A couple of weeks ago, the Cato Institute ran a major advertisement in several leading newspapers across the country, intending to counter some seemingly alarming statements about climate change that were coming from the Obama Administration—primarily statements concerning the urgency of action and the certitude of the science behind the perceived crisis.

The ad campaign quickly drew criticism in the blogosphere from folks who share President Obama’s sense of urgency and are also leaders in raising climate alarm. The loudest among these critics was perhaps Dr. Joe Romm, who runs the blog Climate Progress. Romm’s criticism was quite vehement, but it was also quite wrong.…

Back on Feb. 15, George Will wrote an op-ed in the The Washington Post in which he claimed:

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

This set off a major controversy that continues to this day.  (For example, see here and here.)  As the master of hyperbole Joe Romm points out with delight, the Post actually contradicted Will by name in a news piece, which is quite unorthodox.

This blog does not tackle the huge issues of sea ice and whether we should be terrified or not. …

“I can find virtually no one—in government, in the environmental community, in business or in the press—who thinks that the Kyoto Protocol has even the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of coming into effect in anything approaching its current form.  This is every bit as true internationally as it is in the United States.”

– Paul Portney [then president: Resources for the Future], “The Joy of Flexibility: U.S. Climate Policy in the Next Decade,” Keynote Address, Energy Information Administration Annual Outlook Conference, March 22, 1999, mimeo, p. 2.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress is increasingly fighting his own flank as a number of Left environmentalists are moderating their climate views in response to scientific and political realities. His enemies list grows and grows, the latest being Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg, whom Romm challenges (and more!) …

As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change.  In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, “Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.…