Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, announced the second annual Climate B.S. of the Year Awards on Huffington Post and Forbes blogs Thursday to make examples of bad climate science that was produced, cited, or used in 2011 to try to influence or confuse the public.

Scores of conservative lawmakers and Fox News personalities amplified their pro-greenhouse-gas mantra last year, even as extreme weather, record-breaking temperatures and billion-dollar catastrophesdominated the planet.

First place went to all of the Republican candidates running for president, none of whom sided with the science accepted by 97-98 percent of all climate scientists and every national academy of sciences in the world. Second place went to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation “because of its regular misrepresentation of climate science and anti-climate science reporting among the different Murdoch outlets in the UK, the U.S., and Australia,” the Pacific Institute announced.

Third place went to Roy Spencer and William Braswell “for a debunked research paper on climate sensitivity, and John Christy, for an astounding piece of misleading testimony at a Congressional climate change hearing,” Gleick wrote.

Billionaire badboy brothers Charles and David Koch, who own Colorado property and bankroll lawmakers like Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton, slide into the fourth spot of the bad-science list. The Pacific Institute makes note of the Koch brothers’ well-funded network of anti-climate science groups and highlights a quote from the president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-supported super-PAC.

“If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway,” Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips “brags outright,” Pacific Institute reports.

For a detailed report on how the Koch brothers influence environmental politics, click here.

Colorado’s conservative congressional delegation has helped the cause. Gardner, Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman have all taken the No Climate Tax Pledge and repeatedly voted to weaken protections for land, air and water. Calling out Gardner specifically, one report found Congress averaged more than one anti-environmental vote for every day it was in session.

Fifth place went to anti-climate-science blogger Anthony Watts, “who said he would accept the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature … even if it proved him wrong.” The Koch brothers actually funded the study but it backfired and, like many studies before it, confirmed the Earth’s surface is warming and doing so at an accelerating rate. In the end, Watts attacked the study.

The Pacific Institute’s runners-up for its 2011 Climate B.S. of the Year Awards were Harrison Schmitt and the Heartland Institute for ‘Arcticgate’ (documented errors in denying disappearance of Arctic sea ice); Rush Limbaugh for his consistent falsehoods about climate science; and Steve McIntyre for his smear of climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University.”

Participants lamented Canada’s new status as a “laggard country” when that nation’s conservative government announced its plan to quit the Kyoto Protocol, which it called a thing of the past. And, to almost no one’s surprise, people inside the conference halls and out on the streets joined together in labeling the United States “enemy number one” for the way it is wielding its vast global influence in the service of intransigence, backpedaling and obfuscation. A top South African religious leader Tuesday called the high-profile climate-change skepticism of many U.S. leaders “immoral.”

At a well-attended briefing Tuesday morning held by NGO umbrella organization Climate Action Network, Bishop Geoff Davies, executive director of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, highlighted what he saw as the contradiction inherent in the fact that the people of the United States are deeply religious but also alienated from the responsibility faith demands to address suffering tied to climate-altering pollution.

“The US is a nation of great faith, of Christian commitment. We find it extraordinary that they are behaving like this. We find it immoral,” he said when a Turkish journalist asked what additional pressure could be brought to bear on the world’s lone superpower. “Environmental destruction is a sin against God. We say to faith groups in the U.S.: You’ve got to recognize your responsibilities to combat climate change.”

Watch live video from OneClimate on www.justin.tv

At a press conference on Monday, Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said the U.S. government was criminally confusing the interests of corporate polluters with the interests of its people.

“The US delegation is not only betraying the people of the world but they are betraying the American People,” he said, calling on President Obama to “Get here and get with the program or move aside.”

The future of the Kyoto Protocol is the main question of the negotiations because major developing nations are demanding the treaty continue if they are to participate in any future climate-change agreements.

The protocol, signed in 1997 and meant to take effect in 2005, set up tiers of countries that were supposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by specifically tailored rates. The plan was supposed to cut annual emissions to a rate 5.2 percent below 1990 emissions levels by 2012. The treaty failed spectacularly to meet that goal, with CO2 emissions alone now up to a reported 30 billion metric tons, or a third more than were emitted in 1990.

