes, Senators generally played their appointed roles.

There are four stories out of today that seem notable.

1. Republicans are completely out of the game.

This has been true ever since Obama was elected, of course, but today's hearing threw it in sharp relief. They're just not involved in the conversation. On the far end you have Inhofe, still shouting at clouds about the science. But Barrasso, Bond, and the rest simply repeat, robotically, absurd claims about the economics of emission reduction that have been utterly debunked -- by the EPA, by the CBO, by the EIA, and by the witnesses at today's hearing. With a few exceptions, every time it was a Republican's turn to talk, it was as if the whole hearing ground to a halt, taking a break to watch a sideshow before the adults resumed their business.

Lacking anything of substance, Republicans are resorting to procedural ratf*cks, as usual. They want the EPA to take five weeks to do a full analysis of Kerry-Boxer, even though the agency, like everyone else, knows that the economics are roughly the same as for Waxman-Markey. They're threatening to boycott the markup to prevent quorum unless the EPA accepts their absurd demands. They all left today before the four cabinet secretaries were done testifying, just to be, you know, deliberately rude. Expect these adolescent tantrums to ramp up over coming months.

Conservative Democrats (and a few Rs like Voinovich) are at least grappling with the substance of the bill. But Republicans on the committee, for the most part, are engaged in increasingly irrelevant theater.

2. Baucus is a problem.

Here's what Baucus had to say at the hearing today:

I have some concerns about the overall direction of the bill before us today, and whether it will lead us closer to or further away from passing climate change legislation. For example, I have serious reservations with the depth of the mid-term reduction target in the bill and the lack of preemption of the Clean Air Act's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2020 target of 20% reductions from 2005 levels is, as Sen. Merkley (D-Ore) pointed out later, easily achievable. It could be hit with efficiency alone, at a profit. It could be hit with natural gas switching alone. We'll get a quarter of the way there just via the recession! With the suite of tools available, it will be a cakewalk. The only way you could look at that target and find it impossible is if you think carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the only technology capable of producing reductions. That certainly won't be ready by 2020! But that's an absurd perspective, one shared mainly by Republicans like Voinovich and ... Max Baucus.

Baucus phrases his reservations in the language of concern trolling -- he's just worried about getting the votes, you know. But even if bending on those two items will ultimately be necessary, why on earth would you broadcast your willingness to do so before negotiations even begin? Can we look forward to another months-long, futile quest for bipartisan support from Baucus? Is he going to weaken and slow-walk this bill like he did with health care reform?

See Elana Schor and Greenwire for more on this.

As to the EPA thing:

3. EPA authority emerges as central battle.

Many progressive groups like MoveOn are drawing their red line here: EPA authority under the Clean Air Act must be preserved in the bill. (It is in Kerry-Boxer; it wasn't in Waxman-Markey.). But several Senators, including Baucus and Specter, openly discussed it as something that will have to be given up to gain enough votes for passage.

It also has its champions in the Senate, including Gillibrand and Whitehouse. Speaking of which, check out Whitehouse's righteous pro-CAA, anti-coal remarks (taken from this great post by Ben Wessel):

Expect this to become an increasingly heated fight. It was certainly good to see Lisa Jackson point out that even with legislation there are still "common sense" ways to use the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions.

4. The administration steps up

Alongside the hearing today, where four cabinet secretaries testified, the Obama administration is ramping up its general involvement on this issue. Today saw the announcement of $3.4 billion in funding for smart grid initiatives; Biden announced the reopening of a shuttered GM plant to make hybrids; Obama spoke at a new solar plant in Florida, hyping clean energy and federal legislation; and a New York Times headline blared: Administration Steps Up Efforts on Climate Bill.

Everyone has been saying for months that the fight will succeed or fail based on Obama's investment. It looks like the White House is responding.

Altogether, it is a good day for the forces of climate sanity. The jobs and economics messages were front and center, and wavering conservative Dems were grappling with the legislation in a way that showed they're taking the possibility of passage seriously.

