FOX News evidently agrees with Global Warming Skeptic Trollcat (see above):

Thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit were hacked recently and dumped on a Russian web server. Fox News and right-wing bloggers believe the illegally obtained emails prove that "global warming is a MYTH."

Oops, that's Global Warming Skeptic TrollCat. Here's the take from FOX News.com (actual screenshot):

Here's an unscientific sampling of the reasoned analysis from prominent right-wing bloggers:

Evidently due to this email conspiracy, Arctic sea ice is at historically low levels, Australia is on fire, the northern United Kingdom is underwater, and the world's glaciers are disappearing. Oh yeah, and it's the hottest decade in history.

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Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

Is any piece of nonsense from right-wing opponents of clean energy policy too silly, too outrageous, to get its day in the national press spotlight? It would seem not.

Last week, CBS conservo-blogger Declan McCullagh breathlessly reported: "Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year." That figure spread like wildfire through right-wing blogs, then jumped to Glenn Beck, and eventually reached The Washington Post. Now Republican lawmakers are repeating it.

The number is completely and utterly misleading. At least in reference to current policy options, it's a lie. But now it's out there, forever part of conservative mythology and forever a "controversy" in the eyes of the establishment media. Is there any way it could have been stopped? Is there any way the next lie can be stopped?

A quick look behind the story:

Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released (with great fanfare) a document procured from the Treasury Dept via FOIA request. In it, Treasury estimated the total revenue that could be raised by auctioning 100% of the pollution allowances under a cap-and-trade system. The department did no original analysis, it simply reviewed other studies and came up with a range, with $200 billion per year at the high end. (An earlier CBO analysis [PDF] put the high end at $300 billion.) This was done in preparation for the release of Obama's 2009 budget, which incorporated auction revenue. The budget included a conservative estimate of that revenue -- $79 billion a year in 2012.

You may be wondering, so what? Why is this a news story? Obama's proposal would have auctioned 100% of the allowances, yes, but Obama's proposal isn't on the table. ACES begins with just 15% auctions (ramping up to 70% by 2030). Anyway, Obama's program would have returned 85% of auction revenue directly to consumers via payroll taxes, and the 15% remaining wouldn't have been flushed down the toilet; it would have been spent to kickstart clean energy industries. CBO analysis showed that families in the bottom and middle of the income spectrum would come out ahead under the proposal. Similarly, the Waxman-Markey bill passed out of the House also returns most of the allowance value to consumers -- a brand new CBO analysis [PDF] shows that it would cost the average family $160, not $1,761, a year.

The Treasury Department's Alan Krueger said, "Treasury's analysis is consistent with public analyses by the EIA, EPA, and CBO, and the reporting and blogging on this issue ignores the fact that the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals."

In summary, the Treasury analysis looked at revenue raised entirely in isolation from revenue invested or returned to consumers. CEI's spin was transparently, grotesquely misleading. The Treasury document reveals nothing new and casts absolutely no light on current legislative proposals.

This all has been ably chronicled and debunked by others. See: Wonk Room, Media Matters, Pete Altman, and PolitiFact.

What struck me about it is how much it reveals about the way the press works. CEI hack Chris Horner, who filed the FOIA request, pushed it to McCullagh, from whence it spread to other conservative outlets, notably Glenn Beck's show. At that point, "people are talking about it," so it goes to Politico, and eventually The Washington Post. Now, as it happens, Steven Mufson's Post piece on the issue is fairly good, in the usual he-said, she-said sort of way. If you read with your MSM decoder goggles on, you can tell Mufson knows it's a pile of sh*t.

But that hardly makes up for dozens of articles and politicians trumpeting a $1,761 yearly tax; repetition of a fact, even in the context of debunking it, reinforces it. As Politico's Lisa Lerer put it, in a sentence that exquisitely summarizes the attitude of the political press and the state of public discourse, "those types of numbers -- even if they are inaccurate -- could increase doubts already being raised by moderate Democrats about the climate bill."

In other words, the accuracy of what's being fed into the media bloodstream by Horner and his ilk is irrelevant. Lerer not only can't be bothered to get to the bottom of it; she states explicitly that the effect on public discussion will be the same regardless. She knows the media will never decisively call bullsh*t on something like this. She knows the charge will spread, even if only as a "controversy." The poison's been injected, now it will do its damage.

It's hard to know at what point in the media chain one should ascribe responsibility for this state of affairs. Worse, it's difficult to see what could be different next time. No amount of refutation, however fast and decisive (and response from enviros was pretty good on this one), stops the spread; the media just reports what "critics say." The incentives are all wrong. What's stopping Horner et al from feeding an endless stream of lies, exaggerations, misleading numbers, and general hysteria into the discussion? Nothing. There's no firewall. Our civic immune system is broken.

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We can't believe what's going on today either, Pete.Courtesy of The Age of Stupid

"Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?" asks the main character of Franny Armstrong's new film, The Age of Stupid. Living in a world of climate catastrophe, this solitary character, played by Oscar-nominee Pete Postlethwaite, serves as humanity's moral hindsight from the year 2055. He scans video archives of events unfolding between 2004 and 2008, shocked that the world at that time knew it was flushing its future down the drain. Humankind's stubborn refusal to act on climate compels him to dub contemporary times "the age of stupid."

