Candy Crowley brought up the ad, hoping to get Pelosi to expand on her comments last month that when the time is right, she would dish some dirt on Gingrich acquired from being on a committee that investigated him in the 90s. When Crowley reminded Pelosi of her comments, Pelosi insisted what she meant was for people to read Gingrich’s public record during his time in office. She did not say whether or not anything in his record was a disqualifying factor to becoming the president, however.

But Pelosi didn’t let Gingrich get away so easily, getting in this quick swipe at him:

“Since you brought up my name in association with him as the dumbest thing he ever did, I think there’s plenty of stiff competition for that honor as far as his activities are concerned.”

In the first part of the interview, Pelosi alleged that Gingrich was fined $300,000 by the House Ethics Committee. Later on in the show, Crowley gave Gingrich’s response to the charge, with the candidate claiming the money was paid to reimburse the cost of the House investigation.

Watch the video below, courtesy of CNN:

And watch Crowley read Gingrich’s response here:

RELATED: Mitt Romney Campaign Releases Tired ‘Newt And Nancy’ Attack Ad

During a town hall in Iowa today, Gingrich was asked by a supporter to clarify his position on global warming. The candidate immediately stated that global warming “hasn’t been totally proven” and even if it were, he would still oppose a cap-and-trade solution to combat carbon emissions which, as Gingrich argued, would “turn… over the entire economy to the EPA.” He offered the following analogy to explain his position.

“The Dutch face the problem of oceans. They decided to build dikes instead of lowering the sea.”

Gingrich touted his conservative credentials on opposing cap-and-trade by citing a testimony he delivered before the House of Representatives following a testimony by Al Gore. Referring to the negative attack ads his opponents have used to accuse him of anything else, he dismissed them as “a plain lie.”

And then, in a rather bizarre offshoot, Gingrich bragged about his own personal experience studying the history of the Earth’s climate.

“I, also, am an amateur paleontologist, so I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the earth’s temperature over a long time, and I’m a lot harder to convince than just looking at a computer model.”

So if we’re keeping track now, Newt Gingrich is both an amateur historian and an amateur paleontologist. All he needs is a fedora and a whip, and we’ve got ourselves a real-life Indiana Jones here! (Yes, Indy was technically an archaeologist, but let’s not ruin what could be a great franchise reboot here.)

RELATED: Meghan McCain: If We Nominate Gingrich It Is ‘The End Of The Republican Party’

Watch the video below, courtesy of CNN:

Watch the 2008 Nancy Pelosi / Newt Gingrich Climate Change Ad below:

RELATED: Ron Paul Campaign Releases Brutal Newt Gingrich Attack Ad

Politics has become such a cynical business that it hardly seems worth pointing out the fundamental unfairness of the fact that Romney’s ad implies that Gingrich still supports legislative action on climate change. I do so only to highlight the fact that Newt’s reversal on this issue (and many others) is a worse offense than his couch trip with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but Yuen Woo-Ping-worthy flipper Mitt Romney is in no position to point that out.

While climate change denial may play well with the conservative base, an ad like this runs the risk of making Gingrich more appealing to general election voters, and in the process, making him seem more electable to the Republicans who now support Romney.

The ad itself is overly manipulative, crossing the line where sinister political commercial boilerplate is effective, and leaving it far behind. The crazy-eyed slo-mo of Al Gore at the beginning is a nice touch, but the disorienting cuts and focus effects are overdone, and the faux-American Beauty score is a drag. Ron Paul cut an ad that included this attack, and while it was over the top, it was brutally effective. Romney’s ad is unsubtle in a grinding, look-at-the-seams way that reeks of pandering, and it suffers from the pall of the candidate’s own history of “progressive” lapses.

RELATED: More Archival Video! Watch Mitt Romney Proclaim In 2002 ‘My Views Are Progressive’

Here’s the clip, from YouTube:

“But we are talking about climate change and climate change, is it settled science? There are a lot of people who say absolutely,” Doocy said in a mocking tone.

“Of course it’s not settled science!” Johnson exclaimed. “It’s deep, deep in dispute and that sends some people off the edge.”

RELATED: Tucker Carlson Mocks Environmentalist For Believing Global Warming ‘Spaceship’ Theory

“So shouldn’t we wait?!” Doocy questioned.

“When folks actually say that on the Fox News Channel, they have a mental breakdown when you say it,” Johnson snarked. “It is highly in dispute.”

Perhaps people get upset when people on the Fox News Channel question the science of climate because it flies in the face of facts. 97% of the scientists who actively study climate change affirm that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.” That is a rock solid scientific consensus and to say the science is “deep, deep in dispute” is false.