The hearings tomorrow and the next day will last allll day and get into some serious weeds. Watch Grist's Kerry-Boxer page for updates.

Related Links:

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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

What to make of the new climate poll

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama's Senate allies launched a major push Tuesday behind sweeping legislation to battle climate change, with time running short before a high-stakes global summit in December.

"Today, we begin the formal legislative process to lead the world in rolling back the urgent threat of climate change," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the lead author of a Senate bill to create a cap-and-trade regime.

Obama, showing during a trip to Florida that he will not wait for lawmakers to act, was to unveil the largest-ever upgrade of the U.S. electricity grid, in a $3.4 billion bid to unleash a new era of renewable energy consumption.

Some 100 firms, manufacturers, utilities, and cities will get awards worth from $400,000 to $200 million to help build a nationwide "smart energy grid" to cut costs and improve reliability of the creaking system.

In Washington, Obama's secretaries of energy, interior and transportation, as well as his Environmental Protection Agency chief, were urging senators to act quickly to curb pollutants blamed for global warming.

The administration power-players were to appear before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee as it opens three days of hearings on legislation written by Obama's Democratic allies to fight climate change.

Obama has said he wants to make as much progress as possible to reassure skeptics at the December global talks in Copenhagen that the United States is pressing ahead with aggressive climate change remedies.

But Obama aides have already warned that the legislation may clear Boxer's committee but not the full Senate before the U.N. climate change conference -- a delay that could cripple hopes of a major new international treaty.

Kerry crafted the legislation with the committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said as the hearing began that "our bill is the best way to proceed."

"It provides flexibility to businesses and powerful incentives to drive innovation. It helps consumers, workers, agriculture, transportation, energy efficiency, wildlife, cities, counties, and it will launch an economic transformation," she said.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a cap and trade emissions regime in June, and the Senate is now poised to take up the measure with a new poll showing nearly six in 10 Americans support such a plan.

Under the expected cap-and-trade regime, the government would set the total level of domestic emissions allowable and then allocate quotas to companies.

Firms that emit less than their quota would be allowed to sell their surplus allocation to others that exceed theirs. Those in excess could also face fines.

The House bill calls for cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050. The Senate's slightly more ambitious bill calls for a 20-percent cut by 2020.

The Senate text also makes a push for nuclear energy research and training, and promotes natural gas as a clean energy source.

About sixty percent of respondents to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey said they favor such an approach, while 37 percent said they oppose it.

The survey's error margin was plus or minus three percentage points.

Obama's Republican foes have mostly rejected the administration's approach, with some warning it would inflict severe economic pain on traditional industries as the U.S. economy makes the transition to cleaner energy.

"The bill is no doubt ambitious, but it's also extremely costly," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a longtime climate change doubter, said as the hearing began, disputing an Environmental Protection Agency study that found it would cost most U.S. families no more than 30 cents per day.

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At today's hearing on the Kerry-Boxer bill, Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla.) was spouting the usual lies about the high cost of the policy. Kerry responded:

That's good, but he could have said so much more. Even with those shortcomings of economic models, the costs turn out to be "modest," in CBO chief Doug Elmendorf's words.

For more on why economic models overestimate the cost and underestimate the benefits of green policy see: "Why we overestimate the costs of climate change legislation."

Related Links:

China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

This month Harper's magazine turns its lead essay over to Stephen Stoll, a historian, who in "The Cold We Caused," delves into the history of climate to show how "nearly incoherent" are the arguments of the likes of climate change denier James Inhofe, Senator from Oklahoma, who continues to insist against the facts that we are in a "cooling period."

Inhofe concedes that the globe did warm after the Industrial Revolution, but doubts whether this warming was caused by "man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane."

Stoll turns the question around, asking: What would happen to carbon dioxide and methane if humans were to disappear? As is it happens, we have a reputable (if not indisputable) answer to that question from a scientist named William Ruddiman, at the University of Virginia, who in 2003 published a paper in the journal Climate called How the Anthropogenic Era Began Thousands of Years Ago [PDF].