Fortunately, we don't (yet) live in this climate-ravaged scenario of the future, and we have opportunities like The Age of Stupid to knock our thick skulls into action.

Before The Age of Stupid's U.S. premiere in New York City on September 21, director Franny Armstrong took a few minutes to chat with me about the film's part documentary, part back-to-the-future format; its scare-tactics approach; and what it's supposed to inspire (or depress) you to do:

Look for big names at the film's eco-premiere Monday, such as former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, musicians Thom Yorke (Radiohead) and Moby, X Files actress Gillian Anderson, and our own Umbra Fisk, who will be appearing at -- if not walking down -- the green carpet that night. Check back here Tuesday for her video coverage. The live New York event and film screening will be simultaneously broadcast to 440 U.S. theaters Monday. However, if you don't catch The Age of Stupid at a local movie theater that night, you'll have to wait a while to see it on TV or DVD ... most likely after the Copenhagen international climate talks in December, and by then, Armstrong would argue, you'll likely be too late to have the most climate impact. Which would be stupid.

Synchronize your watches because The Age of Stupid film premiere is part of both the high-profile Climate Week NYC and the TckTckTck Campaign's Global Climate Wake-Up Call. Climate Week will see hundreds of world leaders in business and politics meeting in New York to address climate change in anticipation of the Copenhagen talks a mere seventy days away. The activist-organized Wake-Up Call is a day of rallies and actions to call on world leaders to commit to serious greenhouse gas reductions. Find (or organize) a Global Climate Wake-Up Call event near you on Monday, September 21.

The Age of Stupid looks to be an unforgiving examination of the actions (and inactions) of today, portending extreme consequences for mankind if it doesn't get its act together on climate. Will this film wake up the masses to the climate crisis or will its chilling predictions eventually be realized?

Watch the trailer and decide for yourself:

The Age of Stupid USA Trailer from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

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Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support.

Much of the blame for this incident lies squarely on the White House. The information used against Jones was freely available on the web. All it took was a search. I thought by hiring Jones they intended to take a chance on a real left progressive, but now it appears they were simply caught flat-footed. Either Valerie Jarrett -- Jones' champion in the upper echelons of the administration -- didn't know much about him or didn't widely share what she knew. They certainly seemed disinclined to mount a vigorous defense with Glenn Beck gnoshing on his favorite new chew toy and the health care reform battle about to heat up again. No distractions.

For the record, Jones isn't a truther. Five years ago, at the end of a busy paternity leave, he was asked to support the calls of 9/11 families for further investigation of the attacks (reflecting the concerns of millions of Americans). He agreed and his name ended up on a petition that contained language he didn't support. Three others who signed the petition have also come forward to say they were deceived about its final contents. But the truth of it hardly matters at this point. Jones has always spoken freely, not in the clipped, narrow confines permitted of those who aspire to public office. He talks real talk, in colorful, provocative language. There's plenty in his copious past writing and speaking that can be demagogued. This isn't a civic discussion among people who care who Van Jones really is or what he really believes, after all. It's a head hunt.

On substantive grounds, the resignation is not that significant. Part of the absurdity of all this is that Jones was basically a low-level functionary. By yesterday the dimwit conservative hack Dick Morris had him "in charge of running the cap-and-trade legislation" -- ignorant on too many levels to catalog -- but I doubt if Jones has ever so much as been in a meeting with Obama. By all accounts he was frustrated by the difficulty of getting even the smallest things done from the bottom of a massive bureaucracy. Even if he'd had the hidden intentions Beck and his pant-wetting audience attribute to every black liberal, he couldn't have done anything about it.

But policy, reality, that's not what bottom-feeders like Beck care about. The right governed the country for eight years and ran it into a ditch. Conservatives have no plausible health care solution, no climate solution. They have nothing to offer in response to the nation's pressing problems. What they have is affect. They have the amygdala, the fight-or-flight reflex. They have deep threads of racism, fear, and resentment.

In other words, they don't care what Van Jones does, they care what he is. Beck peddles a message that's been around since America was born: They're taking your country away. They -- the non-white races, the immigrants, the urbanites, the communists, the elites -- are stealing the country from nice, simple white Christians. They're taking what rightfully belongs to us, to Real Americans.

This basic, gut-level fear of loss, fear of tribal obsolescence and irrelevance, is all the 25%-and-shrinking right has left. It has been overwhelmed by its most paranoid, bigoted elements. Not activists, not online petitioners, but U.S. senators and Republican thought leaders say the president wasn't born in the U.S.; that he wants to kill old people; that he is not fit to speak to school children. They are banging drums and chanting just outside the campfire circle of rational civic discourse. Their din makes it impossible to think, to plan, to govern. They can not lead, but in their twisted fear they can prevent the rest of us from going anywhere either.

Our civic immune system has grown weak. There are no filters, no longer shared standards of evidence, truth, or decency. The poison courses unhindered through the body. Nothing, no matter how factually insane or morally repugnant, can be repelled.

Like I said, Beck's more greasy huckster than true believer. He went after Jones to get revenge on Color of Change, a group Jones co-founded, for targeting his advertisers (which are dropping like flies). Rupert Murdoch will only put up with the stench as long as money's coming in.

