Following the Tea Party wave of the midterm elections, half of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Congress now questions the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is a civilizational threat. Analysis by the Wonk Room, with research by Daily Kos’s RL Miller, finds that 45 of 97 Republican freshmen and 85 of 166 reelected Republicans are confirmed climate zombies. There are no Republican freshmen, in the House or Senate, who admit the science is real. New members include William Marcy (MS-2) — who warns of “Global Warming Environmental Terrorists” — and Kristi Noem (SD-AL) — who voted for a resolution that “astrological” and “thermological” dynamics “effect” the weather.

The U.S. Senate, as the Wonk Room has previously described, has a monolithic Republican bloc against climate action, with incoming Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repudiating their past support for cap-and-trade legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives now only has four Republicans who publicly admit that global warming pollution is real:

– Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18): “Global warming is real and man-made.”

– Rep. Judy Biggert (IL-13): “The science behind climate change is sound.”

– Rep. Jim Gerlach (PA-06): “Congressman Gerlach believes we have a responsibility as legislators and citizens to reduce our imprint on the Earth and reverse the effects of science-based climate change for both current and future generations.”

– Rep. Frank Wolf (VA-01): “I believe that global warming is real. The National Academy of Sciences has presented evidence that the Earth’s surface is warming because of human activities, including increased worldwide industrial development, over the past several decades.”

However, none of these four voted in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to combat climate pollution and support a clean energy economy. All five Republicans who did support the legislation and ran for re-election won: Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7). None of them have spoken publicly about the science of climate change.

It remains to be seen whether these nine Republican climate realists will do anything to stop the impending witch hunt against climate scientists by their conspiracy-minded caucus.

In only two Senate races did a candidate’s position on global warming become a major issue.  In those two Senate races, the candidate that stood with the Senate’s top global warming denier and embraced denial of basic scientific reality lost.

The first was Carly Fiorina (see After Inhofe’s endorsement, Carly Fiorina challenges climate science “” unlike the company she once ran! and Politico on CA Senate debate: “Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition 23″).  She was crushed by climate hawk Barbara Boxer

Just this afternoon, the Denver Post and AP called the Colorado Senate race for Bennet.  On October 21st, Ken Buck embraced Inhofe: “Global warming is the greatest hoax” — and, as the clip above makes clear, Bennet attacked immediately.

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Election-night poll in 83 battleground districts found, “Energy Vote Did Not Contribute to Democratic Defeat.”

According to the center-right Politico, “House Democrats who voted for the 2009 bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions – dubbed cap-and-tax by GOP opponents – had a terrible night.”  That’s from a piece headlined, “Democrats’ day of reckoning comes for climate vote.”  You can tell all you need to know about the Politico’s political leanings from its repetition of the polluter-tested-phrase ‘cap-and-tax’ to apply to a centrist, Republican-designed emissions reduction strategy.

The fact is, House Democrats in general had a terrible night.  Indeed, a post-election analysis (below) finds that nearly two thirds of the house Democrats who voted ‘no’ on the House climate and clean energy jobs bill, lost their seats. Time magazine concludes:

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“Democrats’ day of reckoning comes for climate vote,” writes the Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn and Robin Bravender. “House Democrats who voted for the 2009 bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions – dubbed cap-and-tax by GOP opponents – had a terrible night.”

In fact, Democrats who voted against clean energy were more than three times as likely to lose their seats than those who voted for it:

— Out of the 211 Democrats who voted for ACES, only 41 either lost or retired and saw their seats go Republican. Thus 81 percent of Democrats voting for the climate bill won their races.

– Of the 44 Democrats who voted against ACES, 28 lost, retired and lost the seat to Republicans, or in the case of Parker Griffith, flipped parties and lost the Republican primary. That means 64 percent of Democrats voting against the climate bill lost their seat.

– Of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill, only one was punished by the voters — Rep. Mike Castle (DE-AL), who lost his U.S. Senate primary to eventual loser Christine O’Donnell. Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7) were re-elected. Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10) was elected to the U.S. Senate and Rep. John McHugh (NY-23) became Secretary of the Army.

By contrast, the fight against big oil’s Proposition 23 to kill California’s climate legislation buoyed Democrats Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer to victory, helping to activate a broad coalition of progressive voters to come to the polls.

Boxer and Brown sweep to victory by 10 points, while Prop 23 fails by a staggering 61% to 39% in a “decisive and historic victory for the state’s clean energy economy, clean air and climate policy”

California is the only place in the country where climate and clean energy activists aggressively pushed their message across the board in the face of strong, well-funded opposition by Big Oil.  The Golden State hints at what might have happened had President Obama embraced action on climate and clean energy — and backed it up with aggressive and consistent messaging as Boxer, Brown, and the No-On-Prop-23 coalition did.

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Unless you are prepared to go to the theater wearing a head vise, you’ll probably want to skip Lomborg’s new film, Cool It.

Heck, you are probably going to want to put on your vise just to watch the trailer below, since it features the now-discredited Richard Lindzen and the renowned confusionist Freeman Dyson of all people saying how much he admires Lomborg — along with Lomborg’s alone standard disinformation (see “More on the Lomborg Deception” and Caldeira calls the geoengineering vision of Lomborg’s Climate Consensus “a dystopic world out of a science fiction story”).

Of course, the head vise is analogous to a geo-engineering solution to watching Lomborg’s film: It doesn’t actually prevent most of the dangerous impacts and it might well cause its own problems.  So, if you’d rather skip even the trailer, you can read the excellent “alternative guide” by Leo Hickman, features journalist and editor at the UK Guardian:

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Yes, Clean Energy Jobs Are Real

In researching for my series on jobs in renewable energy in the U.S., I turned up some very interesting information.  First, it’s clear that clean energy is creating jobs.  In 2010, the solar industry created 50,00 jobs according to the first ever national solar jobs census that was conducted by The Solar Foundation, Green LMI, Cornell University and others.  In total there are 93,000 people employed in the solar industry right now.

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