The United States is leading efforts to delay any new legally binding agreement until 2020. So far, the countries of Europe as represented by the European Union, are the only developed nations willing to sign on to extend the Kyoto Protocol, but they’ll do so only if the United States and other big polluters like China and India agree to a new pact that would take effect by 2020.

Jim Leape, director general of World Wildlife Fund, called the negotiations “a huge failure of ambition on the part of governments.” He said that a delay in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would be “binding ourselves to a 4-degree world.”

Scientists say that, at today’s warming-emissions rate, the global planet temperature is on course to rise by 4 degrees Celsius and they say that temperature would bring dramatic challenges to the way we presently live, causing the desertification of much farmland, widespread crop failure and major glacier loss.

Leape felt the need to point out to North Americans that climate change is not just some exotic problem for faraway lands but a domestic problem as well, whether or not politicians and corporate leaders care to admit it. He reminded reporters that 47 of the 50 U.S. states declared weather-related emergencies last year. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists warn that extreme weather conditions will only increase in frequency and intensity as the planet warms.

Some analysts say that, given the political and business realities of the contemporary world, the annual meetings– known as the COP conferences (the meeting in Durban is COP17)– with their focus on emissions reduction, detract from other more realizable goals. Paul Danish, writing in the Boulder Weekly, offered a typical example this week, arguing that, at this point, focusing so much attention on cutting emissions is a fool’s errand. “Global warming is a done deal,” he wrote. “[T]he conference should really be focused on learning to live with global warming and finding ways to adapt to it.”

Photos of the Global Day of Action in Durban by Adrienne Russell and Matt Tegelberg.

Reporters often ride along on police vehicles outside the conference.

South Durban is the toxic hub of South Africa and citizens there are demanding industry clean up the region and make efforts to limit waste.

Protesters here are strongly tying the right to secure freedom of information to the issue of climate change. Without access to data, corporate and industry interests can avoid accountability, they say. In South Africa, freedom of information has been threatened recently by a bill that attaches stiff prison sentences to unauthorized possession of classified information.

Reporting from Durban by Adrienne Russell, associate professor of communication at the University of Denver. Her most recent book, Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition was published by Polity Press this year.

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Critics say this is just a small portion of industry donations behind Upton’s flip from a moderate Michigan Republican to an anti-regulation, hard-right legislator, now a member of the deficit-reduction supercommittee.

“The polluters have deep pockets and they have turned an innately conservative issue that is traditionally bipartisan into something polarizing,” Heather Taylor-Miesle, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, told The Michigan Messenger. “The correlation between Upton’s voting record and his increase in contributions from polluting industries is striking.”

Upton’s path — from having nearly 20 years of legislative service with no major committee assignments to the major positions he now embodies — is marked with campaign donations, fundraising trips and influential friends.

A moderate past

Upton, grandson of Whirlpool Corporation co-founder Frederick Upton, was raised in St. Joseph, Mich., known as the twin city to neighboring Benton Harbor across the river. He now represents the state’s 6th Congressional District, which stretches along the Michigan-Indiana border.

His reputation as a political figure was similarly even-handed; he “embodied balance,” said a recent Washington Post feature, and he was known for reaching across the aisle.

Following Barack Obama’s election, Upton said he hoped to work closely with Obama, and regularly met with Rahm Emanuel, the president’s first White House chief of staff. In fact, Emanuel told Upton “something to the effect of, ‘You’re the guy we’re going to be looking to’ ” to build coalitions with Republicans, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette.

His voting record also strayed from more doctrinaire GOP members — during the 110th Congress, he broke from the Republican line on floor votes more often than most House Republicans, and supported then-President George W. Bush less than half of the time,according to a voting analysis (PDF).

Particularly notable was his position on energy issues. “Climate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions,” said Upton in April 2009, and again in June 2009: “We have a unique opportunity and a responsibility to reduce emissions and preserve our economy – the American public is desperate for solutions, but a national energy tax is not the answer.”

In 2007, Upton was a major supporter of legislation to improve lighting efficiency as well as one of the few Republicans that, as recently as 2009 supported increased funding for a U.S. Department of Energy loan program that would help automakers build more efficient cars.

Turning a new leaf

It is on energy issues that Upton has made the most dramatic change. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed from December 2010 titled “How Congress Can Stop the EPA’s Power Grab,” Upton detailed his new objections to environmental regulation, warning against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “unconstitutional power grab that will kill millions of jobs.”