But make no mistake, it's racial resentment that blew this story up. The worst outcome of all this is that it will validate Beck and his long history of paranoid conspiracy theories and repugnant allegations. It will be like chum in the water, almost as invigorating to the crazies as bagging Dan Rather. Much, much more ugliness will ensue, and it will become that much harder to focus on the multiple crises converging on the country.

The White House will find someone else to tend green job-training programs; Jones will go back to his much more effective role as an activist. He will do much good in the world in his life, far, far more than a pissant charlatan like Glenn Beck. But I'm not as sanguine about the direction the country is headed.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce can't catch a break these days. When the Waxman-Markey bill rolled out, it did what it always does: pretended to agree with the goal while recommending changes in the means so drastic that they would gut the bill. See this comical letter wherein it wants to "balance environmental objectives with the need for economic growth and job creation" by lowering targets, increasing free allocations, ditching the renewable energy standard, waiting for China and India to act first, completely preempting state programs, and increasing subsidies to fossil-fuel companies. This is standard operating procedure for CoC, a game it knows how to play. It lobbies for the interests of the corporate class.

But in this case, there's a problem: many, many business see enormous opportunities in the shift to clean energy. Many businesses want the stability and predictability ACES would bring. And many of those businesses happen to be members of the CoC. In May, several of them, including Nike and Johnson & Johnson, dealt the CoC a very public smack on the nose, asking it to quit speaking on behalf of "business" when lobbying on behalf of a few dirty-energy industries.

This kind if dissension in the ranks is new and embarrassing for the CoC. Its flailing response rolled out last week: a call for a "21st Century Scopes Monkey Trial" that would force the EPA to justify its endangerment finding in court.

Now, before you start mocking -- we'll get to that -- step back and think about this from a right-wing hack's perspective. The point is not, repeat not, to get at the truth of climate change. The CoC doesn't give a rat's ass about the truth of climate change. It's very simple: when in doubt, distract. Start a circus. Hype "the controversy."

The idea is to propose something that sounds reasonable on the surface, to the casual news reader, so that the EPA looks defensive if it refuses. It gives the right wing something to make hay over (and oh boy, are they). Most of all, it drags out the faux controversy of the existence of climate change.

Normally this stuff has worked well for conservatives, but a) times are changing, and b) this was a particularly ham-fisted attempt.

In comparing his proposal to the Scopes trial, CoC's Bill Kovacs revealed too much. In that case, conservatives had lost in the realm of science, so they relitigated via a theatrical court case in front of a jury with no scientific training. And Scopes lost. He was found guilty. It was less any kind of American triumph than a sad expression of provincial ignorance.

And that's exactly what Kovacs wants another one of.

Still, he came in for so much mockery that he tried to back off on Thursday, in a National Journal post that is, to put it charitably, rather opaque. He now says the Scopes comparison was "inappropriate" and that the CoC "is not denying or otherwise challenging the science behind global climate change." They just question whether it's a danger, despite the clear conclusion that it is contained in ... the science behind global climate change. Oh, and the Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA.

Kovacs goes on to recycle the myth of the EPA "whistleblower," which shows how desperate he is. The EPA has spent a couple years now making a determination, complete with the requisite 60 days for open comment, but Kovacs wants to second-guess the agency staff's conclusion before a judge. Hell, he'd probably like to treat all regulations this way -- in the name of "transparency," you know. But it would be ridiculous. Government would grind to a halt.

I don't know how much the public is really paying attention to this stuff. But I can't imagine this looks anything but buffoonish to the casual news consumer.

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Van JonesA while back I lampooned a Glenn Beck segment on Van Jones, who's an advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to Beck, Jones is the man on the inside for a vast cryptosocialist conspiracy involving the Apollo Alliance, Color of Change, the Center for American Progress, George Soros, ACORN, Al Queda, and the Trilateral Commission. Everything that goes bump in Beck's closet at night.

Back then I still thought the Gomer Pyle meets Father Coughlin shtick was harmless, too clownish to be taken seriously. Ah, those innocent days before the nation was locked in a room with frantic teabaggers.

Since then Beck's fruitcakery has taken off all over the rightosphere and gotten him what every demagogic infomercial host craves above all else: attention. Advertisers have sprinted away by the dozens, but there are more than enough angry old white people to boost cable ratings.

I suspect his effort to slime Jones will have little effect, as long as the White House doesn't get jumpy. Nobody who isn't already around the bend buys this stuff. It's a game Rupurt Murdoch's playing. He knows it will implode sooner or later, but he's going to suck every last Nielson point out of it.

Meanwhile, Beck is selling fear like hotcakes, effectively inciting people to violence, telling them their country is being taken from them by blacks and commies. Even black commies! The longer Beck goes on, the higher the chances that a Fox viewer with a screw loose will take him seriously and hurt someone. Think Murdoch's ratings will take a hit if that happens? Me neither. It's morally reprehensible, but what can you do? It's a free country and people are free to be two-bit hucksters.

Anyway, just for the record, let's address a few of the Not-Too-Swift Boat attacks. (Where you're done here, you might also check out some similar fact-checking from Eva Paterson, Jones' old boss.)

