Between President Obama’s surprisingly hawkish second inaugural address, and the confirmation of John Kerry as Secretary of State, moves to combat climate change may be afoot in Washington.

That momentum extends to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where ranking minority member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and his fellow Democrats have been pushing to move hearings on climate change onto the group’s agenda for this congressional session. Unfortunately, Republicans still control the House and thus the committee, and have already shot down Democrats’ efforts twice, according to a report in The Hill.

On Wednesday the Committee, along party lines, voted down Democratic amendments to its formal oversight plan for the 113th Congress….

One defeated amendment, from Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), would have required hearings on the role of climate change in drought, heat waves, wildfires, reduced crop yields and other effects….

A second defeated amendment, by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), called for hearings on climate-related coastal threats including sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and ocean acidification. Both proposals called for witnesses including National Academy of Sciences members.

The good news is that Waxman intends to keep pressing, in order to get the GOP on record refusing to investigate an issue that is rapidly moving to the forefront of the American public’s concern:

More votes – with a similar outcome – are expected when the meeting to approve the oversight plan resumes next week.

Waxman is offering a third amendment calling for a hearing on recent reports that warn, “the window for action to prevent irreversible harm from climate change is closing rapidly.”

The need for American lawmakers to come to grips with the reality of climate change and global warming is pressing. In January, the Federal Advisory Committee released its draft of the third National Climate Assessment, and its prognostications were grim: If the United States remains on its current emissions path, most of the country will see a rise of 9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit over the coming century, with ever-worsening extreme weather, heat waves, deluges and droughts as the result.

Encouragingly, there are signs President Obama will call for new policy pushes in next week’s State of the Union address. Even without new laws from Congress, the executive branch has numerous regulatory tools with which it can combat climate change, including having the Environmental Protection Agency move to curb carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants. Nor are Waxman and other Democrats sitting idle — they’ve announced the formation of a new Bicameral Climate Change Task Force, “dedicated to focusing Congressional and public attention on climate change and developing effective policy responses.”

As for where the Republicans are at, the House Science and Technology Committee is set to hold a hearing that appears destined to degenerate into a forum for climate denialism. The committee’s new chair, Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX), has criticized “the idea of human-made global warming, railed against the media as “lap dogs” for not devoting enough airtime to climate deniers, and taken $500,000 from the oil and gas industries over his political career.

Ousted Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, the subject of the new climate documentary “Island President,” told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the challenge of saving his nation from extinction by the effects of greenhouse pollution. “Climate change is a very real issue to the Maldives. It’s not something in the future. We already have 16 islands where we have to relocate people.” The entire nation lies below 1.5 meters above sea level. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise by at least that amount unless immediate action is taken to reduce the amount of fossil-fuel pollution in the atmosphere. “What happens to the Maldives today will definitely happen the same to everyone else,” Nasheed said. “Maldives today, Manhattan tomorrow,” Mitchell agreed.

“The Island President” opens this weekend in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and next week in Washington DC and San Diego.

The global climate-activist organization 350.org is “gearing up for a major new fight to end the billions of dollars in subsidies the fossil fuel industry receives each year.” In an online video, 350.org founder Bill McKibben reviews the accomplishments of the climate movement in the United States, including the non-violent civil disobedience at the White House that led to the rejection of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and the challenges ahead:

The power of the fossil fuel industry over national politics is “a big part of what’s making this planet less habitable day by day,” McKibben says, as he asks people to “join the fight” against fossil-fuel subsidies.

Mitt Romney’s top donor is Environmental Defense Fund board member Julian H. Robertson Jr., who has given $1.3 million to the Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future even though Romney has viciously attacked the climate cap-and-trade policies EDF supports. A spokesperson for the hedge-fund billionaire said that Robertson is confident Romney is lying to the public when he campaigns against climate action as the “Soros agenda,” and will “do the right thing” if elected:

In terms of the environment and climate-change controls, which [Julian Robertson] does believe is one of the most important issues the country and the world faces, he has confidence that Romney, once he’s in there, will do the right thing.

Robertson has been a long-time supporter of Romney, saying he’s “the smartest guy I’ve ever seen” in 2007. Robertson vigorously supported Obama’s cap-and-trade bill in 2009, because of the “danger of global warming.”

If Romney intends to support climate-change controls as president, he certainly hasn’t given any such indication on the campaign trail:

“Unlike Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney never sat next to Nancy Pelosi in an ad funded by George Soros on behalf of Al Gore’s global warming initiative. As recently as 2008, the Soros agenda had no better friend than Newt Gingrich.” [2/2/12]

“In my administration, coal will not be a four-letter word.” [3/5/12]

“I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.” [11/2/11]

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The founder of Conservation Hawks, an organization of sportsmen dedicated to fighting climate change, will give up his gun if global warming is a hoax.

“If you can convince Conservation Hawks chairman Todd Tanner that he’s wasting his time, that he does not have to worry about climate change, he will present to you his most prized possession: A Beretta Silver Pigeon 12 gauge over/under that was a gift from his wife, and has been a faithful companion on many a Montana bird hunt,” Hal Herring writes at The Conservationist. “I know the gun, and I’ve hunted and fished with Todd for years. He’s not kidding. You convince him, he’ll give you the gun.”

Let’s say you are walking down a trail in the wilderness with your wife and kids, and you come upon a grizzly sow, standing on a carcass. She charges, flat out. You’re in front of your family. What do you do? Just give up? Pretend it’s not happening? Let her maul you and everything your care about? Of course you don’t. You take action. That is how I see climate change. It’s real, it’s threatening everything we love. Not taking action is not an option.

Tanner rebuffed the argument that action on global warming pollution just means a government takeover. “You want to talk about government intrusion, think about what it means if we don’t address this now while we have the time and resources,” he said. “We will lose the freedoms that we have because somebody—and it will be government—will be in an all out effort to try and address the effects. To try and address the effects of our neglect. We’ll face the worst thing of all- losing our freedom. And we’ll already have lost most of hunting and fishing. That’s how serious I believe this is.”

So those of you who deny the threat of global warming — Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, David Koch — this could be yours if you can convince Tanner that there’s really just a scientific conspiracy to trick people that greenhouse pollution is dangerous: