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The big news so far from the current hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power—concerning the so-called “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011”—is that Senator James Inhofe, the leading climate change denier in the U.S. Congress, has a book coming out.

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Just when you thought it was safe to acknowledge the unequivocal reality of global warming…..

Just when you thought the U.S. government was ready to admit that it has a serious emissions problem, and do something about it….

Just when you thought the skeptic party was over…

No way: There has been a strong run of nonsense from global warming “skeptics” and deniers lately. They are not ashamed, and they are not changing their tune. In fact, it sounds like they are gearing up for the next battle.

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All the pieces seem to be falling into place this week.

Even as renewable energy stocks continued to plummet along with the rest of the market—the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Index, which seeks to represent the industry, has declined 37 percent this year—we’re finally seeing some striking signals that at last things will be different when it comes to climate and energy policy.

As recently as last week, my colleague Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote here that while we’re on the verge of a sea change, it was still unclear precisely how the incoming Obama administration would move on global warming.

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In an alternate universe, where up is down, planets are flat, and hot is actually cold, lives a certain Republican Senator named James Inhofe. He has been known to travel to the US Senate and hold climate change hearings in which science fiction is introduced as "evidence" that climate change is a "hoax", and in which individuals with questionable scientific judgment are called upon to profess their agreement with his views.

One tired argument that he and his oily friends have consistently brought up is that global warming is cyclical, and is caused by sunspots. Regardless of the fact that the "sunspots and cosmic rays" theory of global warming has been conclusively disproved (multiple times), Inhofe brought it up in today's Senate Environment and Public Works Committee meeting, citing the Farmer's Almanac as his "research" source.

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The most interesting aspect of the 1,700 prominent signatories urging U.S. politicians to make immediate, deep reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions is that so many of them are economists.

Predictably, the statement by the Union of Concerned Scientists, issued on the eve of U.S. Senate debate on the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, affirms the long-standing scientific evidence for global warming.

But what was unusual, and surprising, was the prominent role of economists as measured by the statement that acting quickly to cut emissions “would be the most cost-effective way to limit climate change.”

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Stop the presses! Senator James Inhofe's Environmental and Public Works (EPW) Committee press blog is breathlessly reporting (in big font, of course) that - wait for it - climate change is going to stop!

BREAKING NEWS:
Global Warming Will 'Stop', New Peer-Reviewed Study Says
Global Warming Takes a Break for Nearly 20 Years?

Well, that's very interesting… but what's really interesting is the next paragraph, which Inhofe's blogger brigade conveniently missed…