• Van Jones is not a "Green Jobs Czar." There is no such thing. There has never been a job with that title. No one in the administration has ever used that term. Jones is special advisor for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at CEQ. "Green Jobs Czar" a title made up by the media. Beck's obsession with the term -- common parlance in politics since Nixon -- is as inexplicable in substance as it is creepy in intensity. Regardless, Jones doesn't have mysterious and unaccountable powers to shape the economy. In fact he's a newbie, a low-level political appointee with two Senate-confirmed layers between him and Obama.

But of course, he's black. And Beck's audience just knew a black president would bring in more of his kind. You know how those people behave. There goes the neighborhood.

• Jones is not a "criminal" or an "ex-con" (speaking of barely sub-rosa racism). In 1992, while still attending Yale Law School, Jones volunteered as a legal monitor at a peaceful protest in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. It was in San Francisco, not L.A. He, some other legal monitors, and some protesters were briefly and illegally arrested. They were released in four hours, and later received a legal settlement over the violation of their rights. They were never charged with a crime, much less convicted. The same thing -- improper arrest during peaceful protest -- happened to Jones twice more; again, no charges were ever filed. That is the basis on which Sean Hannity called Jones an "ex-con" on national television. Stay classy, Sean.

• Jones is not a black nationalist or a communist. Beck's entire fevered fantasia is spun out of a single article about Jones, based on an interview he did with a local paper in 2005 -- long before he or anyone who knew him thought he'd ever work for the government. It's actually a fascinating story on a human level. It recounts Jones' evolution as a progressive from angry young radical protester to community organizer to activist bent on a strategy of unity and comity. It's subtitled, "Van Jones renounced his rowdy black nationalism on the way toward becoming an influential leader of the new progressive politics." If you're interested in anything deeper than cable gimcrackery, I recommend giving it a read.

If you know Jones, you know he's extremely candid; you also know the guy absolutely loves talking, loves the richness and drama of language, loves a funny or dramatic turn of phrase. (Would that more progressive leaders loved language the same way.) So things like this, when he talks about his anger at police overreaction --

Convinced that American society needed a wake-up call on race, Jones abandoned his plan to become a journalist, concluding that he would rather make news than report it. "If I'd been in another country, I probably would have joined some underground guerrilla sect," he said. "But as it was, I went on to an Ivy League law school."

-- are just funny to me. But they're easy to demagogue. Of course it's true that Jones was a self-styled radical in his youth. Hell, I was once a "self-avowed" libertarian. People grow up.

Around 2000, faced with a fractured and infighting movement, he had something of a breakdown/epiphany. He turned his back on radicalism and focused on finding a political program that inspires and unifies. If there are two signal features of Jones' subsequent activism, one is that it builds bridges among demographics that have historically approached one another with suspicion; the other is that it relies crucially on both the private and public sectors. It reclaims what conservatives have stolen and perverted: respect for free markets, patriotism, and family values. Indeed, when Jones talks about targeting jobs and economic development at struggling urban areas, he sounds like nobody so much as the late Jack Kemp. I once saw him deliver a short talk to a crowd of largely white, middle-aged, besuited businessmen at a Wall Street Journal business conference; he was sandwiched in the middle a long line of droning talks. Within 10 minutes, he had the executives on their feet in a standing ovation. They don't do that for communism.

If you want to know what Jones thinks now, instead of what he thought in his early 20s, read his book: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. He's out to save America's free-market economy and get its people working. If the conservative movement were smart it would take yes for an answer and claim him as one if its own. But then, it's not smart. It's Beck.

If it's not going to claim him, the right is correct to fear him, though. He has synthesized the best of environmentalism, progressivism, and capitalism into a program with appeal both broad and intense. It's particularly notable among young people, but Jones gets acclaim from virtually everyone who's met him or seen him speak. The more his kind of can-do, entrepreneurial, win-win green solutions spread, the more modern-day conservatives look like panicked, lumbering dinosaurs.

Sooner or later the American public will see something like this:

They'll see that Jones bears no resemblance to the caricature painted by the right. That caricature is just another shadow on the wall of Plato's cave (or Fox's studio, as the case may be). It's another campfire story, another cloud for righties to shout at, another adrenalin boost for a frightened, angry, shrinking audience. This too shall pass.

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Senators opposed to Clean Energy Jobs Act are ignoring bill’s benefits to Americans—Part 2

"I am not the smartest man in the world, but I have been trained to read scientific documents, and [anthropogenic climate change] is malarkey."

-- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who also explained why Jesus would oppose a public option in health care reform

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This post originally appeared on Streetsblog DC.

This is the big problem with Ed Glaeser's New York Times posts purporting to analyze the costs and benefits of a high speed rail system.

Despite Glaeser's acknowledgment that his "back-of-the-envelope calculation" doesn't "[represent] a complete evaluation of any actual proposed route," the posts are sure to be read and regurgitated by rail opponents uninterested in having an actual debate on the merits of high-speed rail investments.

Today, the Washington Post's lame excuse for an economics columnist, Robert Samuelson, used numbers from Glaeser's analysis in writing an extremely regrettable piece arguing that investments in high-speed rail are misguided. But this is no honest entry into the discussion of how best to invest in transportation infrastructure. It's a hack job, plain and simple.

Samuelson begins by complaining about Amtrak subsidies, but he can't be bothered to address what those subsidies actually suggest about the competitiveness of fast, intercity rail. On the corridor where service most closely resembles true high-speed service, Amtrak runs an operating profit.