He then went on to be the sponsor of the bill passed in the House that aims to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases; he flipped on his long-time support for energy efficient light bulbs (“There is no other explanation for why Fred Upton changed his mind on light bulbs then politics. It was an easy target,” says Taylor-Miesle); andpushed legislation to speed up the Keystone XL pipeline despite a recent oil spill near his district.

Money in the game

Upton was also accused by critics of asking the chairman of a major energy company a “softball question” during a congressional hearing. This may not have been particularly notable, except that this major energy company, DTE Energy, was also a major donor to Upton.

DTE Energy was the fourth-largest donor to Upton’s re-election campaign in 2010, giving him $20,400, and is his top contributor so far in the 2012 election cycle, according to Open Secrets. The company is currently being sued by the EPA for failing to install pollution controls on one of its major coal-fired power plants.

The energy and natural resources lobby is the 8th-largest donation industry, with more than 75 percent of its campaign donations going to Republican candidates, according to an analysis by Open Secrets. In the 2011-2012 fiscal year, it gave over $25 million.

According to Open Secrets, Upton has raised over $280,000 from the electrical utilities, oil and gas and energy industries for his campaign committee and Leadership PAC so far in the 2011-2012 campaign cycle. This is more than he raised in the 2009-2010 cycle ($278,500).

Seventy-two percent of his campaign contributions come from outside his district and 66 percent from outside his state, according to MapLight. As outside campaign contributions to Upton grow, so does his importance on the national stage, said Tyler Slocum, director of the non-profit lobbying group Public Citizen’s Energy project.

“There is no question that major fossil fuel producing companies are behind the [de-regulation] effort,” said Slocum, “and Upton has been all too eager to be a cheerleader for their effort.”

The Michigan congressman also receives money through his Team Republicans Utilizing Sensible Tactics Leadership PAC, which has raised more than $468,000 since the start of 2011. In the 2012 cycle, CMS Energy is the leading contributor to Trust PAC, giving $14,000 in individual and PAC donations.

Revolving door

Not all of Upton’s ties to the energy industry are available on his disclosure forms. Two former energy lobbyists work for his committee. His staff director Gary Andres most recently worked for the lobbying firm Dutko Worldwide, which caters to Aspect Energy LLC, Duke Energy Corp., PDVSA USA Inc. and NV Energy Inc., among others.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s general counsel, James Barnette, has a similar background. He most recently worked for the lobbying firm Steptoe and Johnson, whose clients include Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, Rio Tinto London Ltd. and Weyerhaeuser. Prior to entering lobbying, he served on the Energy and Commerce Committee staff from 1995 to 2006.

Upton was also spotted in the front row of an American Petroleum Institute event highlighting the oil industry’s agenda for 2011, and has met with some of the top industry executives since his appointment as chairman of the committee.

Why the flip?

Upton is considered to be in a safe Republican district, so are campaign contributions the only reason for his move to the right? Bill Ballenger, a former state representative and senator, told The Michigan Indpendent, “the threat to Upton is not from a Democrat in a general election but from his right in a Republican primary.”

At a time when the GOP is catering to a more right-wing message, the challenge to Upton’s seat by the very conservative former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk would have been “enough for any politician to be ‘scared straight,’” says Ballenger.

Taylor-Miesle, with the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund, sees Upton’s turn as politically expedient for him.

“I believe that Fred Upton is a smart member of Congress. He knows the science and economic case for protecting the environment and public health. Given his history, I don’t think that those fundamental beliefs have changed,” said Taylor-Miesle. “But he also knows that the Senate is probably not going to pass anything in its current climate. So he can appease his radical base with crazy legislation putting kids health at risk without a real likelihood of it ever happening.”

However, she says, that logic is not an excuse for the legislation he is supporting: “At the end of the day, however, anyway you dice it, he is endangering my family [and] your family.”

Eartha Melzer contributed to this report

In Colorado and southern Wyoming alone, more than four million acres of forest are already under siege by beetles.

It’s a cycle that may be starting to spin out of control, reports today’s New York Times.

From The New York Times:

Across millions of acres, the pines of the northern and central Rockies are dying, just one among many types of forests that are showing signs of distress these days.

From the mountainous Southwest deep into Texas, wildfires raced across parched landscapes this summer, burning millions more acres. In Colorado, at least 15 percent of that state’s spectacular aspen forests have gone into decline because of a lack of water.

