This week, Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of SuperFreakonomics, embraced the fevered “Climategate” ravings of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and other global warming deniers in an interview with Fox Business Network host David Asman. Dubner purports that the hacked University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails reveal that the supposed consensus on global warming is because “everybody’s scared to be an outlier, everybody’s scared to be a skeptic.” After Asman compared climate scientists to Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler — Dubner did his own Glenn Beck impression, accusing “potent” scientists of “colluding” to “tell Al Gore what to say,” and “distorting evidence” to “make their findings be right for their position”:

You can’t read these e-mails and feel that the IPCC’s or the major climate scientists’ findings and predictions about global warming are kosher. You can’t. They may be, but if you read these you have to have a whole lot of skepticism about that. And of course, coming into Copenhagen these are going to have a big effect how the world looks at you. They’re going to say, “Wait a minute. You say these climate scientists have been telling us we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow?”

Watch it:

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, Washington Times, and other news outlets are participating in this Swiftboat-style smear campaign, following the lead of actual Swiftboat smearer and former Limbaugh and Inhofe employee Marc Morano — instead of bothering to understand what the scientists were actually talking about in the hacked emails.

However, as climate scientist Richard Somerville explained yesterday, “The ice has no agenda.” Arctic sea ice is at historically low levels, Australia is on fire, the northern United Kingdom is underwater, the world’s glaciers are disappearing, and half of the United States has been declared an agricultural disaster area. And it’s the the hottest decade in recorded history.

By asking whether “we have to stop burning fossil fuel tomorrow,” Dubner — a top blogger for the New York Times — gets to the heart of why this bizarre theory of a cabal of all-powerful climatologists is getting support from conservative media and politicians. The incontrovertible science — based not on manipulated data but on decades of basic research — is that the burning of fossil fuels is drastically reshaping our planet’s climate and acidifying the oceans. And the only known way to restore conditions to those safe for human civilization is to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels. Doing so, however, would affect the incredible profits and power of the oil and coal industries, and of their ideological allies.

In fact, if we stop treating our atmosphere like a sewer, the climate system will heal itself over time, potentially more rapidly than we expect. That our past inaction will continue to bear consequences into the future is a reason to act with greater swiftness, not to dither further. The longer we delay, the more difficult and expensive the challenge to reduce pollution while adapting to a hostile world becomes.

In short, we are the “captains of our own destiny” and our positions are not dictated by the U.S. Chamber on this or any other matter.

“The incident,” the Puget Sound Business Journal writes, “again underscores the fact that the business community, far from being monolithic, is just as politically diverse as the rest of the country.”

It’s kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate. Are we warming or are we cooling? I don’t think Americans are even told anymore if it’s global warming or just climate change. And I don’t attribute all the changes to man’s activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical and the earth does cool and it warms.

Listen here:

Palin, of course, lives in the state that is at the epicenter of man-made global warming. Global warming has caused Alaska’s average temperature to rise by 3.4°F, causing once-frozen land to collapse, glaciers to disappear, outbreaks of beetles and wildfires to spread, and forcing Todd Palin’s Iron Dog race to move hundreds of miles north. And yes, the science is clear that it’s because of all the fossil fuels Palin loves to “tap into.”

Many conservative Democrats have questioned President Obama’s clean energy agenda. Now, a Republican is breaking with his party to talk sense. In a press conference yesterday with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham rebuked senators unwilling to address carbon pollution. Saying that he has “seen the effects of a warming planet,” Graham called for the United States to “lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution”:

The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.

Watch it:

Graham sounded more like Van Jones — the author of “The Green Collar Economy” who was branded by Glenn Beck as a “communist” — than many of his Democratic colleagues:

Max Baucus (D-MT): Montana, with our resource-based agriculture and tourism economies, cannot afford the unmitigated impacts of climate change. But we also cannot afford the unmitigated effects of climate change legislation.

Evan Bayh (D-IN): Jobs should be our top priority and we shouldn’t do anything that detracts from that.

Robert Byrd (D-WV): I will actively oppose any bill that would harm the workers, families, industries, or our resource-based economy in West Virginia.

Byron Dorgan (D-ND): I just don’t think climate change is going to be on the floor this year. Trying to restart our economic engine and trying to get this country back to work — to me that is the most important issue.

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): I am opposed to the House passed cap-and-trade legislation, which in my view, picks winners and losers and places a disproportionate share of the economic burden on families and businesses in Arkansas.

Claire McCaskill (D-MO): I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri.

Ben Nelson (D-NE): I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home are going to be disadvantaged.

Jim Webb (D-VA): We can’t just start with things like emission standards at a time when we’re at a crisis with the entire national energy policy.