Watch Doocy and Johnson pour cold water on the climate agreement in Durban below via Fox News:

(h/t MM)

He staked out the “sane candidate” territory in August, and as a tracking video shot by American Bridge PAC in late October shows, Huntsman has no wiggle room on this flip.

RELATED: Jon Huntsman Warns The GOP: ‘You Cannot Run Away From Mainstream Science’

Until now, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has stood out from the Republican pack in a number of ways, most notably in his willingness to buck his party’s creeping disdain for science, particularly climate change science. By flipping on this issue, he not only gives up a key advantage over frontrunner Newt Gingrich, whom he’s set to debate one-on-one next week, but he also joins Gingrich and Mitt Romney as the Three Horsemen of the Flipocalypse.

How bad is Huntsman’s flip, though? He’s not outright denying the science. In fact, he told the Heritage Foundation that he “defers to the science.” Here’s what he said:

I’m not a scientist, nor am I a physicist, but I would defer to science and say the scientific community owes us more in terms of a better description or explanation about what might lie beneath all of this. But there’s not enough information right now to be able to formulate policies.

It’s a little on the weaselly side, but you could argue that Huntsman’s statements Tuesday are still consistent with what he said in August. He believes the science, he just needs more of it to convince him to do anything about climate change.

RELATED: Jon Huntsman Campaign Scores Lincoln-Douglas Style Debate With Newt Gingrich

That stance, however, is a 180° flip from what he told a town hall meeting in Hopkinton, NH on October 18. There, he drew huge applause for deriding his rivals’ denial of science, and made a clear case that the science, as far as he’s concerned, is settled. “I think back on a cancer institute that I was involved in building, and was president of for awhile,” Huntsman said, “if you had 98 of a hundred oncologists who came to you and said ‘We’ve got an approach on prostate, colon, or breast cancer that we think is most efficacious,’ we’d say ‘Hallelujah!’ That’s science speaking.”

RELATED: Jon Huntsman Won’t Kiss Donald Trump’s Ring, Or ‘Any Other Part Of His Anatomy’

This is a real shame for Huntsman, because even though he’s an extreme longshot to win New Hampshire, his organization in that state, plus his upcoming one-on-one debate with Newt Gingrich, left him in a decent position to capitalize on any slip-ups by the frontrunners. He also scored major points by being one of the first, and most aggressive, candidates to skip out on the Donald Trump debate.

It’s a shame he so quickly gave up on the things that set him apart. Some Republicans may not have liked Huntsman’s pro-science ways, but I doubt any of them will cotton to such a glaring flip on such a signature issue.

Here are Huntsman’s remarks from Tuesday, followed by American Bridge‘s video from that Oct. 18 town hall:

“I do not believe in a cap and trade program,” Romney added. “By the way, they do not call it America warming, they call it global warming. So the idea of America spending massive amounts, trillions of dollars to somehow stop global warming is not a great idea. It loses jobs for Americans and ultimately it won’t be successful, because industries that are energy intensive will just get up and go somewhere else. So it doesn’t make any sense at all.”

The green blogosphere assailed the former Massachusetts governor for flip-flopping positions on the issue, calling out Romney for changing positons yet again on climate change. ThinkProgress’s Brad Johnson noted that Romney made a completely opposite statement in June: “I believe that humans contribute to that,” Romney said. “I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases.”

Grist’s Christopher Mims also slammed Romney. “If there’s one thing Mitt Romney’s good at, it’s turning directly into whatever political winds are blowing through the Republican base.”

While 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is causing climate change, Romney perhaps read a recent Reuters poll that showed 43% of Republicans (and 49% of tea party members) believe global warming is the result of natural causes.

Watch Romney criticize cap and trade legislation below via ThinkProgress:

(h/t TP)

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party. Has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change. It’s true,” Obama zinged.

“You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have healthcare and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay. That’s not reflective of who we are,” Obama added. “This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country. 2008 was an important direction. 2012 is a more important election.”

Perry said in his book Fed Up! that, “I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.” Politifact has rated that statement False.

A Perry spokesman fired back at Obama over his attack on the Texas Governor, telling Politico.”It’s outrageous President Obama would use the burning of 1,500 homes, the worst fires in state history, as a political attack.”

(h/t Politico)

Leading Republican candidates, Jon Hunstman aside, have for the most come out against that idea that human action has been responsible for warming the planet; an idea that has, for the most part, been substantiated by scientists and held up by public concern. Rick Perry has gotten around the issue by suggesting that scientists have manipulated data, while Michele Bachmann has said she believes that climate change is a hoax. This sort of skepticism has become something of a GOP flag this campaign cycle.

According to Politico’s report, Clinton was not critical of their stance so much as we was as the lack of debate it allows for. He urged that climate change and science need not be black and white issue it has become:

“We need the debate in America and every country between people who are a little bit to the right and people who are a little bit to the left about what the best way is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, what is the best, most economical way to do it, what will get more done quicker.”

Clinton asked voters to do their part in rendering the extreme take on climate politically inviable. ”You can’t win the nomination of one of the major parties in the country if you admit that the scientists are right? That disqualifies you from doing it?” he said. “You could really help us there.” Politics, neither, needs to be the will-you-or-won’t-you game it’s become, he seemed to be saying.

Earlier in the interview, Colbert brought up Rick Perry‘s endorsement of Gore’s 1988 presidential campaign, and asked him whether he would return the favor. “It would hurt him a lot!” Gore chuckled. “He was a Democrat back then, I’m not sure what happened.”

Colbert followed up with a question about Perry’s climate change skepticism: “He said, back in the 17th century, only Galileo said the Earth revolved around the sun, everybody else said the sun revolved around the Earth. Who’s side are you on, Galileo or global warming? Rick Perry says you can’t have both!” Gore responded that the science was in and 97% of climatologists agreed that human activity was causing global warming.

The interview concluded with Colbert asking if Keith Olbermann would be part of the Climate Reality Project, as the Countdown host scares Colbert.

“He scares Fox News and he scares your character,” Gore replied, letting the cat out of the bag. The Vice President suddenly realized his mistake as he and Colbert both lost their composure. “I forgot for a moment,” Gore apologized.

Colbert stung back, “I think our job is done here — (air quotes) “Al Gore”.”

Watch the segment below, courtesy of Comedy Central:

From Reuters:

“’24 Hours of Reality’ will broadcast a presentation by Al Gore every hour for 24 hours across 24 different time zones from Wednesday to Thursday, with the aim of convincing climate change deniers and driving action against global warming among households, schools and businesses.

The campaign also asks people to hand over control of their social networking accounts on Facebook and Twitter to it for 24 hours to deliver Gore’s message.

‘There will be 200 new slides arguing the connection between more extreme weather and climate change,’ Trewin Restorick, chief executive of the event’s UK partner Global Action Plan, told Reuters on Monday.”

New slides! Oh, I’m sure every single Fox News host is getting started on their “We were wrong” editorials as we speak.

That Reuters article concludes by pointing out an opinion poll showing that “concern about climate change in the United States” is now at 48%, down from 62% in 2007, a year after Gore’s big documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. That number hasn’t dropped because there’s been less proof in the past four years (Oh yeah, and if anyone tries to bring up this, please do try to remember how that story actually ended).

The really inconvenient truth is that “climate change” has become “political and, therefore, no one’s going to get persuaded by simple “proof” any more. Gore is seen by many, not as an expert, but rather as someone on the other team, an enemy, a guy who called them racist (despite the full quote of what he actually said).

Long story short, these skeptics just don’t like him. They will never believe anything he says because it came out of his mouth. One of these new slides could be a signed letter from God Himself saying “Dear Al, Please get everyone to stop messing up my planet. Love, Yaweh XOXOX” but, because Al Gore’s involved, the response will mostly be jokes about his private jet usage and weight.

That’s just the way it is. Sad? Yes. But, then again, I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that my grandchildren will grow up in a flaming post-apocalyptic Hellscape where humans kill each other for a drop of water and everyone wears leather and football shoulder pads for some reason. Whatever. I’ve accepted it. I plan on dying in a totally bad ass motorcycle accident in a couple years anyway so, not my problem.

However, Al Gore still seems pretty set on trying to change things. However, he just has to accept that no one who hasn’t been persuaded already will ever be by him. His political enemies have ruined his reputation too much (and he hasn’t helped). If he wants to really stop this thing, he should stop working on his message and start looking for a new messenger.

And, if he doesn’t? Maybe all those Fox News hosts were right about him being in it for the glory after all.

Gore explains:

“There came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, ‘Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.’ That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won.”

In some circles, according to Gore, just using the words “climate change” is considered taboo, as was the case with Southerners bringing up racism. The interviewer suggested the comparison may not be quite accurate, considering the scientific evidence available for global warming. However, Gore suggested that there is a moral component that both arguments share.