The devastation extends worldwide. The great euphorbia trees of southern Africa are succumbing to heat and water stress. So are the Atlas cedars of northern Algeria. Fires fed by hot, dry weather are killing enormous stretches of Siberian forest. Eucalyptus trees are succumbing on a large scale to a heat blast in Australia, and the Amazon recently suffered two “once a century” droughts just five years apart, killing many large trees.

Experts are scrambling to understand the situation, and to predict how serious it may become.

Scientists say the future habitability of the Earth might well depend on the answer. For, while a majority of the world’s people now live in cities, they depend more than ever on forests, in a way that few of them understand.

The Times reports that scientists have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to prevent catastrophic global deforestation, but that funds and political will are lacking.

“Like any other scheme to improve the human condition, it’s quite precarious because it is so grand in its ambitions,” said William Boyd, a University of Colorado law professor working to salvage the plan.

Boyd is involved in several global initiatives to combat deforestation and global warming.

“There’s a long tradition of people who don’t like a particular message turning to attack the person delivering the message,” he said on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. “I view it as an honor, really. The message is an important one and I will continue doing my best delivering it the best I can.”

The man, who won both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for standing up for the environment, set off a firestorm of controversy in the conservative blogosphere after he referenced the book “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, while speaking at the Aspen Institute on Aug. 4. In his interview with NPR, he duplicated the message he delivered in Aspen, sans the swear words.

Gore said “carbon polluters” are “doing exactly the same thing that the tobacco industry did after the Surgeon General’s report came out” linking smoking to cancer.

“They hired actors and dressed them up as doctors and gave them scripts saying that smoking isn’t harmful,” Gore said. “Some of the same people and same organizations who took money from the tobacco companies to lie about the science of cigarette smoking are now taking money from the large carbon polluters and the oil and gas industry to mislead people about climate science.”

The one-time presidential candidate pointed to the extreme drought that has gripped Texas, flooding in Vermont and other states, millions of people displaced in Pakistan, flooding in Australia, and fires and drought in Russia as evidence that the earth’s changing climate is no joke.

“These are the events that scientists have been warning us about,” Gore said. “And now they’re saying if we keep putting all of this global warming pollution up there, these events will become worse and more frequent.”

Acknowledging the vitriol that sometimes surrounds climate change discussions, Gore praised Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman’s “willingness to take big risks in the Republican primary” by saying that he believes that the climate scientists are telling the truth.

“The deniers have accused him of all kinds of things,” Gore said. “It’s interesting, you know, 97 to 98 percent of all the climate scientists in the world are in agreement on this. Every national academy of science in every major country in the world is in agreement. So do you believe them or do you believe the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil and Rush Limbaugh? That’s an easy choice for me. For some evidently it’s not. Eventually reality has its day.”

Gore was on the program to promote The Climate Reality Project, which recently began streaming “24 hours of reality” about the earth’s climate crisis and extreme weather. It is being streamed in every time zone, in 13 languages, and features top scientists and other experts.

Earlier this week, Gore appeared on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report where he also made the case for climate change:

“One of the reasons the economy is in trouble is because we keep going to war in the Middle East in the place where most of the oil is located, and we keep borrowing money from China to buy oil from a market dominated by Saudi Arabia and then burn it in ways that destroy the future of the planet,” Gore said. “All of that has got to change. We can put people to work and strengthen the economy by building solar and wind facilities, refurbishing inefficient buildings, and building smart grids and fast trains and putting people to work instead of continuing this addiction to very expensive dirty oil and coal.”

Meanwhile, extreme skier Chris Davenport of Old Snowmass, Olympic snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler of Aspen, and snowboard star Jeremy Jones of Truckee, Calif., were on Capitol Hill Thursday where they made their view clear: “There is no debate. Climate change is already happening and we’re seeing it every day. … In our work, we’ve witnessed first-hand climate impacts on our mountains, from reduced snowpack and melting glaciers to dying alpine forests and shorter winter seasons,” the group told Congress.

“There’s a long tradition of people who don’t like a particular message turning to attack the person delivering the message,” he said on NPR’s Talk of the Nation today. “I view it as an honor, really. The message is an important one and I will continue doing my best delivering it the best I can.”