It gets much worse from there. Samuelson argues against rail on the basis of population density, writing:

What works in Europe and Asia won't in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can't pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.

This is embarrassingly bad analysis. America's overall population density includes vast expanses of land in the west where few people live and where high-speed trains won't be built (have a look at the administration's map of proposed routes here and note how many low-density states are not expected to get service).

The proper point of comparison is the population densities of metropolitan corridors where lines will be built. A child could understand the point, and yet Samuelson, out of ignorance or deliberate obtuseness, doesn't get it.

He follows that up with a similar error:

Distances also matter. America is big; trips are longer. Beyond 400 to 500 miles, fast trains can't compete with planes.

Again, this is just embarrassing. Distances between major cities on planned corridors will be at most 400 miles. No one is suggesting that rail compete with planes on coast-to-coast routes.

This is a hugely important factual point, and Samuelson seems to be entirely ignorant of it. He simply knows nothing about the policies being considered.

Samuelson goes on to make other mistakes; like Glaeser he fails to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives to high-speed rail -- given current congestion levels and expected population growth, new infrastructure of some kind will be necessary to keep the national economy functioning. But given the basic errors mentioned above, it's hardly worth engaging with the piece.

The Post should be ashamed of its decision to publish this. And Glaeser should be at least a little bit uncomfortable that his work is being cited in factually challenged columns by writers who clearly have no interest in honest participation in the discussion.

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For public transportation to survive, we all need to ... drive more?

While I was away on vacation (it was wonderful, thanks for asking), the Washington Post editorial page featured opinion pieces from Sarah Palin and George Will, two of conservatism's leading, um, thinkers, revealing a great deal about the WaPo editorial page and the quality of conservative thinking.

Rebuttal has been ably carried out by many others, including Joe Romm (whose bald pate is belied by his youthful energy!). He demolishes Palin here and Will here.

Rather, a somewhat meta point. The debate over climate/energy legislation, at least as carried out between conservatives and everyone else, has taken on a surreal tinge. One might expect the media to respond, or notice, or react in some way, but outlets like the WaPo just keep carrying on as if the debate is perfectly normal.

The surreality comes from a simple fact: institutionally, as a movement and as a party, conservatives do not believe anthropogenic climate change exists. They don't think the problem the legislation is designed to solve is actually a problem.

You might think this would make for short debates. Conservatives could collectively sign on to a one-line op-ed:

"We do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, thus we do not support legislation to address it."

Period. Done. Right? But that doesn't happen. Instead you get peculiarities like Palin, droning on for 700 words about how the legislation is flawed because it doesn't promote domestic fossil fuel without once mentioning carbon emissions or climate change. You get Will analyzing the challenges of international climate negotiations and then mentioning, almost casually, at the end of his piece, "by the way, climate change isn't real."

But if climate change isn't real, of course we shouldn't be going through the wrenching process of trying to get off fossil fuels in a few short decades. Of course we shouldn't be beating our heads against a wall trying to get China and India to agree to constrain their growth. It's pointless even discussing those things.

If I simply refused to acknowledge the federal deficit, would Fred Hiatt have me on the WaPo editorial page analyzing the merits of deficit reduction proposals? Of course not. I don't believe the $%*# thing exists! Of course I don't support policies to reduce it.

By greenlighting Potemkin arguments about this or that climate policy from the likes of Palin and Will, the WaPo is giving conservatives a pass. Rejection of settled science is treated as a footnote. But without a shared set of facts, there are no rules, no constraints. Republicans can cavalierly demagogue anything Democrats offer, because hell, it's all just funny talk, a game of make believe.

There will never be a policy proposal sensible enough to gain support from people who do not acknowledge the problem the proposal is meant to address. You'd think that fact would merit notice!

So here's my modest proposal for Fred Hiatt and his ilk: Any conservative who writes about climate/energy legislation should be required to begin by stating clearly whether he or she believes the scientific consensus on warming. That fundamental fact colors everything else, so put it up front.

If they do not accept the science, then fine, let them tell us their preferred carbon-insensitive energy policy. Their fellow non-believers can debate the merits.

If they do accept the science, they can't simply reject the moderate (and inadequate) Democratic proposals for addressing the problem contained in ACES. They have to tell us how they would solve the problem. That's the benchmark.

That simple proposal won't make the climate debate sensible -- let's be realistic about our ambitions -- but it would move beyond the pretense that people like Palin and Will are involved in a good-faith debate.

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Missouri Sen. Kit Bond (R) is circulating this incomprehensible graphic that he says illustrates the "bureaucratic nightmare" of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that the House passed last month.

Bond devoted the majority of his opening statement at Tuesday's Senate hearing on climate policy griping that the bill is just too long for people to understand. "The American people and my Missouri constituents deserve to know why it takes 1,427 pages to address energy issues," he said.  He noted that the combined drafts of the bill would stack up to more than 15 inches.

Holy shoot! You mean lawmaking is complicated? Can't we just stick with that drilling chant?

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Climate change is happening. The science is sound. But plenty of people and organizations with various motives (all dubious) are spending millions to sow seeds of doubt among the American public.

Following on our in-depth series, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic, Grist will launch an occasional feature that tracks the latest global warming denialisms and skeptics garbage, making sure to point readers to the real story.

