Next year, Republicans will be the majority party in the House of Representatives, which means they’ll hold the committee chairmanships and run the hearings. They’ll have opportunities aplenty to review the Obama administration’s global warming policies and the alarmist “science” that supposedly justifies cap-and-trade, renewable energy mandates, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. 

They would do well to study how in the 105th and 106th Congresses, a GOP House committee chairman from Missouri single handedly debunked the Clinton-Gore administration’s economic analysis of the Kyoto Protocol. 

Kyotoism: Down but Not Yet Out

Politically, the last eighteen months have been remarkable. In June 2009, the House passed H.R. 2454, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” popularly known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Waxman-Markey’s passage was the culmination of a 20-year PR/lobbying campaign waged by U.N.…

Last Wednesday, November 17, 2010, the Subcommittee on Energy & Environment of the Committee on Science and Technology of the U. S. House of Representatives held a hearing on climate change titled “A Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response.” In a clear deference to the incoming make-up of the House, there were a relatively high number of panelists that were invited by the sitting minority, which made this hearing more “rational” and fascinating that than most subcommittee hearings in some time.

The Republican invitees were Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Judith Curry.

The first two are stalwarts of the let’s-just-hold-on-a-minute view of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. And, true to form, at the hearing each presented compelling evidence as to why anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions might not rapidly push up global temperature—not now, nor in the future.…

“One of the keystones of the Climate Change alarmist movement was its audacious attempt to create a functioning market by monetizing the atmospheric gas known as CO2…. Certainly, gaming the system has always been at the top on the agenda of the new green eco-trader.”

– Patrick Henningsen, “The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange,” 21st Century Wire, August 28, 2010.

We were tipped off by the August 28th headline, “The Great Collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange,” by Patrick Henningsen, editor of 21^st Century Wire. And now it is official as reported by Chicago Business, Fox News , and Crain’s Chicago Business (sub. required): the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is dead. Trading in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emission contracts at CCX has basically ceased with member emissions-reduction agreements expiring at the end of the year.…

“I am not afraid about the climate.”

– Judith Curry, quoted in Alexandre Mansur, “American Researcher Says That There Is Still a lot of Uncertainty About Global Warming, Época, May 1, 2010.

“Real Climate, I think they’ve damaged their brand. They started out doing something that people liked, but they’ve been too partisan in a scientific way.”

– Judith Curry, quoted in Eric Berger, “Judith Curry: On Antarctic sea ice, Climategate and skeptics.” August 18, 2010.

There is solid middle ground in the ever-contentious climate-change debate. And now is the time to welcome it, given that politics is not going to reverse in any detectable amount the human influence on climate.

And the shame of the post-Climategate era is that other scientists like Curry did not join her to right the wrongs of a profession that has become politicized, agendacized, and Malthusiancized.…