Are you confused by the issues surrounding carbon dioxide cap & trade systems?

Of course not — but you probably know someone who is. If so, my friend Holmes Hummel, a Stanford Ph.D. and legislative fellow for Congressman Inslee (D-WA) has created a website just for you your friend, aimed specifically at “The Curious & Concerned, a growing number of people who understand the importance of a federal climate policy but are confused by the framework of the current proposals”:

Introduction to Cap-and-Trade Carbon Policy
Using Musical Chairs: An Illustration of Managed Scarcity

Holmes welcomes feedback!

The bar for Wall Street Journal editorials, in the journalistic equivalent of limbo dancing, keeps dropping. In a piece titled, “The Science of Gore’s Nobel” (UPDATE: Open access link), Holman W. Jenkins Jr. of the WSJ ed board, manages to slander the media, Al Gore, the Nobel Committee, and all climate scientists — without offering any facts to back up the attacks:

The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn’t for “science”…. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

Why would the media blur the Nobel Peace Prize with a science prize when Gore isn’t a scientist? They wouldn’t, of course, but this imagined media blunder allows Jenkins — a journalist — to make the subject of his piece climate science.

What is especially bizarre about the WSJ piece is that Gore shared the Nobel Peace Price with thousands of scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — but Jenkins never mentions that fact at all. Again, that’s because he wants to attack the Nobel committee for “promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.”

In fact, the award was not given for promoting “belief” — a pejorative word as Jenkins uses it — but for promoting “knowledge” — as the Committee said, the award was given for “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

By omitting mention of the IPCC, Jenkins can ignore the tremendous scientific evidence for the theory of human-caused global warming and the urgent need for action. Jenkins attacks the international scientific consensus without providing a single piece of counterevidence — or any understanding of either the nature of the consensus or the difference between “belief” and “scientific knowledge.”

Because the consensus is so important, and now, so alarming, it is worth understanding what it is — and what it isn’t — since conservatives must either ramp up their attack on it — or accept the clarion call for immediate government action (something most of them cannot stomach politically no matter what the science says).

Let’s start with what the consensus isn’t — ably set out by Jenkins:

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This morning the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began its mark-up of Lieberman-Warner’s global warming bill – “America’s Climate Security Act.”

You can watch the live webcast here, just look for the red “Live Hearing” button. I’m listening now, and it’s certainly interesting.

The current debate (11:30 am EST) is over energy bills for low-income households. Each Senator is claiming to triumph the needs of the lower classes, but Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) just noted that several Senators speaking out of concern for low-income citizens often vote against programs like LIHEAP.

The low-income debate spurred from an amendment, of course, because Senators are dropping amendments left and right in order to slow the process.

Republican Senators plan to introduce over 150 amendments to slow the bill (E&E PM, subs. req’d). Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) alone is responsible for working on 46 of the amendments — [JR: a valuable exercise that certainly vindicates his decision to stay in the Senate] — with others coming from Sens. James Inhofe (R-OK), George Voinovich (R-OH), David Vitter (R-LA) and Kit Bond (R-MO).

According to Sen. James Inhofe’s staff director, the bill will pass committee, but, “the suspense will be on how individual members vote on individual amendments.” (In fact, Inhofe just called for roll call votes on the amendments. Sounds a lot more like another delay tactic than the Senator being honestly anxious about the votes.)

The action won’t stop any time soon – Sen. Boxer just announced that she and Sen. Inhofe have bought the group lunch so that they can work through this bill. Alas, no such thing as a free lunch when there are 150 amendments on your plate.

… to change the lightbulbs Texans use?

The answer turns out to be … 5:

To kick off a statewide campaign to get residents to replace old light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs, Texas mayors vowed to launch an effort to make the bulbs available, to encourage their use and to suggest that people give them as gifts for Christmas or other occasions….

Joining San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger at the Energy Conservation Summit were Austin Mayor Will Wynn, Houston Mayor Bill White, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and El Paso Mayor John Cox.

Bill White is my former boss from 1993 to 1995 when he was Deputy Secretary of Energy. He is just about the smartest and most thoughtful politician you are ever likely to encounter.

He just won his third — and term-limited last — term as mayor of Houston. Here’s hoping the rumors are true and he pursues higher office!