Jeff Jacoby The conservative columnist for the Boston Globe coughs up a huge hairball of climate disinformation in his July 1 piece, citing real climate scientists who purportedly doubt that mankind’s reliance on fossil fuels is warming the globe.

The Boston Phoenix’s David S. Bernstein tears into Jacoby, noting that his column is full of the same horse manure being shopped around by the same small group of climate deniers, some of whom, it turns out, completely agree with the science of global warming. Go figure.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute claims that the EPA suppressed an internal report raising serious doubts about the science of global warming. The free-market think tank says longtime EPA staffer Al Carlin was told to shut up when his work cast doubts on the science used to justify the agency’s finding that CO2 emissions pose a threat and, therefore, should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Sadly, CBSNews.com and too many others picked the story up and ran rather one-sided reports. Now, unsurprisingly, conservative lawmakers are demanding an investigation.

Grist’s Jon Hiskes called up CEI to hear their side of things. Well, there’s nothing to it.  Carlin is an economist, not a climatologist, and the EPA says its managers went out of their way to give Carlin a platform for his skepticism. In the end, he was told to butt out because, well, he’s an economist trying to weigh in on a scientific report. And as for the science in Carlin’s document, turns out it’s full of holes too, according to a detailed assessment by REAL NASA CLIMATE EXPERT Gavin Schmidt. Newsweek gets in on the debunking too, while Media Matters dissects the shoddy reporting of the CEI allegations. And don’t miss this great TPM piece.

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Dizzy by now?Courtesy katiew via FlickrThe peculiar story of a “suppressed” report at the Environmental Protection Agency continues to grow, despite the fact that the agency appears to have done nothing worse than holding its employees to professional standards.

The charge spreading through the news media is that the EPA quashed an internal report because it didn’t fit with the agency’s official position that climate change endangers public health. Al Carlin and John Davidson of the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics wrote the report, disputing the scientific consensus that human activities are driving global climate change and calling on the EPA to halt its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming,” says their report [PDF].

The story was first advanced by the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes addressing climate change and has run a scientifically laughable hooray-for-CO2 campaign in the past. Last week CEI released internal emails between Carlin and his boss that it claimed proved political meddling inside the EPA.

“It [the report] was an inconvenient study,” Sam Kazman, CEI general counsel, told me in an interview last Wednesday. “The administration had already decided on a certain course of action, and this would not help.”

But the emails reveal little more than a rather tedious employee-management dispute. Carlin’s boss, Al McGartland, tells Carlin that his report won’t be included in the EPA’s official findings and asks him to get back to work on other issues. EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy noted that Carlin’s education and work expertise are largely in economics, not climatology. That’s why his comments on climate science were not included.

“Certain opinions were expressed by an individual [Carlin] who is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue,” she said.

“Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding.  Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar.  The individual was also granted a request to join a committee that organizes an ongoing climate seminar series, open to both agency and outside experts, where he has been able to invite speakers with a full range of views on climate science.  The claims that his opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false.”

The next day the CEI released a draft of the actual report—an odd move because it contradicts the think tank’s version of the story. For one, the document shows that the two economists were not working in their native field. And as for the report’s scientific merits, consider this evaluation from NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, an actual climatologist. He writes on RealClimate.org:

Here’s a reprint of Grist’s original story, followed by a short update from last week:

Wouldn’t it be terrible if the Obama administration turned out to be manipulating science to fit its own ideology? Especially after Obama declared, to much fanfare, that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over"?

Yeah, that would make a helluva story: “Look, the new guy is just like the old guy!”

Well yeah, but it hasn’t happened yet, at least not in the way the Competitive Enterprise Institute claims in a release it sent this morning under the headline “BREAKING: EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study.”

The free-market think tank, which has a history of intellectually hi-larious denialism, says the “Environment (sic) Protection Agency” silenced an internal dissenter in the course of its endangerment finding, a process that concluded in April that greenhouse-gases threaten public health and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

According to CEI, the dissenter wanted to include “a significant internal critique of the agency’s global warming position” but was stifled because the report didn’t fit the political conclusion the EPA had already reached. The group published four EPA emails as evidence of political maneuvering within the agency.

And what do the emails reveal? That there’s nothing to this story. An EPA economist wanted to give scientific opinion, which wasn’t accepted—most likely because it’s outside his area of expertise and training.
 
The dissenter, Alan Carlin, works as a research analyst in Washington at the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), which conducts a variety of economic analysis, including cost-benefit studies, risk assessment, and economic impact modeling. In short, it does number crunching, not scientific research.

Carlin’s personal website, Carlin Economics, reports that he received a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in economics and joined the EPA in 1971. It also includes links to his publications, the most recent of which support solar radiation management—a form of geoengineering—and oppose reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

If Carlin wanted to comment on the scientific causes of climate change, there’s little in his work experience or education to suggest it’s within his expertise. In an email, his supervisor at the EPA told him to stick to his own work [PDF].

The EPA said Carlin has had plenty of opportunities to present his thoughts—on both science and economics.

“Certain opinions were expressed by an individual [Carlin] who is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue,” said EPA spokesperson Adora Andy.

“Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding.  Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar.  The individual was also granted a request to join a committee that organizes an ongoing climate seminar series, open to both agency and outside experts, where he has been able to invite speakers with a full range of views on climate science.  The claims that his opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false.”

