Back on June 21, I wrote, “It’s alive! An energy bill that puts a price on carbon is now officially undead.”

Back then, my sources gave the chances for passage this year of comprehensive energy legislation that included a cap on utility greenhouse gas emissions as 50-50.  But that presupposed a very hard push — messaging and arm-twisting — from Obama and his team.  Since that hasn’t happened, we’re now probably at best 50-50 for any energy bill at all!

True, the Politico reported today, “Reid warms to July climate vote”:

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How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from smoking to global warming

JR: I loved “Merchants of Doubt.”  But before I could write my review, guest blogger John Atcheson wrote his.  John has more than 30 years in energy and the environment with government, private industry, and the nation’s leading think tanks (see “Utility decoupling on steroids.”)  He is working on his own novel about climate change.

In Merchants of Doubt Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway take us on a fascinating trip down what they call Tobacco Road.  Take the journey with them, and you’ll see renowned scientists abandon science, you’ll see environmentalism equated with communism, and you’ll discover the connection between the Cold War and climate denial.

And for the most part, you’ll be entertained along the way.

Oreskes and Conway are historians who focus on science. What they do best is to sort through history’s discarded headlines and peak into the nooks and crannies of scientific literature to weave together their tale and to reveal the hypocrisy and hubris of a few scientists who show up again and again in contrarian positions against established science.

The trip exposes an unlikely link between Manhattan project scientists and the cult of denial that confronted virtually every major public health and environmental initiative of the last sixty years.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a new ad campaign.  It is part of their long-standing effort to shine a light on the scientific truth about human-caused global warming.

The thinking behind the ads, according to UCS President Kevin Knobloch, is that “People like science and scientists, but they often don’t have a good idea of who they are as people.”

Of Dr. Inouye, we find out:

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been asking questions about the birds and the bees. How do they fly? What do they eat?

Now that I’m a trained scientist, my questions may be more sophisticated, but the passion is the same. I wonder what climate change is doing to the life cycle of wildflowers, and how bumblebees and hummingbirds are reacting to those changes. The bug’s-eye view shows me that our world is warming like never before. My name is David Inouye, and I’m a concerned scientist.

To learn more about my work, visit www.ucsusa.org/evidence.

I asked filmmaker/scientist Randy Olson, author of Don’t Be Such a Scientist:  Talking Substance in an Age of Style, for his thoughts.  He wrote me:

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Our guest blogger is Heather Taylor-Miesle, Director of the NRDC Action Fund.

On June 26, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-212 in favor of HR 2454, the Americ an Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Only eight Republicans – we’ll call them the “Enlightened Eight” – voted “aye.” These Republicans were Mary Bono-Mack (CA-45), Mike Castle (DE-AL), John McHugh (NY-23), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Mark Kirk (IL-10), Dave Reichert (WA-8), and Christopher Smith (NJ-4).

Republicans voting for cap and trade in the year of the Tea Party? You’d think that they’d be dumped in the harbor by now. Instead, they’re all doing fine. In fact, to date, not a single one of these Republicans has been successfully primaried by tea partiers. Instead, we have two — Castle and Kirk — running for U.S. Senate, one — McHugh — who was appointed Secretary of the Army by President Obama, and five others — Bono-Mack, LoBiondo, Lance, Reichert, Smith — running for reelection.

Lance actually was challenged by not one, not two, but three tea party candidates. One of Lance’s opponents, David Larsen, even produced a nifty video, helpfully explaining that “Leonard Lance Loves Cap & Trade Taxes.” So, did this work? Did the Tea Partiers overthrow the tyrannical, crypto-liberal Lance? Uh, no. Instead, in the end, Lance received 56% of the vote, easily moving on to November.

Meanwhile, 100 miles or so south on the Jersey Turnpike, LoBiondo faced two tea party challengers – Donna Ward and Linda Biamonte — who also attacked on the cap-and-trade issue. According to Biamonte, cap and trade “is insidious and another tax policy… a funneling of money to Goldman Sachs and Al Gore through derivatives creating a carbon bubble like the housing bubble.” You’d think that Republican primary voters in the year of the Tea Party would agree with this line of attack. Yet LoBiondo won with 75% of the vote.

Last but not least in New Jersey, Christopher Smith easily turned back a tea party challenger — Alan Bateman — by a more than two-to-one margin. Bateman had argued that cap and trade is a internationalist plot:

Obama knows he can count on Smith to support the United Nations’ agenda to redistribute American wealth to foreign countries through international Cap & Trade agreements and other programs that threaten our sovereignty.

Apparently, Republican voters in NJ-4 didn’t buy that argument.

Across the country in California’s 45th District, Mary Bono-Mack won 71% of the vote over tea party candidate Clayton Thibodeau on June 8. This, despite Thibodeau attacking Bono-Mack as “the only Republican west of the Mississippi to vote for Cap and Trade.” Thibodeau also called cap and trade “frightening,” claiming that government could force you to renovate your home or meet requirements before you purchase a home. Thibodeau’s scare tactics on cap-and-trade didn’t play in CA-45.

Finally, in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert has drawn a Tea Party challenger named Ernest Huber, who writes that Reichert voted to “enslave” people in a “Soviet-style dictatorship“:

This is widely viewed as an attempt at Soviet-style dictatorship using the environmental scam of global warming/climate change. This bill was written by the communist Apollo Alliance, which was led by the communist Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs czar. It’s a nation-killer due to the multi-$trillion false tax bill it would impose on all of our activities, the massive destruction of jobs, and the loss of our freedoms to government employees who would regulate our every move through the EPA, Departments of Ecology, HUD, and Sustainable Communities. It passed the House 219-212. Bottom line: Reichert and seven other RINOs voted to enslave you and me.

We’ll see how this argument plays with voters in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, but something tells us it’s not going to go over any better than in the New Jersey or California primaries.

In sum, it’s quite possible for Republicans to vote for comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation and live (politically) to tell about it. The proof is in the primaries.

China Surges Past U.S., Europe in Clean-Energy Asset Financing

China attracted more asset financing in clean-energy technology in the second quarter than Europe and the U.S. combined, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said.

Financing of wind turbines, solar panels and low-carbon technology in China climbed 72 percent to $11.5 billion compared with the year-earlier quarter, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in an e-mailed statement. U.S. investments in clean energy rose to $4.9 billion while in Europe it fell to $4.5 billion.

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Last month I wrote about the new study that reaffirmed the broad scientific understanding of climate change and questioned the media’s reliance on a tiny group of less-credibile scientists for “balance.” The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study “Expert credibility in climate change,” was predictably attacked and misrepresented by the disinformers as part of their ongoing efforts to promote their fringe anti-science views.

To set the record straight, ClimateScienceWatch.org talked with one of the article’s coauthors, Stanford University Prof. Stephen Schneider.  The video and transcript of the interview are below.  First, let me repost the study’s main conclusion: Read more

NYT: “An examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses.”

Climate Progress has noted again and again, it’s time to “Turn Off the Oil Subsidy Spigot.”  Think Progress has an excellent analysis here on why:

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