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For those of us who care about global warming, 2006 and 2007 felt like pretty good years. Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for An Inconvenient Truth, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Media attention to the issue soared, and it was positive attention. Given all the buzz, I—and many others—figured the problem was all but solved.

The next steps appeared deceptively simple. Elect Barack Obama, pass cap-and-trade, go to Copenhagen in the snowy winter of 2009 and take it global—or so I advised in Scientific American. I didn’t expect “ClimateGate,” or the dramatic consequences that an overseas non-scandal (for so I perceived it to be) could have for U.S. climate policy.

Nor did I imagine that virtually the entire Republican Party, rather than just some part of it, would come to reject climate science on this flimsy basis. I expected out-and-out climate change deniers like Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe to be further marginalized, not mainstreamed.

Needless to say, I now look back on all this and shake my head.  Clearly, I—and many other people who felt the same way—was missing something rather big. We were far too optimistic in thinking that our governmental and media institutions were up for dealing with this type of problem.

Recently, a new book has helped bring the nature of their failure—and particularly the media's failure—into sharp focus.

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Building on an idea that seems to have originated with Newt Gingrich, Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has spent the past few weeks calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to be abolished. In the June 13th GOP debate, Bachmann said she would pass the “mother of all repeal bills” to target “job-killing regulations.” She indicated that she’d start with the EPA, and added that it “should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America.”

But a new poll from the conservative-leaning Rasmussen** finds that an overwhelming majority of likely voters, including more than two-thirds of independents, disagree with Rep. Bachmann. When asked whether they “favor or oppose abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency,” 61% of likely voters indicated that they are opposed:

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The damage inflicted on the Gulf of Mexico from the BP blowout goes far beyond the ecological and economic impacts this catastrophe has wrought on the region.  As evidenced painfully well in the video below, residents of the Gulf states are suffering from the horrifying realization that their beaches could be closed indefinitely, their family businesses ruined by BP’s negligence, and their

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The GOP’s wonder twins, Sarah Palin and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), turned the Minneapolis Convention Center into climate denier central this week, offering up a huge helping of enthusiasm for dirty energy, as Palin stumped for Bachman’s re-election bid.

The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog reports that “tea party fervor hit a fever-pitch” as the GOP’s “best-known females offered the thousands in attendance a lot of red meat and a healthy dose of girl power,” entering the stage to Martina McBride’s “This One’s For the Girls.”

The “Drill Baby Drill” babes had the grand old partiers all aflutter as they displayed their “mutual admiration”:

“She is so much one of us,” Bachmann said of Palin, “And as absolutely drop dead gorgeous this woman is on the outside, I’m here to testify that she is 20 times more beautiful on the inside.”

Palin responded in equally creepy fashion, recalling their first meeting in Alaska:

“I knew that we’d be buddies when I met her when she said, ‘Drill here, drill now.’ And then I replied, ‘Drill, baby, drill’ and then we both said, ‘You betcha!’”

Geez, wish I had been there to witness that thrilling moment.

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Alan Leshner, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the executive publisher of the journal Science, responded to Sarah Palin’s op

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Alaska Governor Sarah Palin penned an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Post slamming Obama’s “cap-and-tax” plan and promoting America’s home-grown, (not) cheap, (not) clean, (not) abundant fossil fuel supply. 

Palin clearly wants to be relevant in her forthcoming post-resignation days, and what better way than by declaring herself the lead spokesperson attacking efforts to stop climate change?

In true GOP fashion, Palin seeks to put the fear of God and all things scary into readers minds, foretelling an apocalyptic future for any who subscribe to the idea that we need to curb carbon emissions to save the climate and protect our economy from carbon dependence. 

Palin declares Obama’s cap-and-trade (er, sorry, she says “cap-and-tax” four times) energy plan an “enormous threat to our economy” that “would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”

Permanent damage?  You mean the tipping point beyond which scientists conclude that we won’t be able to recover the climate and will surely face more devastating floods, droughts, and heat waves?

No, no. That’s not the “permanent damage” Sarah Palin predicts.

Instead, Palin is talking about the damage that efforts to curb carbon emissions might have on the profits of the world’s largest polluters, including the oil industry which has treated her and her family so well over the years, providing gobs of campaign funding and a job for dear husband Todd (when he’s not out snowmobiling, of course).