The Orange County Register managed to take their complaints about the California Air Resources Board (ARB) doing their job and twist it into a piece denying the realities of climate change and spouting one of the most absurd denier claims; that global warming is benign, even good for us.

The piece starts with an accusation against the ARB of “dictating to private enterprise” by adopting regulations that will force fuel producers to reduce their carbon footprint. The role of the ARB is "to promote and protect public health, welfare and ecological resources through the effective and efficient reduction of air pollutants while recognizing and considering the effects on the economy of the state". Hey OC Register editorial board, protecting the public health and environment from harmful air pollutants is the board’s job description.

It’s sometimes called a mandate.

This is government by administrative decree from unelected ARB board members, administrators and staff, who concocted a fanciful "solution" to so-called global warming, an increasingly disputed phenomenon that hasn't occurred for at least a decade.

You have to love the global warming denial just two paragraphs into this piece. I’m not sure where they are getting their data, but 2008 was tied with 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record using National Climatic Data Center records dating back to 1880.

Just how ambitious will Barack Obama’s clean energy package be? During the campaign, he pledged to invest $150 billion in new projects over the next decade and create 5 million well-paying green-collar jobs.

While there was some trepidation about whether Obama, facing an ever-worsening economic crisis, would keep his word, the release of the long-awaited $825 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 last week seems to have quelled most doubts.

To no one’s surprise, a large chunk of the stimulus – over $90 billion – will go to funding “shovel-ready” transportation and public infrastructure projects.

Thirty-two billion dollars will be used to create a “smart electricity grid” to cut waste, and over $20 billion will be devoted to renewable energy tax cuts and credits for research and development on energy efficiency and energy conservation.

I know, I know: If you support "adaptation" in the global warming debate, you run the risk of being mistaken for someone who opposes "mitigation." But I'm not one of those adaptation-only Bjorn Lomborg types.

I support both capping emissions, and also getting ready for climate change, because I believe the science is clear: We have to do something, fast, to prevent the worst outcomes; but we're already so far down the global warming path that there will be many changes we can no longer stop, and must live with - and so must prepare for.

But my question is, where is Barack Obama on all of this?

As greenhouse-gas emissions rise, North America is likely to experience more droughts and excessive heat in some regions even as intense downpours and hurricanes pound others more often, according to a report issued yesterday by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

Some 94 skeptics published a letter in the National Post declaring that:

"[D]espite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling."

Most unfortunate timing.

The American Prospect, June 19, 2007 Two Paths for the Planet: Will we rewire the world with clean energy – or descend into political chaos, social disruption and climate hell?

And will Washington get with the program?