Do these Democrats agree with Lindsey Graham that our planet “is in peril“? Do they agree with Graham that “limiting carbon pollution is good for business”? Will conservative Democrats follow Sen. Graham’s embrace of the “new green economy” — and shouldn’t they be asked if they will?

Senate Republicans have endorsed Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) plan to boycott the legislative markup of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733), scheduled to begin tomorrow. Inhofe’s GOP compatriots on the environment committee hope to block action by refusing to participate in the markup on the pretext that the Enviromental Protection Agency’s economic analysis of the bill is not “complete.” In a letter sent to committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), ranking member Inhofe and his counterparts on five other committees said any attempt to begin the markup before acceding to his demands “would severely damage” its chances for passage:

We understand that there may be an attempt to report S. 1733 from the Committee not only without a satisfactory analysis, but also without sufficient opportunity to address the bipartisan concerns raised over the course of legislative hearings on the measure. As we are sure you will understand, from our viewpoint, such an approach would severely damage, rather than help, the chances of enacting changes to our nation’s climate and energy policies.

The signatories are the top Republicans on the six Senate committees that will consider this legislation — environment, energy, agriculture, commerce, foreign relations, and finance. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX, ), like Inhofe, flatly deny the reality of climate change. However, several of the signatories have claimed concern about the threat of global warming — Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Dick Lugar (R-IN), who in 2006 warned of the “significant long-term risks to the economy and the environment of the United States from the temperature increases and climatic disruptions that are projected to result from increased greenhouse gas concentrations.” Evidently their commitment to partisan obstruction is greater than their concern for the future of the nation.

Download the letter here.

The second thing I want to note is this is not the only continuing effort to deceive the American public. I want to note a book called Freakonomics, or SuperFreakonomics, that some authors wrote, that basically said or asserted we don’t have to control CO2, we’ll just pump sulfur dioxide up into the atmosphere and that will solve the problem. They purported to quote a scientist named Ken Caldeira from Stanford who’s one of the predominant researchers in ocean acidification to suggest that Dr. Caldeira didn’t think we should control CO2. Which is an absolute deception. Dr. Caldeira I’ve spoken to personally. He’s told me we have to solve ocean acidification. You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.

Watch it:

Levitt and Dubner’s promotion of geoengineering as a “cheap and simple” alternative to carbon mitigation is in direct opposition to the views of Dr. Ken Caldeira and the world’s scientific community. Although Caldeira objected to the chapter and has since repeatedly said he was misrepresented in multiple ways, the SuperFreakonomics authors have continued their deception, joining the billion-dollar effort by fossil-fuel companies and the radical right to thwart action on climate change.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Later during the hearing, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) asked Miller about the purpose of ACCCE. Miller replied that in addition to grassroots lobbying (astroturfing) and state-based lobbying, his front group has only began federal lobbying in “April of 2008″ in its “16 year history”:

INSLEE: Your entire goal of your organization is to influence Congress. Is that right?

MILLER: We do work at the state level, we do regulatory matters, we do general education to the public. So, the federal, direct federal lobbying has only been part of our portfolio since April of 2008 with a 16 year history of the organization.

Watch it:

Miller’s claim is another example of the coal industry’s perjury under oath. In a six month period of 2007 alone, ACCCE, under its previous name of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, spent $2,660,000 lobbying the federal government. Senate disclosures show that the organization has spent millions more lobbying since 2001.

ACCCE was formed in 2008, according to its website, with the combined “assets and missions of the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED) and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC).” So when Miller noted his 16 year history, he was referring to the lobbying efforts of the coal industry’s previous incarnations, ABEC and CEED.

I do want to congratulate you on your Youtube, the fact you’re using the term global warming again, I appreciate that. People have been running from that term ever since we went out of that natural warming cycle about nine years ago.

Watch it:

Inhofe’s dangerous nonsense has been debunked repeatedly by scientists, from the UK Met Office and NOAA to independent statisticians. 2005 is the hottest year on record, and the last ten years have been the hottest decade on record. Furthermore, it is clear that fossil fuel emissions are responsible.

The PR strategy has been focused on lashing back at critics, while assuring the public that the Chamber actually does view climate change as a serious problem that must be addressed somehow. Chamber officials and representatives have been on a media blitz, seeking to rebuke the Scopes monkey trial comment and trying to strike a very different tone on the science of climate change:

Chamber Chief Lobbyist Bruce Josten called the Scopes monkey trial comment “unfortunate, regrettable, stupid.” “We have not, are not and will not” challenge the science behind climate change, added Josten. [Politico, 10/20/09]

Chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel: “We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming.” [NYT, 9/28/09]

David Chavern, Executive Vice President: “We want a climate change bill.” [NPR, 10/22/09]

However, in a 75-minute, profanity-laced interview with Politico today, Chamber president Tom Donohue continued to deny the science underpinning climate change:

Donohue refused to say if he believes the science behind global warming. “Is the science right? Is science not right? I don’t know,” he said.