But what was it that Carlin wanted to attach to the endangerment ruling? Sam Kazman, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s general counsel, told me Carlin's work cites research showing global warming has been caused by ocean and solar cycles, not by human-caused emissions. Kazman refused to share the document.

“On the question of whether we have a copy of any version of the report—sorry, but at this time all I can say is no comment,” Kazman wrote in an email.

So there’s your nothingburger of a story. The CEI tried to seed this false controversy in hopes that it would grow into a media kerfuffle that would slow down the EPA’s climate work or the energy and climate bill advancing toward a vote in the House this week.

One gullible blogger already took the bait. Any others who make the same error shall have their blogging license suspended for 90 days and their Twittering privileges permanently revoked. It is hereby declared.

UPDATE 6/26: The Competitive Enterprise Institute released a draft of the “suppressed” report, which confirms the EPA’s explanation: The agency didn’t think much of the report because it’s authored by an economist claiming to be a climatologist.

“We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming,” write authors Al Carlin and John Davidson of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics. They go on to criticize the EPA’s reliance on climate science from the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Surprising absolutely no one, opponents of emissions regulation have pounced on the supposed scandal, saying it’s reason to reject the Waxman-Markey climate bill. Leading bill opponent Joe Barton (R-Texas) mentioned the report during floor debate on Friday and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), at a press conference, called it “a case of the American public denied the right to know this contrary scientific evidence.”

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Grist sat through roughly six hours of debate of the climate bill on Friday, and if you were watching or following our live blogging of it, you know how painful it got at times. For those who want to see the short version of Friday's debate, Progressive Media USA put together a one-minute summary of Democratic and Republican talking points.

It's much less painful than the full debate, I assure you.

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UPDATE 6/26: The Competitive Enterprise Institute released a draft of the “suppressed” report, which confirms the EPA’s explanation: The agency didn’t think much of the report because it’s authored by an economist claiming to be a climatologist.

“We have become increasingly concerned that EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming,” write authors Al Carlin and John Davidson of the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics. They go on to criticize the EPA’s reliance on climate science from the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Surprising absolutely no one, opponents of emissions regulation have pounced on the supposed scandal, saying it’s reason to reject the Waxman-Markey climate bill. Leading bill opponent Joe Barton (R-Texas) mentioned the report during floor debate on Friday and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), at a press conference, called it “a case of the American public denied the right to know this contrary scientific evidence.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

This is spin.Courtesy katiew via Flickr Wouldn’t it be terrible if the Obama administration turned out to be manipulating science to fit its own ideology? Especially after Obama declared, to much fanfare, that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over"?

Yeah, that would make a helluva story: “Look, the new guy is just like the old guy!”

Well yeah, but it hasn’t happened yet, at least not in the way the Competitive Enterprise Institute claims in a release it sent this morning under the headline “BREAKING: EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study.”

The free-market think tank, which has a history of intellectually hi-larious denialism, says the “Environment (sic) Protection Agency” silenced an internal dissenter in the course of its endangerment finding, a process that concluded in April that greenhouse-gases threaten public health and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

According to CEI, the dissenter wanted to include “a significant internal critique of the agency’s global warming position” but was stifled because the report didn’t fit the political conclusion the EPA had already reached. The group published four EPA emails as evidence of political maneuvering within the agency.

And what do the emails reveal? That there’s nothing to this story. An EPA economist wanted to give scientific opinion, which wasn’t accepted—most likely because it’s outside his area of expertise and training.
 
The dissenter, Alan Carlin, works as a research analyst in Washington at the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), which conducts a variety of economic analysis, including cost-benefit studies, risk assessment, and economic impact modeling. In short, it does number crunching, not scientific research.

Carlin’s personal website, Carlin Economics, reports that he received a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in economics and joined the EPA in 1971. It also includes links to his publications, the most recent of which support solar radiation management—a form of geoengineering—and oppose reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

If Carlin wanted to comment on the scientific causes of climate change, there’s little in his work experience or education to suggest it’s within his expertise. In an email, his supervisor at the EPA told him to stick to his own work [PDF].

The EPA said Carlin has had plenty of opportunities to present his thoughts—on both science and economics.

“Certain opinions were expressed by an individual [Carlin] who is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue,” said EPA spokesperson Adora Andy.

“Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding.  Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar.  The individual was also granted a request to join a committee that organizes an ongoing climate seminar series, open to both agency and outside experts, where he has been able to invite speakers with a full range of views on climate science.  The claims that his opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false.”

But what was it that Carlin wanted to attach to the endangerment ruling? Sam Kazman, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s general counsel, told me Carlin's work cites research showing global warming has been caused by ocean and solar cycles, not by human-caused emissions. Kazman refused to share the document.

“On the question of whether we have a copy of any version of the report—sorry, but at this time all I can say is no comment,” Kazman wrote in an email.

So there’s your nothingburger of a story. The CEI tried to seed this false controversy in hopes that it would grow into a media kerfuffle that would slow down the EPA’s climate work or the energy and climate bill advancing toward a vote in the House this week.

One gullible blogger already took the bait. Any others who make the same error shall have their blogging license suspended for 90 days and their Twittering privileges permanently revoked. It is hereby declared.