Ruddiman argues that the so-called Little Ice Age, which took hold from approximately 1315 to 1850, was the result of various horrific plagues and pandemics in the Middle Ages. As people died by the tens of millions, agriculture in much of Europe, Asia, and Central America all but collapsed, forests and jungles regrew, the levels of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere fell, winters lengthened, pack ice spread southward, and global temperatures dropped dramatically. 

Though some climate change deniers have pointed to this as evidence that greenhouse gases are good, Stoll argues that's a shallow interpretation:

In fact, however, this medieval tale reveals the enormous capacity of human beings to shape their environment, whether unwittingly or deliberately. If our crop-planting, animal-herding, forest-and-savannah-burning ancestors could trigger the rapid cooling of the atmosphere through their sudden absence, then we can achieve the same effect by abandoning other practices. The cold we caused does more damage to Inhofe’s position than any finding by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Stoll sees the positive side of this argument. As the responsibility of wealthy, developed nations for "a just climate" becomes undeniable, "the litany of rationalizations" holding the global poor to blame for their suffering may finally become untenable, giving them a chance to rebalance the scales of justice.

Stoll's faith in the power of rationality might seem a little naive, except that he foresees a time when "the very poor are filing class-action suits against wealthy nations for reckless carbon output."

And just this week, according to the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, the conservative Fifth Circuit [Federal] Court based in New Orleans has just allowed lawyers for landowners in Mississippi to file suit against coal companies and oil companies for damage suffered during Hurricane Katrina. The court noted that the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act, and affirmed the causal link between emissions and global warming, and, possibly, ocean temperatures and more powerful hurricanes.

Though no one expects the this ruling on "standing" to lead to quick decisions against coal companies, an expert in class-action suits did predict it would lead to many other claims against emitters being filed. Legal observers recall that the tobacco industry defended itself against damage suits successfully for years, but eventually was forced to stop denying that cigarette smoking is harmful to health.

So Stoll's argument seems not so far-fetched after all. As they say in courthouses around the world, the mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceedingly small.

Related Links:

China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

Why Senator Inhofe is going to Copenhagen

CALLER: Yes, I agree with the Senator on what he says about the climate change. I believe that the world is just changing like it usually does….

INHOFE: I think he’s right. I think what he’s saying is God’s still up there. We’re going through these cycles. … I really believe that a lot of people are in denial who want to hang their hat on the fact, that they believe is a fact, that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, are causing global warming. The science really isn’t there.

Thank God the Senator from Oklahoma is here to promise us that that the Almighty will override at a planetary level the laws of physics He created and simply stop human-emissions of heat-trapping gases from ravaging his Creation.  Now if we can only get Inhofe to tell God to stop all cancers and traffic accidents, too.

More seriously,  the only thing more stunning than the fact that a U.S. Senator — the ranking minority member on the Environment and Public Works committee, no less — would advance such a predeterministic view is that anyone in the media would treat him seriously (see for instance, “NYT’s Green Inc. blog wins worst headline of the day“).

But this fundamentalist, anti-scientific tripe, far from disqualifying Inhofe, puts him in very good company with other leading conservative politicians:

It bears repeating that the fact the climate has changed in the past, does not mean humans can’t change the climate today.  Quite the reverse.  As the famous climatologist Wallace Broecker, climate scientist, wrote in a 1995 Nature article:

The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges.

The point is that “natural cycles” do not mean “random cycles.”  The climate changes when it is forced to change.  Past warmings were driven by natural forcings, including massive releases of greenhouse gases.  But now humans are dwarfing the natural cycles and natural forcings by pumping out greenhouse gases at a much higher rate than ever occurred in the past — see Humans boosting CO2 14,000 times faster than nature, overwhelming slow negative feedbacks.

If the “Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts to even small nudges,” what will happen to people foolish enough to keep punching it in the face?  The answer is biblical, but rather than divine intervention, it will, I fear, be Hell and High Water.

H/t to Think Progress, which posted the video and gives its background.

On C-Span’s Washington Journal this week, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the godfather of global warming deniers, said that he will travel to the climate change summit in Copenhagen this fall to present “another view.” “I think somebody has to be there — a one-man truth squad,” he said. Throughout the program, Inhofe went through his tattered global warming denier claims: that climate change is a “hoax,” that CO2 is not a pollutant, and — latching on to the latest false right-wing talking point — that clean energy legislation will cost American families $1,700 a year.

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I was going to blog on this umpteenth attack on strong progressive women, but Matt Yglesias beat me to the punch here, so to speak. I'll add my thoughts to Matt's comments at the end:

I used to think that US Senate Barbara Boxer was an experienced legislator with a solid progressive record on the issues. But then I read this Politico article in which various anonymous people criticize her "abrasive personal style" and "outspoken partisan liberal" demeanor. Big trouble! And then I got to thinking, I recall having read similar critiques of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. And Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate and now as Secretary of State has been subjected to similar criticism. Nancy Pelosi, too.

You've really got to wonder what the deal is with the Democratic Party that every woman who comes forward into a position of power and influence is a shrill, castrating harridan. I mean, what are Democrats thinking? What poor judgment! Doesn't everyone know that politics is a business in which the only people who get ahead are soft-spoken sweethearts like Rahm Emanuel and Chuck Schumer? Somehow male politicians have managed to figure this out. What's stopping the women?

Two excerpts from the Politico piece are particularly egregioius:

With Boxer as chairwoman and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe - who calls man-made global warming a "hoax" - as ranking Republican, the committee hearings tend to be politically charged. Staffers say it would be better for the committee to focus on more politically palatable arguments about job production, national security and the country's dependence on foreign oil.

In other words, because the ranking member is the top global warming denier in the Senate - a fossil-fuel-industry funded liar who spouts more disinformation on climate science than all his colleagues combined - Boxer should just be a good little girl and not talk about the gravest threat to the health and well-being of Americans.  So Politico is painting Boxer as a pushy bitch because she understands the science and is trying to prevent a catastrophe?

It boggles the mind that this paragraph appeared in a serious media outlet.

Does the Politico know that global warming is NOT a hoax, that thousands of scientists (and dozens of governments, including our own) are NOT engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool the public?  Because if the Politico knows that - and I hope they do - then they know that their own critique of Boxer for pushing back hard against Inhofe is utter crap.

And here is one of the two specific incidents that prove Boxer has an "abrasive personal style":

During another hearing this month, Boxer found herself in a testy exchange with the CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, who accused her of "condescending" to him.

That's right, the Politico is somehow damning her for her perfectly reasonable behavior during an utterly contrived dust up (see "Black Chamber of Commerce CEO calls Barbara Boxer a racist - when she's trying to stop future Katrinas and he wants dozens more").

Inhofe has a far more "abrasive personal style" - at least if you are a scientist, since he again and again distorts your research and attacks your integrity.  But I guess because he is a man then, for the Politico, that just reflects his strong political views and not his "condescending" attitude toward people who have devoted their lives to telling the public the truth.

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Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”

Grist got to wondering, "Can voters in all 50 states go online and easily find out what a senator thinks about climate change and energy policy?"Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist

Listen up, James Inhofe, because this might be the only compliment Grist ever pays you: You've got a decent website. Despite your wacked-out view that climate change is a "hoax" and your opposition to a climate bill, inhofe.senate.gov does a fair job of making your climate and energy positions clear and accessible to the Oklahomans who voted to send you to Washington.

In fact, your website is more transparent than the sites of many senators who completely disagree with your views on global warming, including Democratic leaders Harry Reid (Nev.) and Richard Durbin (Ill.), along with two of the most influential senators when it comes to environmental policymaking -- Barbara Boxer (Calif.) and Jeff Bingaman (N.M.).

Illustration by Tom Twigg / GristFor citizens looking for information on their senators' positions on energy and climate change policy, official Senate websites are a logical place to start. After all, senators get taxpayer money to produce the sites. And at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., President Obama has pledged to boost government transparency online through the new data.gov, usaspending.gov, and the revamped whitehouse.gov.