Of course, Donohue is being consistent. Donohue, who also sits on the board of a company that ships coal, has forced the Chamber into a denier position on climate change for years. He has run ads mocking cap and trade, touted books questioning climate change, and promoted a myth of a global “cooling trend.”

Despite the spin by more disciplined officials, the Chamber continues to spend unprecedented amounts of money lobbying against clean energy legislation. With climate change deniers like Bill Kovacs and Tom Donohue at the helm, it seems unlikely that there will be much of a change in position — even with local Chambers of Commerce joining the slew of businesses repudiating the national organization’s backwards stance on climate.

“As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name, to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change, in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy, through cap and tax type policies, all in the name of national security, is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!” Mr. Metcalfe’s email reads. “Remember Benedict Arnold before giving credibility to a veteran who uses their service as a means to promote a leftist agenda. Drill Baby Drill!!!”

Rep. Metcalfe, who served in the U.S. Army from 1980-84, today defended the remarks, saying that “if the type of policies that an individual promotes undermines the Constitution and the law of the land in our country, then they are not patriots.”

Global warming is inextricably linked to national security, with the potential to “aggravate existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions” around the world, which “could increase the pool of potential recruits into terrorist activity.” In the past, Metcalfe has refused to support Domestic Violence Awareness month in Pennsylvania because the resolution referenced domestic abuse suffered by men, which Metcalfe interpreted as part of a “homosexual agenda.” He also opposed a vote to “honor the 60th anniversary of a Muslim group in the state, because ‘Muslims don’t recognize Jesus Christ as God.’”

The Chamber of Commerce quickly tried to quash the reports that it had reversed its “Scopes monkey trial” stance. Chamber of Commerce official Eric Wohlschlegel broke into the press conference held by the Yes Men at the National Press Club, shouting, “This guy is a fake!” After a “mild shoving match at the podium,” Wohlschegel told reporters, “It is a very sad day.” U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Thomas J. Collamore decried “public relations hoaxes” and called for “law enforcement authorities to investigate this event”:

Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change. These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases.

Of course, it is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other right-wing corporate groups that have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting “public relations hoaxes” to “undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.” As PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee explained his company’s departure from the Chamber, “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s stance on this issue.”

It’s doubtful that the Chamber — chaired by race-baiters and corrupt global warming deniers — will now be decrying clean coal carols, climate skeptics, fearmongering, and broken economic analyses as it spends over $100 million a year to lobby Congress.

SuperFreakonomics, the forthcoming sequel to the pop-economics bestseller Freakonomics by economists Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, devotes 44 pages to a contrarian view of climate change, calling global warming a “religion.” Much of the chapter praises Microsoft billionaire and scientific dilettante, Nathan Myhrvold, whose solution to global warming is to pump acid rain pollution into the atmosphere. Levitt and Dubner also claim that prominent climate scientist Ken Caldeira does not think carbon dioxide is the “right villain”:

Caldeira is thoroughly convinced that human activity is responsible for some global warming and is more pessimistic than Myhrvold about how future climate will affect humankind. He believes “we are being incredibly foolish emitting carbon dioxide” as we currently do. Yet his research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight.

Levitt and Dubner’s portrayal of Caldeira is false. As he told Climate Progress’s Joseph Romm in an e-mail interview, he believes carbon dioxide is the central villain:

Every carbon dioxide emission adds to climate damage and increasing risk of catastrophic consequences. There is no safe level of emission. I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies.

Levitt and Dubner spend much of their time channeling conservative columnist George Will, complaining about a “drumbeat of doom” growing louder from “doomsayers” even though the average global temperature, they say, “has in fact decreased.” The book also repeats Will’s obsession with a supposed consensus about “global cooling” in the 1970s.

To prepare, the ministers have been learning the basics of scuba diving on the weekends. Nasheed already is a certified diver. At the meeting, Cabinet members will communicate using hand gestures. The president will ratify a pledge calling on other countries to slash greenhouse emissions ahead of a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

The Maldives, a nation of 1,200 coral islands southwest of India, “lies just 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) above sea level.” Sea levels have already risen by 0.2 meters (8 inches) in the past century due to thermal expansion and ice melt caused by global warming. In 2008, scientists warned that the best estimate for sea level rise by 2100 “lies between 0.8 and 2.0 meters” (2.5 to 6.6 feet).

It is my view that regardless of Administration, the President acting through the entire executive branch is fully entitled to express his policy judgments to the EPA Administrator, and to expect his subordinate to carry out the judgment of what the law requires and permits. . . . I cannot support any investigations that could have a chilling effect within the deliberative process of the Administration, and cause future career and political employees from refraining from an open and honest dialogue.