Later in the interview, Gore addressed comments made by Rick Perry about climate change, and saw his remarks as part of “an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole.”

“It’s not in [scientists'] nature to get ready to constantly defend themselves against political attacks. That’s not want they expected to be doing in their lives.”

Watch the video below, courtesy of Ustream:

h/t Daily Caller

Kimmel applauded Gore’s anger, joking “he can use a little dash of Mel Gibson in his life – maybe more people would listen to him.” Then the movie trailer played with a voice sounding eerily similar to Gore, saying “many people ask me ‘what is global warming?’ It’s a f*ckin’ disaster, that’s what it is you dumbasses!” The narrator even pronounces the word “ocean” in Gore’s unique vernacular.

The narrator unloads many more obscenities and ends with “I’m Al Gore and I’m sick of this shit.” Yet ever the conservationist, Kimmel is able to squeeze out one more joke from the same material, concluding “somebody’s mom to needs to wash somebody’s mouth out with bio-degradable soap!”

Watch the clip from ABC below:

Gore began by comparing the anti-global warming block to tobacco lobbyists who “succeeded in delaying the implementation of the surgeon general’s report for 40 years… It was evil, evil, evil.” He declined to name names, but gave the impression that a small group of people were benefiting from the debate by paying for alternate and less reliable theories to come out against climate change:

And some of the exact same people — I can go down a list of their names — are involved in this. And so what do they do? They pay pseudo scientists to pretend to be scientists to put out the message: ‘This climate thing, it’s nonsense. Man-made CO2 doesn’t trap heat. It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!

What seemed to get him angriest, however, was the prospect that those that believed in global warming were outnumbered. “You heard them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again,” he cried, arguing that there was “no longer a shared reality” from which to begin scientific study and that those that shared his reality were being hindered by the debate. “It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word ‘climate,’” he railed.

The speech also included some talk on the current fiscal crisis in America, where Gore noted that the country had not been served well by lobbyists paying for public advertising for their causes, and stating that the wide dissemination of the idea that spending and not revenue was the problem had led to the second recession, and that was “absolutely insane.”

Listen to Gore’s statements below:

[h/t]

On September 14th, Gore’s event will attempt to focus the world’s attention on the truth, remove any lingering doubt and reveal the deniers. Gore suggests “climate change is not your fault.” Well that’s a relief. However, “the climate crisis is our problem.” Damn!

And the final message from Gore is that “fossil fuel interests have money, influence, control – but together we have something that they don’t: reality.” Gore previously proved his ability to spark a national climate awareness movement with his popular documentary An Inconvenient Truth. With Gore’s new event, will lightning be able to strike twice? Or does “climate change” result in less lightning overall?

Watch the clip below from Climate Reality Project:

(h/t The Blaze)

Joan Walsh told Matthews she found Gore’s essay both inspiring and depressing. And even if Gore was critical of the media, Walsh comforted Matthews that Gore wasn’t talking about them “of course, because we’re doing the right thing.” Forget about worrying about global warming though, since it was Matthews who was continuing to heat up with anger at conservatives throughout this segment.

Matthews argued that the Republican party is lining itself up as “anti-science” and selling half the country “nonsense.” He singled out Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Chamber of Commerce as being guilty of pandering to business interests and declared “these people are evil in what they are doing.” Especially since Matthews doesn’t believe Beck or Limbaugh are stupid, he thinks their motives are not well-intentioned. And in a quote that will surely get some of Matthews’ own critics excited, he admits that on certain issues like climate, he really hates “so called objective journalism” where “even-handedness” forces reporters to give credibility to both sides of an argument when one side just isn’t true.

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

Despite the fact that Christie’s recent “none of your business” outburst is viewed by many as “conservative porn” because of his unique no-nonsense attitude, Beck goes after Christie here since “truth has no agenda.” Christie’s offending statement:

“Climate change is real and its impacting our state. . . . When you have over 90% of the world’s scientists who have studied this, stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts.”

Beck was extremely disappointed to hear Christie believe all this scientific mumbo jumbo and declared “climate change is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” since the climate is always changing! Yet if admitting humans might be contributing to climate change was bad, Christie’s next statement seems like a completely unforgivable sin in Beck’s eyes.

In the audio clip, Christie promised “no new coal permitted in New Jersey” because of coal’s impact on the environment. Beck’s sidekicks chimed in with their disgust, suggesting “Christie is actually worse on that issue than Obama is” and wondering “how did this fatso get elected?” Beck then also resorted to a joke about Christie’s weight asking “he can’t control his own diet, how can he control the temperature?” Given that Rush Limbaugh recently trashed Mitt Romney for also believing the “hoax” of man-made global warming, it seems that in conservative circles Christie may no longer be invited to sit at the cool kids lunch table.

UPDATE – Earlier in the show Beck and his crew discussed how supportive they were of Christie on other issues and how advertisements from New Jersey teacher unions were unfairly critical of Christie’s personal wealth. Therefore, Beck’s mocking of Christie’s weight here, was apparently an attempt to parody such over-the-top campaign ads.

Listen to the clip below from The Glenn Beck Program:

(h/t)

Romney was discussing global warming and admitted that he “can’t prove” global warming is happening, but that he tends to believe it is real and humans have to work to stop it. While some Republican candidates allow that global warming may exist– and some, like Tim Pawlenty, used to back Cap and Trade– few specifically believe in man-made global warming, or at least don’t say so publicly:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

It’s a strange election year when the Republican Party’s frontrunner has a universal health care overhaul on his resume and openly starts talking about being mindful of the environment. ThinkProgress notes that his energy policies are not exactly music to the ears of actual, left-wing environmentalists– and actually support industries like domestic oil and natural gas, but adamantly calling for a reduction in greenhouse gases may be the straw that broke the camel’s back for Romney in hyper-conservative strongholds (like, say, Iowa). One could also argue he was never competitive there to begin with, however, such that this could win him very important ground among independents for the general election. In that case, these comments could be taken as evidence that, given the wide array of hopefuls that span the ideology spectrum from Rudy Giuliani to Ron Paul to Rick Santorum, Romney may already believe he will cruise through the primaries. If that’s the case, he may be in for a rude awakening.

The video (via ThinkProgress) of Romney’s comments below:

The event-goers dive into the freezing cold water for only about 20 seconds, but Edwards donned a wetsuit to keep her core warm. After taking the plunge, she said it “really makes you wish for spring.”

Interestingly, no other members of Congress decided to participate, but Politico’s Patrick Gavin was on hand to unleash a string of expletives and jump around (jump around).

Check out video of the event, via Politico:

The main debate was between Maher (who believes climate change is real) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), a climate change skeptic. Taking Maher’s side on the issue were comedian D.L. Hughley and former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell (Campbell called Kingston’s position “absolute rubbish”), while Will Cain of the National Review was more sympathetic to Kingston, saying he was “agnostic” on the issue. Masher was having none of it, though, saying “the science is settled” on climate change, and then asking Kingston point blank if he believes in evolution.

Long story short: Maher got the answer we imagine he hoped Kingston would give him in hopes he could make him look scientifically illiterate: the congressman indeed doesn’t believe in evolution. Campbell and Cain brought the discussion back on topic until Maher brought up evolution again…and this time, Campbell couldn’t resist chiming in, pointing out that microbes developing resistance to antibiotics is an example of an evolutionary process in action. Even Cain eventually admitted he wasn’t on Kingston’s side in the evolution debate, though Kingston did have one unlikely ally. Video of the back-and-forth segment, via HBO, below.

Carlson, filling in for Sean Hannity, came out swinging, initially calling the entire climate change theory a “lie” and posing one major question to Rosenberg: “what weather phenomenon would prove global warming isn’t real?” Rosenberg cited several instances of what she called “climate chaos” or “climate extremes” which made global weather shifts increasingly unpredictable, among them “biblical” floods in Pakistan. “Interesting you should mention the word,” Carlson noted as he turned to Horner, calling global warming “a religion, and one with particularly fervent believers.”

Horner only continued to pile on. “Cooler now means warmer,” he quipped, arguing that climate change was now in a “say anything phase that every doomsday cult encounters when the spaceship fails to come as promised.” Rosenberg then tried to shift gears on her argument, pointing out that China and Russia, among other countries around the world, were attempting polities to try to limit the effects of global warming. At this point, after much crosstalk, a tired but amused Carlson ended the segment, hoping “the spaceship lands” as he bid adieu to Rosenberg.

The shouty panel via Fox News below:

His comments on the bill — which he worked on with the Democartic Sen. John Kerry and the Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — are a strong indicator of how perilous congressional bipartisanship can be for the minority party, particularly in an election year, and especially considering the power wielded by media outlets like Fox News. Lizza further quotes Graham as saying:

The second [the people at Fox News] focus on us, it’s gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it’s gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves. We have to move this along as quickly as possible.