The man who won both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for standing up for the environment set off a firestorm of controversy in the conservative blogosphere after he referenced the book “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, while speaking at the Aspen Institute on Aug. 4. In his interview with NPR, he duplicated the message he delivered in Aspen, sans the swear words.

Gore said “carbon polluters” are “doing exactly the same thing that the tobacco industry did after the Surgeon General’s report came out” linking smoking to cancer.

“They hired actors and dressed them up as doctors and gave them scripts saying that smoking isn’t harmful,” Gore told NPR. “Some of the same people and same organizations who took money from the tobacco companies to lie about the science of cigarette smoking are now taking money from the large carbon polluters and the oil and gas industry to mislead people about climate science.”

The one-time presidential candidate pointed to the extreme drought that has gripped Texas, flooding in Vermont and other states, millions of people displaced in Pakistan, flooding in Australia, and fires and drought in Russia as evidence that the earth’s changing climate is no joke. “These are the events that scientists have been warning us about,” Gore said. “And now they’re saying if we keep putting all of this global warming pollution up there, these events will become worse and more frequent.”

Acknowledging the vitriol that sometimes surrounds climate change discussions, Gore praised Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman’s “willingness to take big risks in the Republican primary by saying that he believes that the climate scientists are telling the truth. The deniers have accused him of all kinds of things. It’s interesting, you know, 97-98 percent of all the climate scientists in the world are in agreement on this. Every national academy of science in every major country in the world is in agreement. So do you believe them or do you believe the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil and Rush Limbaugh? That’s an easy choice for me. For some evidently it’s not. Eventually reality has its day.”

Gore was on the program to promote The Climate Reality Project, which beginning at 6 p.m. MDT tonight will stream “24 hours of reality” about the earth’s climate crisis and extreme weather. It will be streamed in every time zone, in 13 languages, and feature top scientists and other experts.

Earlier this week, he appeared on The Colbert Report where he also made the case for climate change.

“One of the reasons the economy is in trouble is because we keep going to war in the Middle East in the place where most of the oil is located and we keep borrowing money from China to buy oil from a market dominated by Saudi Arabia and then burn it in ways that destroy the future of the planet,” Gore said. “All of that has got to change. We can put people to work and strengthen the economy by building solar and wind facilities, refurbishing inefficient buildings, and building smart grids and fast trains and putting people to work instead of continuing this addiction to very expensive dirty oil and coal.”

Meanwhile, extreme skier Chris Davenport of Old Snowmass, Olympic snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler of Aspen, and snowboard star Jeremy Jones of Truckee, Calif., were on Capitol Hill today where they made their view clear: “There is no debate. Climate change is already happening and we’re seeing it every day. … In our work, we’ve witnessed first-hand climate impacts on our mountains, from reduced snowpack and melting glaciers to dying alpine forests and shorter winter seasons,” they told Congress.

A second poll out this week, from Public Policy Polling, shows Perry leading Romney by a much larger margin, 31-18, but also shows his support among likely Republican primary voters to be falling.

From Bloomberg.com:

Republicans give Rick Perry frontrunner status in their party’s presidential primary race even as warning signs flash over his ability to win support in the general election.

The Texas governor is the preferred choice of 26 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Sept. 9-12. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney places second at 22 percent, while all of the other Republican candidates get less than 10 percent.

In a hypothetical general election matchup, Perry trails President Barack Obama among the poll’s entire sample, 49 percent to 40 percent, about twice the deficit for Romney. Perry also confronts negative reactions from Americans disinclined to vote for a candidate expressing the skepticism he has about the viability of Social Security, evolution science and whether humans contribute to climate change.

“Science is an integral part of our culture,” said Danyelle Lowers, 27, a student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, who considers herself an independent voter. “To have such a general disregard for the sciences is rather terrifying.”

Still, positions and statements that could hurt Perry in a faceoff with Obama work to his advantage with his most immediate audience — Republican primary voters.

Perry’s skepticism on climate change and evolution, while playing well in the primaries could hurt him in a general election, the polls showed.

Forty-five percent of Americans say they’d be less inclined to support a candidate who says science isn’t settled on whether human activity contributes to global warming, while 25 percent said it would make them more likely to back that candidate. Half said they would be turned off by a candidate who says evolution remains an unproven theory, with 20 percent saying they’d be more inclined to support someone who holds that view.