By some strange miracle, Inhofe has had a complete change of heart on the inviolability of the “unitary executive” during the Obama presidency. In June, Inhofe even supported a criminal investigation into whether the EPA was “suppressing science” when its officials did not support the report of an EPA economist who had plagiarized blog posts from global warming deniers.

I am sorry to learn of Apple’s resignation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is unfortunate that your company didn’t take the time to understand the Chamber’s position on climate and forfeited the opportunity to advance a 21st century approach to climate change.

Of course, Apple is right. The Chamber of Commerce has a retrograde stance on global warming, opposes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and has become an enemy of a clean-energy economy. In fact, in an unusual merger of interests, long-time Apple rival Microsoft has also distanced itself from the Chamber’s radical views.

There has recently been a “business backlash” against the Chamber of Commerce over its refusal to accept the science of global warming and lobbying against climate change legislation. The New York Times reports today that the latest company to join this backlash is Apple, which wrote in a letter to the Chamber that it has been “frustrating” that the business federation has been fighting efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions:

“We strongly object to the chamber’s recent comments opposing the E.P.A.’s effort to limit greenhouse gases,” wrote Catherine A. Novelli, the vice-president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, in a letter dated today and addressed to Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the chamber. Click here to read the letter.

“Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the chamber at odds with us in this effort,” Ms. Novelli continued.

Apple’s resignation was effective immediately, the letter said. The move comes a few weeks after Apple expanded the environmental disclosures on its products.

Apple joins Pacific Gas & Energy, Public Service Company of New Mexico, and Exelon in an ever-growing list of companies who are leaving the Chamber over its ideological opposition to any serious action over climate change.

By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere “plateau,” not warming’s apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.

By this logic, we’d have to conclude that the Toronto Blue Jays just clinched the A.L. East division title — after all, they’ve won six games in a row and are 9-1 in their last ten games, while the New York Yankees lost their last game and are only 7-3. (In reality, the Yankees have clinched the division title.) However, when ThinkProgress contacted Will to confirm this theory, he responded:

You don’t seem to understand baseball. The Blue Jays are not even in contention.

Will’s persistent assertion that global warming has stopped during the hottest decade in recorded history is just as nonsensical as the idea that a team that is nine games below .500 is beating one that is 45 games above .500. Unfortunately, Will hung up before we could ask who he believed was the hottest team in baseball.

The Wonk Room has more.

Facing increasing pressure from activists, Nike today announced that is resigning from the Chamber’s board of directors:

It is important that US companies be represented by a strong and effective Chamber that reflects the interests of all its members on multiple issues. We believe that on the issue of climate change the Chamber has not represented the diversity of perspective held by the board of directors.

Therefore, we have decided to resign our board of directors position. We will continue our membership to advocate for climate change legislation inside the committee structure and believe that we can better influence policy by being part of the conversation. Moving forward we will continue to evaluate our membership.

The New York Times has an editorial today criticizing the Chamber for being “way behind the curve“:

The United States Chamber of Commerce’s Web site says the group supports “a comprehensive legislative solution” to global warming. Yet no organization in this country has done more to undermine such legislation. [...]

The chamber has now declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to use regulatory means to control emissions — beginning with one official’s ill-advised (and since apologized-for) demand for a “Scopes monkey trial” questioning the science behind the agency’s preliminary finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health.

As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has noted, the Chamber is beginning to feel the heat and is trying to rewrite the history of its denialism. Enviroknow writes that two questions remain: 1) “When will Nike formally end its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?” and 2) “Which of the following 17 corporations — which are on the record in support of federal climate legislation yet sit on the Chamber’s Board of Directors — will be the next to part ways with the chamber?”

Energy companies are abandoning the sinking ship of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in droves over its opposition to clean energy action, whether by the EPA or by Congress.

Under pressure, Chamber president Tom Donohue today claimed the Chamber “continues to support strong federal legislation and a binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.” And spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel recently argued that the Chamber respects the science of climate change:

We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming.

This is a blatant falsehood, by any definition. Just last month, the Chamber’s Senior Vice President William Kovacs called for the “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” to put “the science of climate change on trial.” The Chamber, dominated by pollution-industry skeptics such as Don Blankenship, Harry Alford, and Fred Palmer, has questioned climate science since at least 1992:

2008: Chamber President Tom Donohue Says ‘Scientific Inquiry’ Into Climate Change ‘Should Continue’ Because Of ‘Cooling Trend.’ [U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 3/4/08]

2001: Chamber Claims Global Warming ‘About One Percent From Human Activity,’ Says ‘Things Just Change.’ [CNNFN, 7/16/01]

1992: Chamber Sponsors Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels To ‘Refute The Global Warming Warnings.’ [Chicago Sun-Times, 5/13/92]

In addition to being the Chamber of Commerce president, Tom Donohue works for Union Pacific, a company opposed to climate regulation.