The article also tells of how Graham’s team reacted when Fox News did focus on them:

[Matthew]Rimkunas, Graham’s climate-policy adviser, sent [Lieberman aide Danielle] Rosengarten an e-mail. The subject was “Go to Fox website and look at gas tax article asap.” She clicked on Foxnews.com: “WH Opposes Higher Gas Taxes Floated by S.C. GOP Sen. Graham in Emerging Senate Energy Bill.” The White House double-crossed us, she thought. The report, by Major Garrett, then the Fox News White House correspondent, cited “senior administration sources” and said that the “Obama White House opposes a move in the Senate, led by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, to raise federal gasoline taxes within still-developing legislation to reduce green house gas emissions.” Including two updates to his original story, Garrett used the word “tax” thirty-four times.

“This is horrific,” Rosengarten e-mailed Rimkunas.

“It needs to be fixed,” he responded. “Never seen lg this pissed.”

Graham, who The New Yorker says has “a reputation as a Senate maverick — but not one who actually [gets] things done,” was also said to have been bullied by his conservative colleagues. “Hey, Lindsey, how many times have you talked to Rahm [Emmanuel] today?” is one ‘insult’ that the apparently uncreative congressional Republicans would hurl toward the South Carolina senator, and part of what would eventually help kill the climate change bill.

Check out the whole story here to read more about Graham, Kerry, Lieberman, and the rigors of bipartisan legislation.

It wasn’t until today, though, that America Live host Megyn Kelly discovered the whole video debacle. This afternoon, she shined a harsh spotlight on the clip, calling it “horrific,” “extremely graphic,” and “disturbing” before showing a brief snippet of it on her show.

After the video plays, Kelly pauses, stony-faced. “That’s what they thought would make you laugh,” she says, before letting her audience know that the video has been stopped because what comes after this scene is “even more horrifying.”

Kelly then then turns to Marc Morano of climatedepot.com, a group for global warming skeptics. (Warning: Before you click through, you should know that the group currently has a pretty disgusting still from “No Pressure” prominently displayed on its homepage.) Morano, too, is outraged by the video. He calls the clip an act of desperation before claiming it’s just the latest example of climate change activists trying to silence their opposition. He then takes things a bit too far by asserting that “a lot of crazies out there” will use this eco snuff film “to further get them jazzed up about harming people.”

Watch the America Live clip in full below.

Since Global Warming first became a hot button issue, the folks that believed the man-made theory have always had one big talking point to fall back on: they had the scientists on their side. This led to many a debate ending with one side laying down the “scientist card” and calling it a day, smugly confident that no one could ever have a response to that. That all changed last year when thousands of stolen e-mails seemed to give the skeptics the perfect rebuttal: “Yeah, the scientists are on your side, but they’re also dirty, rotten liars.” Thanks to this morning’s announcement, the argument can swing back around again. According to the panel, the data found by the Climatic Research Unit, the group behind the e-mails, is, in fact, valid.

From the Associated Press article:

In their report, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact,” adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.”

The investigators don’t find the CRU completely faultless though. It seems that, what was originally interpreted in the correspondence as proof of the group distorting facts was actually proof of them refusing to share their findings with rival scientific operations and critics. So it seems the scientists aren’t liars as much as overly competitive and kind of jerky.

However, this vindication isn’t about to sway Global Warming skeptics. In fact, all they have to do is look at the bottom of the AP article to find their argument ready made for them.

Lawmakers stressed that their report – which was written after only a single day of oral testimony – did not cover all the issues and would not be as in-depth as the two other inquiries into the e-mail scandal that are still pending.

So, it seems what we’re saying is that no one needs to worry. Everyone can keep believing what they believed at the beginning of this scandal. One side still has their scientists and the other side still has the fact that scientists could be wrong. Then again, none of you were really planning on changing your minds about this anyway, were you?

Politico’s Patrick Gavin got the exclusive, short-but-sweet interview with Markie, where he performs an improvised version of “Just a Friend” that showcases his new-found political interest with the lyrics “You got what I need… save some energy! We need clean energy!”


Does this mean it is time to take guesses on who the next celebrity from the past century will come out and defend climate change will be? Will it be one of the members of Rockapella, or perhaps Wishbone? And how long will it take Glenn Beck to snap excitedly at the celebrity feud bait?

Then yesterday, World Net Daily, the successful media operation that makes most of its money selling ‘birther’ paraphernalia, wrote a rather scathing piece on Beck “accusing” him of being a “kinder, gentler” Glenn Beck – one who believes (gasp) in global warming. (This thanks to some comments Beck made in an interview with USA Today.)