The PPP poll also shows double digit support for Ron Paul at 11 percent and Newt Gingrich at 10 percent.

From the PPP website:

In a sense these numbers are good news for both Perry and Romney. They’re obviously good for Perry in that he’s been able to maintain a double digit lead as the attacks have begun flying at him. But they’re also good news for Romney because after a 2 month period of surging support for Perry his momentum has finally stopped. Certainly he’s in a very strong position and he’ll win the nomination if he can maintain it, but his support isn’t still surging the way it had been poll after poll after poll.

Perry, though, has strong support among people whose views are outside the mainstream. While that may carry him to the nomination, it will make 2012 a tricky road for Republicans:

Romney leads Perry 23-18 among GOP voters who believe in global warming…but that’s only 27% of them. With the 62% who don’t believe in it Perry’s up 38-14. One interesting note on those numbers- Perry’s favorability with Republicans who believe in global warming is 37/50. Are those folks going to vote for him in the general election if he ends up as the nominee?

With Republicans who don’t think Barack Obama is a Socialist, Romney leads Perry 26-13…but with the 71% who do think Obama is a Socialist, Perry is ahead 35-16.

The good news is pouring in for Republicans right now. But if there’s a dark cloud ahead it’s the possibility of ending up with a nominee who’s gone so far outside the mainstream to win over Republican primary voters that he can’t win the center against Obama. It’s something to keep an eye on.

That much became apparent in a session last week in Denver when aides to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennett and U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter met with members of the Colorado Renewable Energy Society.

From the proposed pipeline to bring tar sands from Alberta into the United States to the framing of climate-change legislation, the aides kept using the same four-letter word: jobs.

“My boss stands for job creation. My boss stands for prosperity. He stands for environmental protection,” said Aaron Greco, a Perlmutter aide who focuses on energy issues.

An energy bill, said Becca Montgomery, state policy director for Bennet, should be framed as an economic stimulus. “But you wouldn’t call it that,” she added. “Jobs are just a first.”

Perlmutter, said Greco, could end up not opposing the Keystone pipeline from Alberta. Hotly opposed by some environmentalists, the pipeline would bring the tar sands to refineries to be constructed in the United States – and create jobs. Nothing revealed so far has provided grounds to oppose it, he said. He reminded his audience of about 60 people that they, too, likely were driving the demand. “Didn’t most of us drive here tonight?”

In fact, although he didn’t say it, it’s likely that a large proportion of the audience had reached the event using Canadian tar sands. A pipeline from Fort McMurray extends to the Suncor refinery in Commerce City. The refinery provides about a third of the petroleum sold in Colorado.

Should later evidence emerge about unacceptable environmental impacts, said Greco, Perlmuter might oppose the authorizing legislation.

“One thing I tell my friends in the environmental community – and I have lots of friends in the environmental community – is that it’s your job to advocate for the environment. It’s my job to advocate for everything,” Greco said.

Greco also warned against applying too much of a litmus test to Democratic politicians. “The Democratic Party is a big tent,” he said, going on to note suggestions that the AFL-CIO will withhold money for the re-election of President Barack Obama because of disagreements over his policies. But if Obama goes too far left and gets defeated, said Greco, “The policies that happen after he loses are really horrible.”

Aides to both legislators expressed support for renewable energy, but admitted to difficulties. Greco, the Perlmutter aide, said they see marketing uncertainty to be the biggest challenge. “We want to be the global leader… we’re not the global leader.”

Montgomery said Bennet wants improved market certainty for renewable energy within a long-term energy policy.

Both aides agreed that there is no overt opposition to renewable energy. The opposition is more nuanced.

“They say it’s not a real step forward,” said Montgomery. “The more data you can give us, that always helps. The more fire we have, the better.”

Climate change is not a compelling argument with most people.

“They’re not climate change deniers,” said Greco. “They just don’t see it every day.”

As such, he said, the messaging matters entirely. The debate needs to be framed in terms of choice.

And that provides a challenge, he added, because few Americans understand where their water comes from, who pays to fill the potholes, and the sources of their electricity.

But Perlmutter’s aide was clearly wrong in at least one respect. He said that a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by a Democrat right now will not pass.