And, well, it's the 21st century. You would think a U.S. senator would put up a useful site as a basic way of communicating with constituents. You would think.

In the interest of transparency, Grist combed the official websites of 99 senators (Al Franken didn't have one at the time of our review) and rated them on how well each explained a senator's positions on climate change and energy policies. Our grading system gave senators points for stating whether or not he or she agrees with the scientific consensus on climate change, whether a site lists the criteria for how the lawmaker will evaluate a climate bill, and whether it describes a senator's positions on a variety of energy policies -- including renewable research incentives, "clean coal" research, expanded use of nuclear energy, increased offshore and domestic oil and gas drilling, and incentives for biofuel production. Again, the focus was on transparency; senators who oppose climate legislation or doubt the science of global warming were not penalized for their views, only if they failed to make those views clear and accessible on their sites.

The results aren't pretty. We found a distinct lack of information among Democrats and Republicans alike, senators with and without strong environmental voting records, and from all regions of the country. See our full methodology and results for each senator on the next page.

Under our grading scale, 53 senators scored a C or worse. Twenty-five sites had no mention of climate change or global warming. Only 60 offered an opinion of cap-and-trade -- the leading approach in Congress for reducing carbon emissions -- on their energy or environment pages.

Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-R.I.) environment page still refers to "President Bush." Lamar Alexander's (R-Tenn.) "Energy and Environment" page brought up an error message. Robert Byrd's (D-W.V.) climate page does not appear to be linked to the rest of his site. Three senators posted no information at all on climate or energy issues: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), and Roland Burris (D-Ill.)

Two sponsors of past climate legislation, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, had sharply diverging scores. Lieberman (I-Conn.) scored 20 on the 25-point scale—a relatively high score. McCain (R-Ariz.) scored a 7.

The examination also revealed sharp regional differences. Senators from Pacific states (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii) had the highest-scoring sites, averaging 17.3 points out of 25. Next were Northeastern senators, with an average score of 17.1.

Southern senators scored the lowest (9.2), with the Southwest (11.4), Midwest (11.9), Plains (13.8), and Mountain West (13.8) falling in the middle.

More highlights:

Prefer letter grades? By assigning each grade a 5-point range, we would have handed out 14 A's, 32 B's, 22 C's, 19 D's, and 12 F's. Many students would find this grading to be very generous. If we used a more common academic scale in which less than 60 percent is a failing grade, 50 senators would have flunked. So as to not reward mediocrity, Grist did not grade on a curve.

Bingman chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, but his official website doesn't reveal his views on topics he has great influence over.Illustration by Tom Twigg / GristThe range of information on climate and energy, from useful to useless, is par for the course for congressional sites, according to John Wonderlich, policy director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington group that works to promote transparency in government.

"This is something we should expect senators to do on their websites," he said. "But there's no requirement that they do so. That actually makes it more interesting because it reflects their priorities -- what they choose to put on their sites, what they choose to talk about."

In the House of Representatives, many lawmakers considered to be key swing votes on the landmark Waxman-Markey bill last month withheld their opinion up until the last minute. Wonderlich said there is motivation for senators to do the same.

"There's an incentive to not have a clear position," he said. "For a senator whose vote is going to be courted, it's in their interest to be a little bit coy, because their vote becomes a bargaining chip ... It's all about jockeying for clout within your caucus, or trying to get a committee seat, or trying to secure support for some other measure."

Of course, that comes at the expense of citizens trying to find a senator's views, he said.

Here's our full grading criteria, followed by a list of how senators scored.

How easy it is to find information about a senator's views on climate change and energy was judged by the following measures:

On the energy/environment/climate page, is the following information available:

Does a senator's site contain specific information on how he or she feels about any of the following:

Total: 25 points

Go to next page to see the results for all 99 senators >>>

<<< Back to the first page of this article

See also the full set of results for each senator (as a spreadsheet). Notice patterns or suprises that we didn't note? Email us or comment below.