Fear not World Net Daily devotees! Glenn Beck made it fairly clear in longish segment last night that he equates global warming advocates with other conspiracy theorists such as…the Birthers, the Truthers, and the man on the mooners (I made that last one up…he was referring to the people who believe the landing on the moon was staged). Also, the reason these conspiracy theorists exist is because we are accustomed to being lied to by our politicians. Also, we suffer from a habit of only hearing what we want to. You can watch the vid below for a full explanation(ish) of his thinking.

Speaking of conspiracy theorists. One has to wonder whether after last night’s announcement that Van Jones has been tapped for this year’s NAACP’s ‘image award’ whether or not Beck will conclude that the NAACP itself is a group of secret Maoists. I’m sure we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

The column itself is inoffensive enough. He begins by lamenting the smug positions taken on global warming/climate change by some Congressmen in the wake of the recent blizzard in Washington…

When you see lawmakers like Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeting that “it is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,’ ” or news that the grandchildren of Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma are building an igloo next to the Capitol with a big sign that says “Al Gore’s New Home,” you really wonder if we can have a serious discussion about the climate-energy issue anymore.

…and it’s hard to argue that such displays will accomplish anything constructive. Friedman’s problems begin when he advocates widespread adoption of the term “global weirding” in place of “global warming” or “climate change.” The first problem is that this term barely outpaces “lamestream media” on the Juvenile-O-Meter. The second is that he already advocated for this term – and was criticized for it then – two years ago. NYT Picker singled him out last year for repeating himself almost verbatim, and it appears here he did something similar. Here’s what he said in 2007:

And sweet-sounding “global warming” doesn’t really capture what’s likely to happen. I prefer the term “global weirding,” coined by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, because the rise in average global temperature is going to lead to all sorts of crazy things — from hotter heat spells and droughts in some places, to colder cold spells and more violent storms, more intense flooding, forest fires and species loss in other places.

Today, he said:

Avoid the term “global warming.” I prefer the term “global weirding,” because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

Additionally, he said the following in November of last year:

According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion … passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”

Now, add one more thing. The world keeps getting flatter — more and more people can now see how we live, aspire to our lifestyle and even take our jobs so they can live how we live. So not only are we adding 2.5 billion people by 2050, but many more will live like “Americans” — with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.

Today:

Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar.

Not as egregious as what NYT Picker pointed out, but awfully similar. Friedman’s point about projected population growth and renewable energy is valid, but if he simply repeats himself, he’ll get tuned out. A better solution for a column like today’s might be to put in blog format rather than print – that way, he can link to previous columns where he’s already said essentially what he intends to say, rather than regurgitating talking points. He does have an nytimes.com blog, but hasn’t used it in over two years. Such a forum would be a better fit for what he said today, and might help soften the criticism levied at him.

That, of course, and dropping “global weirding.”

“Who has claimed that this snow storm is proof that global warming doesn’t exist?” Beck asked after mocking Nye with interjections of “Oh boy” and “Seriously?” on his radio show. “Who’s claimed that? Dude, you have… a lot,” Maddow responded before playing two clips of Beck laughing about global warming, including a joke that the snow is also burying Al Gore’s global warming theory. “Who has claimed that?” Maddow repeated, playing a similar clip of Sean Hannity.

“It is one thing to be outrageously wrong about facts and science, but the price of that is getting made fun of for it and getting called out on it — boom! — by Bill Nye the Science Guy,” Maddow concluded.

Check out the clip below:

Rachel Maddow

But just to assure the audience that her point was absolutely irrefutable, she brought an absolutely irrefutable personality on the air to agree with her: beloved childhood icon Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Sadly, with the exception of his outfit, there was little of the man who taught a generation the earth’s three layers or how to make fossils out of dried sponges in the Bill Nye that visited MSNBC last night. This was an angry science guy, who lashed out against climate change skeptics by calling them “unpatriotic” and expressed frustration that there were people who would refute Nobel Prize-winning scientific research. That’s not to say that Nye was shilling for global warming out of pure partisan hackery – it was a positive and possibly necessary thing to see someone so trusted and knowledgeable weigh in on the subject in a sincere manner. He explained in his familiar, comforting manner that, since the theory of climate change is that large-scale trends in human behavior can make weather more unpredictable, the fact that it is unexpectedly cold does not disprove the theory – if anything, it reinforces it.