In fact, a bill that would break the logjam over the so-called PACE programs, such have been enacted in Boulder, Eagle, Pitkin and Gunnison counties in Colorado, as well as in other states, has a lengthy list of both Republican and Democratic supporters in Congress. Such programs use local government to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Any bill that champions local self-determination – as the PACE programs do – is far likelier to gain Republican support, said Montgomery.

The Associated Press reports:

A new environmental study of the proposed $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline shows no new issues since a similar report was issued last year.

The report issued Friday is the third on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude oil extracted from tar sands in western Canada to refineries in Texas. The pipeline would travel through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The State Department report removes a major roadblock to construction of the pipeline, but does not grant final approval. The department has authority over the project because it crosses an international boundary.

Environmental groups wanted the State Dept. to study the potential for leaks and whether the route of the pipeline could be changed to avoid crossing the Ogallala aquifer.

“We haven’t seen the analysis, but we are in regular contact with the State Department so we know what studies have been completed and we know they haven’t done the studies we’ve asked for,” Danielle Droitsch, a senior adviser at the National Resources Defense Council, told the Winnipeg Free Press on Thursday.

The State Dept. action was expected by the pipeline opponents that have gathered near the White House for a two week long run of sit-ins to protest the planned pipeline. So far 322 people have been arrested.

“After two failed rounds of environmental review, this looks like strike three for the State Department. The document still fails to address the key concerns for landowners and wildlife,” National Wildlife Federation senior vice president Jim Lyon said in a statement. ”It is almost certain to be scrutinized in other venues, including a probable legal challenge. This only escalates the controversy in a process that is far from over.”

In an interview with the New York Times climate scientist and pipeline opponent James Hansen compared the U.S. and Canada to out of control drug addicts.

“If Obama chooses the dirty needle [pipeline] it will confirm that Obama was just greenwashing all along, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians, with no real intention of solving the addiction,” Hansen said.

Designed to carry oil from the tar sands production fields of Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf Coast, the nearest the pipeline comes to Colorado is Nebraska, but activists point out that tar sands oil already comes into Commerce City by pipeline and is then refined by Suncor Energy and sold as gasoline across Colorado at nearly 270 Shell and Phillips 66 stations.

Climatologist Jim Hansen, also traveling with the cross-country No Tar Sands Caravan from Davis, Calif., to Washington, D.C. Aug. 21-26, said it’s “essentially game over for the climate” if the XL pipeline wins U.S. State Department approval and allows full exploitation of tar sands reserves in Canada. The extraction process uses huge quantities of water and conventional power and is responsible for enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and other emissions, critics say.

Activists, including actor Danny Glover, plan to travel the nation to spread the word on the folly of expanding tar sands production via the XL pipeline, which has been under increased scrutiny following an ExxonMobil pipeline spill in Montana’s Yellowstone River earlier this summer.

In a release regarding the No Tar Sands Caravan Colorado stops, the group drew parallels between tar sands production and efforts in this state to revive oil shale production on the Western Slope.

“The rising dollar value of oil has got Western slope communities bracing for a revival of destructive oil shale development,” the release reads. “Oil shale, like tar sand, requires tremendous amounts of water, habitat destruction, and deadly emissions to produce each barrel of oil.”

Not so be confused with recent shale oil plays (traditional oil and gas drilling in shale formations using hydraulic fracturing), oil shale production died in Colorado in the early 1980s before it ever even got started commercially. It involves super-hearting shale rock and sand to extract organic kerogen and then refine it into oil. Research on vast untapped reserves in the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming has been under way for decades.

Proponents of oil shale production say the Obama administration has been dragging its feet on the potential fuel source while fast-tracking tar sands. And there is growing interest from some businesses and Republican politicians on the Western Slope to revive the long-dormant but still-unproven industry.

The No Tar Sands Caravan stops in Boulder Monday evening, Aug. 22, and overnights at the Masala Community House. Demonstrators then head to Denver for a 9 a.m. rally on the west steps of the State Capitol. The ultimate destination is a “sustained presence from over 2,000 citizens on the White House gates.”

One of those citizens will be recent Fairview High School [Boulder] graduate Alex Budd, who said in a release: “Tar sands development will be the final nail in the climate coffin. If we are to have any hope of preserving a world worth living in, this is a line we absolutely must not cross! Knowing what’s at stake, I will do what is necessary to defend what I love. Enough is enough.”