Senator

Party

State

Score

Grade

Amy Klobuchar

D

MN

24

A

Christopher Dodd

D

CT

23

A

Johnny Isakson

R

GA

23

A

John Kerry

D

MA

22

A

James Inhofe

R

OK

22

A

Judd Gregg

R

NH

22

A

Olympia Snowe

R

ME

22

A

Kirsten Gillibrand

D

NY

21

A

Dianne Feinstein

D

CA

21

A

Orrin Hatch

R

UT

21

A

Kent Conrad

D

ND

21

A

Jeff Merkley

D

OR

21

A

Maria Cantwell

D

WA

21

A

Bob Casey, Jr.

D

PA

21

A

Ted Kennedy

D

MA

20

B

Bernie Sanders

I

VT

20

B

Joe Lieberman

I

CT

20

B

Mike Crapo

R

ID

20

B

Sheldon Whitehouse

D

RI

20

B

Mark Pryor

D

AR

20

B

Arlen Specter

D

PA

19

B

Patty Murray

D

WA

19

B

Frank Lautenberg

D

NJ

19

B

Daniel Inouye

D

HI

19

B

Daniel Akaka

D

HI

19

B

Carl Levin

D

MI

19

B

Harry Reid

D

NV

19

B

Ben Cardin

D

MD

19

B

Jeanne Shaheen

D

NH

19

B

Jack Reed

D

RI

19

B

Sherrod Brown

D

OH

19

B

Russ Feingold

D

WI

19

B

Kit Bond

R

MO

18

B

Thomas R. Carper

D

DE

18

B

Mark Udall

D

CO

18

B

Bob Menendez

D

NJ

18

B

Richard Lugar

R

IN

17

B

Jay Rockefeller

D

WV

17

B

Max Baucus

D

MT

17

B

Mike Enzi

R

WY

17

B

Richard Durbin

D

IL

17

B

Chuck Grassley

R

IA

16

B

Pat Roberts

R

KS

16

B

Patrick Leahy

D

VT

16

B

Ron Wyden

D

OR

16

B

John Thune

R

SD

16

B

Mike Johanns

R

NE

15

C

Lisa Murkowski

R

AK

15

C

Blanche Lincoln

D

AR

15

C

Richard Shelby

R

AL

14

C

Tom Udall

D

NM

14

C

John Ensign

R

NV

14

C

Michael Bennet

D

CO

14

C

Barbara Mikulski

D

MD

13

C

John Cornyn

R

TX

13

C

Jim Bunning

R

KY

12

C

Lamar Alexander

R

TN

12

C

Tim Johnson

D

SD

12

C

Tom Coburn

R

OK

12

C

Bob Corker

R

TN

12

C

Mark Begich

D

AK

12

C

Robert Foster Bennett

R

UT

11

C

Ted Kaufman

D

DE

11

C

Jim Risch

R

ID

11

C

Jeff Sessions

R

AL

11

C

Kay Hagan

D

NC

11

C

Claire McCaskill

D

MO

11

C

Sam Brownback

R

KS

11

C

Herb Kohl

D

WI

10

D

Barbara Boxer

D

CA

10

D

Evan Bayh

D

IN

10

D

David Vitter

R

LA

10

D

Richard Burr

R

NC

9

D

Jeff Bingaman

D

NM

8

D

Debbie Stabenow

D

MI

8

D

John Barrasso

R

WY

8

D

John McCain

R

AZ

7

D

Byron Dorgan

D

ND

7

D

Chuck Schumer

D

NY

7

D

Roger Wicker

R

MS

7

D

Lindsey Graham

R

SC

7

D

Mary Landrieu

D

LA

7

D

Robert Byrd

D

WV

6

D

Ben Nelson

D

NE

6

D

Saxby Chambliss

R

GA

6

D

Susan Collins

R

ME

6

D

Jon Tester

D

MT

6

D

George Voinovich

R

OH

5

F

Mel Martinez

R

FL

5

F

Kay Bailey Hutchison

R

TX

4

F

Jim DeMint

R

SC

4

F

Mark Warner

D

VA

4

F

Jon Kyl

R

AZ

3

F

Bill Nelson

D

FL

3

F

Tom Harkin

D

IA

2

F

Jim Webb

D

VA

1

F

Roland Burris

D

IL

0

F

Thad Cochran

R

MS

0

F

Mitch McConnell

R

KY

0

F

Not included: Al Franken (D-MN)

Vanessa Kerr and Claire Thompson contributed reporting to this story.

