Forbes.com has an interesting editorial on why “all hope for action to limit climate change died” in 2010, when Senate Leader Harry Reid moved energy legislation this week with no firm caps on GHG emissions.

No doubt there are strong opinions on either side of the issue of what motivated the discussion of climate change and what caused Reid to move on energy legislation without GHG caps. This editorial writer suggests that a political issue “died” for political reasons.

via wsj.com

In this just-released report, Lord Monckton investigates the unfolding ClimateGate scandal.

Monckton’s work follows the release of several years worth email and files from the East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU). Monckton asserts that those files have revealed a sordid morass of systemic corruption in the climate science field. He alleges that, through the emails and files, we can see how a small group of politically-connected and financially-motivated climate scientists routinely distorted their research findings,

to fit a nakedly political story-line profitable to themselves and congenial to the governments that, these days, pay the bills for 99% of all scientific research.

Don Blakenship, CEO of Massey Energy comments on the use of coal and climate science on this E&E TV interview.

Click here for the transcript of the interview.

Trying to read through the many emails and stories on this issue this morning. I’ll be updating this post as I go along.

At first blush, it appears that servers at the Hadley CRU – NOTE: this Realclimate.org posting notes that the files and email came from the University of East Anglia mail servers, not the Hadley CRU – may have been hacked and over 1,000 emails and many associated files have been copied and released onto the Internet — they may also have been leaked by an insider.

“I don’t see any climate bill on the table right now that I can support … We really have to start from scratch again…”

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN)

This grist.org article, Lugar makes it clear that he will not support the current Kerry-Boxer Senate climate bill. The chief reasons reported for his refusal include the profound negative economic impacts on coal-using and coal-producing states.

Lugar has been a consistent voice in the choir calling for some form of climate legislation and his farming operation in Indiana has long served as an offset provider for the Chicago Climate Exchange. So his refusal to back the current crop of climate legislation was a significant setback for the embattled legislation.

This Heritage Foundation study argues that the move to create legislative and regulatory ‘fixes’ on the issue of CO₂ will do more economic, social, and environmental damage than good.

—————————

Update – Sept 30, 2009

Download the updated version of the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act“

Boxer, Kerry and nine other supporting Senators released the updated version of the (now 821 page)  climate change bill – the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.”

According to this New York Times article, the release of the bill was accomplished in the midst of a “campaign-style rally.” The article also noted that while retaining the same requirements for emissions reductions as described in yesterday’s post (below), as well as maintaining structurally the same means and methods for meeting those reductions, the bill authors have now chosen to abandon the use of the term “cap and trade.” The program will now apparently be referred to as the  “Pollution Reduction and Investment” program.