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This is not helpful:

Russia Today offers this steaming pile of reportage under the disingenuous headline, "Did global warming help bring down Air France flight 447?"

Will climate change lead to fiercer storms? Sure. Can any particular storm be linked to climate change with any legitimate certainty? No. The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media has a timely piece on this very subject.

This sort of framing—note the headline in the form of a question, note that the evidence is "leading" some climatologists to "wonder"—is made-to-order fodder for deniers like the Business & Media Institute. The free-market group (“Advancing the Culture of Free Enterprise in America”) already pounced on the story: "Climatologist Blames Global Warming for Air France Crash."

They’ve got the gall to call out "warming alarmists" for advancing this fictitious link to the Air France crash. Alarmist?! Why…that’s just…OK, this pretty much fits the definition of alarmist. We can agree on that one.

And, to jab back at the climate skeptics, the Russia Today stinker of a headline was the equivalent of the gleeful right-wing bloviating about the "myth" of climate change every time the temperature drops below 40 degrees F in Miami.

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Obama takes on the anti-scientific delayers

For the past month, House Republicans have been taking their anti-climate-bill efforts on the road, trying to stir up public resistance to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy legislation. The show kicked off in D.C. and moved on to Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California.

Now the House Republican Conference has produced a "greatest hits" reel on their travels (and if these were the highlights, we'd hate to see the lowlights). With melodramatic music and stiffs in suits, we think it could be the comedy sleeper hit of the summer.

While we're on the topic of Republican anti-climate-bill hijinks, ThinkProgress put together a video of GOP representatives' tirades against the bill on the House floor. In about an hour of speeches on the topic on Tuesday, various members malign green jobs as "paper mâché," "subprime," and "gangrene."

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I'm keeping close watch over debate on the Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. (Grist ... sitting through hours upon hours of markup so you don't have to!)

We'll spare you the blow-by-blow and just give you the scoop when there's big news. But the true political junkies waiting at the edge of their seats for news can tune in to my Twitter feed or our collective climate-bill feed for up-to-the minute information.

The short story: Debate on the bill is trudging onward very, very slowly. Democrats have passed a flurry of minor amendments -- nothing too exciting. And though Republicans have offered a number of amendments meant to weaken the legislation, they've had very little success, with only one amendment passing so far.

Undeterred, Republicans still intend to offer more than 400 amendments to drag out debate on the bill as long as possible. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, debate lasted late into the night. If they can't kill the bill, they're going to try to kill us by boredom in the process.

To stave off the tedium, I've been keeping an eye on the League of Conservation Voters' new blog that tracks the wacky things climate skeptics are saying on the Hill.

Speaking of, here's video of Smokey Joe Barton (R-Texas), the king of Republican deniers, discussing the climate bill on C-SPAN Tuesday. Money quote: "Something that the Democrat sponsors do not point out, a lot of the CO2 that is created in the United States is naturally created. You can't regulate God. Not even the Democratic majority in the U.S. Congress can regulate God."

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How much smaller can the climate denial tent get? We’re about to find out.

With companies as diverse as Nike, Johnson & Johnson and Ford Motor Company having joined the call for comprehensive clean energy & climate legislation, the Republican Party has come up with its counter-strategy: “To fight bill, GOP turns on business,” declares the headline in today’s Politico, citing a Double-Secret Probation Leaked Memo from Republican staffers for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. (The lesson: If you want people to read your memo, pretend it’s secret, then “leak” it to anyone who’ll take it.)

Earlier this week, ClimateWire reported, “The GOP also may try to eliminate tax benefits for companies that belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, including Alcoa, BP, Duke Energy Corp., Rio Tinto and Shell Oil Co., and tinker with the nonprofit tax status for the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute and Pew Center on Global Climate Change.” That’ll show ‘em!

Who’s left in the denial tent these days? You can’t just say “Big Oil” – ConocoPhillips and Shell are part of US CAP. You can’t just say “Big Coal” – Duke Energy recently dropped out of the National Association of Manufacturers over Duke’s support for climate legislation. How about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, purportedly the voice of small business? Last, week, 10,000 small business leaders asked the U.S. chamber to shut up and get out of the way on clean energy and climate action.

Even as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 moves through the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Republican leadership still has no viable alternative to offer. All Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) could do last week was dust off the Cheney energy plan, little more than a big polluter bailout bill.

Since denial has failed, Republican leadership is moving to anger, lashing out at businesses who’ve been allies for generations. And without the claim that they’re protecting business by blocking clean energy legislation, what’s left for the Grand Old Party’s leaders to claim? That they’re protecting polluters? Or that, science and jobs be damned, we’re the captains of this here denial ship and we’re going down with it?

The GOP Tent is starting to look more like a bunker. Will any of the rank-and-file question that mentality? Looks like we're about to find out.

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George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is concerned about the plight of marathon runners under a cap-and-trade plan. No, we're not making this up.

Barton, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee and a vocal climate skeptic, told conservative magazine Newsmax in an interview published on Monday that he is worried that regulating greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act would lead to the regulation of everything under the sun -- including marathoners.

An excerpt:

Never mind that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has indicated she has no interest in regulating small sources -- the agency's regulations would target major industrial sources emitting at least 25,000 metric tons of carbon per year, as well as the transportation sector. And no, the "transportation sector" doesn't include runners.

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