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A curious thing happened at Tuesday's morning meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the panel's infamous climate-change skeptic, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), cited NASA climatologist Jim Hansen in his screed against the House climate bill.

Yes, this is the same James Inhofe who once called climate change the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." And this is the same James Hansen who has been called the "the father of global warming," the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies who has repeatedly called for dramatic action to fight global warming.

Hansen, like Inhofe, is no fan of the Waxman-Markey bill. But for Inhofe -- a global warming denier -- to cite Hansen is irony bordering on satire. Hansen, after all, doesn't think the climate bill that passed in the House last month is strong enough to adequately address the problem of climate change.

Inhofe said at Tuesday's hearing that he agreed with Hansen that the Waxman-Markey bill is "not going to make any change" in the climate. "And he's Mr. Greenhouse Gas," added Inhofe.

In reality, Hansen acknowledges that climate change is caused by man-made, heat-trapping emissions, whereas Inhofe does not. And Hansen has said that he believes steps can be taken by the international community to combat global warming. Inhofe, meanwhile, thinks nothing humans do affect the Earth's climate.

It appears that Inhofe isn't alone. Skeptic Steve Milloy posted a piece on the Green Hell blog on Tuesday titled "Why we should love James Hansen." He argues:

Former Inhofe staffer Marc Morano, who now runs the skeptic site ClimateDepot.com, tweeted the story shortly thereafter: "Go Jim, go! Why we should love James Hansen."

Yes, it appears in denier land, the enemy of your enemy – in this case, the Waxman-Markey bill – is your friend. At least for now.

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The Heartland Institute, an outpost for climate change skeptics, is holding its Third International Conference on Climate Change here in Washington, D.C., this week (just three months after its second one). Yesterday the meeting played host to the Senate's top climate-change denier, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe.

Inhofe, best known for calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," regaled the crowd with his plans to obstruct climate and energy legislation in Congress this year. His pledge? That Republican deniers will "stall that until we get a new president."

An excerpt, followed by video:

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Most of the news coverage in recent days, understandably has focused on the Markey climate hearings and speculation about when his subcommittee will actually start voting.  And now there is scrutiny of efforts by "moderate" House Democrats to gut the Waxman-Markey bill on behalf of Duke Energy, the Edison Electric Institute and other forces of darkness who assert with a straight face that "the consumer" is their only concern.

Across the Capitol, however, another important mini-drama is playing out. There, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has recommended approval of the very qualified Gina McCarthy, the environmental commissioner from Connecticut, to become head of the U.S. EPA air pollution control division. 

But two Republicans, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and John Barrasso of Wyoming, have said they'll try to "hold" the McCarthy nomination -- preventing a formal vote by the full Senate. The reason?  They don't like EPA's proposed "endangerment" finding (that greenhouse gases pose a threat to health and the environment.)

The Senate leadership ought to put a quick stop to this nonsense.  It's one thing for them to sit back and watch their House colleagues agonize over the climate bill. 

But the EPA can't function properly without having someone in charge of the air division.  We still have a huge air pollution problem, as the American Lung Association noted this week in its annual "State of the Air" report. McCarthy was a good choice, and she ought to be permitted to do her job.  And the way the special interests are mobilizing to undermine the very good intentions of Congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, we're going to need the best minds possible at EPA to make some progress on climate as well as "conventional" air pollutants like smog, soot and mercury.

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China, India, US Commit to Seal Copenhagen Deal

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

Inhofe to Boxer: “We Won, You Lost, Now Get a Life!”