On the other hand, Maddow’s exploitation of Nye’s likability to reinforce her talking points is below the status of both an Emmy-winning educational comedian and a respected, albeit partisan, political commentator. If Maddow is comfortable with using the image of Bill Nye the Science Guy, is there any childhood memory she won’t touch? Can we expect Carmen Sandiego to make an appearance supporting the Wall Street bailouts, or Shari Lewis of Lamb Chop’s Play Along railing against Carly Fiorina‘s demonizing of sheep?

Yes, Nye is an expert in his field. Yes, he probably has strong opinions on the matter that he should have a venue in which to express. But bringing him out after a montage of basketball YouTube clips put together to humiliate Sean Hannity just seems in bad taste. He is an esteemed, apolitical educator, not a run-of-the-mill talking head.

Nye’s appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show below:

Yesterday, Representative Joe Barton, known to his critics as “Smokey Joe” for his staunchly free-market, anti-regulation stance on corporate pollution, went on C-SPAN to discuss … wait for it … Climategate.

The Climategate affair, and the public skepticism about man-made global warming that it has helped produce, have to be a small triumph for a man who has been a staunch skeptic since before it was fashionable.

From the interview with The Hill’s Ben Gemen and C-SPAN’s Steve Scully:

Gemen: I guess I’m still just a little bit puzzled by how so many scientists across such a spectrum in your view could have all gotten it so catastrophically wrong?

Barton: Well if they all believe in the theory and they’re funded and they’re part of a group that it’s in their academic, professional career to prove that theory right, they can kind of brainwash themselves. Now I’m not saying they’ve done that, but I’m saying that’s a fair question. And the more that comes out the more relevant that question becomes.

Scully: Are they brainwashing Americans?

Barton: I think some of them have tried to.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, ever acerbic: ”It’s like a six-course meal of stupid.”

To his credit, Barton isn’t one of the bandwagon-jumpers who have suddenly become vocal climate change skeptics in the wake of Climategate: he’s been at the forefront for some time now.

The environment-minded League of Conservation Voters has never given him a rating of higher than 5% since 1999. Last year, the LCV gave him a rating of 0% for voting, among other things, to eliminate funding for all of the environmental staff in the White House, to prevent the National Marine Fisheries Service from taking measures to protect wild salmon and other species, and against a bill to “recodify the authority of the Secretary of Homeland Security to enhance security and protect against acts of terrorism against chemical facilities.”

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

It’s the weekend, which means it’s time to separate the chumps from the champs in Mediaite’s “Winners and Losers” — our scorecard of who rocked and who flopped in the week’s headlines.

You’ve no doubt heard the story by now: hackers recently got hold of a bunch of emails from some climate scientists and the University of Anglia. So now some have decided these emails are the smoking gun to some grand global warming conspiracy, cooked up just for sport. And the controversy broke just in time for the Copenhagen summit!

So who are the Winners and Losers of the Climategate scuttlebutt?

LOSER

Copenhagen Reps, put on the defense in the wake of the pseudo-scandal. No, Climategate probably won’t derail an international resolution at the U.N. climate change summit, but the controversy has certainly sullied the positive image of the event. Now world leaders and scientists are forced to defend the evidence of global warming instead of focusing on efforts to curb the trend.

WINNER

Producers and pundits, because the climate change conspiracy angle is super-talky and easily digested, which means it’s made for cable. And the timing couldn’t be better! As reporters await actual news from Copenhagen, which isn’t likely to break until the 11th hour, recycling the back-and-forth between climate contrarians and the ‘warmists‘ is a sensational ‘in’ to an otherwise dreary policy debate.

WINNER

Sarah Palin, who after snatching headlines last week for lending credence to the birther movement, is now scoring buzz for her stance on an equally popular right-wing conspiracy theory. Palin’s Washington Post climate change op-ed was a reported chart-topper, ranking 21st of the hundreds of opinions published by the paper this year and inciting numerous rebuttals.

LOSER

Sarah Palin, called out along with other deniers by Al Gore for persisting in an “era of unreality.” Fair call or not, her Washington Post op-ed was decidedly wrought with inaccuracies, both about hacked emails as proof of a climate change hoax and about the economic consequences of a carbon emission reduction policies.

WINNER

The Washington Post, for audaciously defending their decision to run the Palin piece. After all, despite being marred by disinformation, the editorial met all the WaPo op-ed selection criteria: “opinion” penned by someone who “stirs discussion” (i.e. page views). Which is why this week you can look forward Snooki Polizzi’s on Afghanistan combat strategy.

WINNER

Tiger Woods — Looks like global warming took some of the heat of the philandering golf great. At several points this week “Copenhagen” trumped “Tiger Woods latest” among hot Google Trends search topics. Yay, world!

(photo via)