The Houston Chronicle broke the story last week, when Harvey Rice reported the “long-awaited” study was being held up by the oceanography professor’s concerns over edits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which had commissioned the study:

“I don’t think there is any question but that their motive is to tone this thing down as it relates to global (climate) change,” Anderson said. “It’s not about the science. It’s all politics.”

The article has several references to climate change but does not say it is caused by humans. However, other references to the impact people have had on the environment were deleted by TCEQ.

TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow gave no reason for the deletions in an e-mail response, saying only that the agency disagreed with information in the article.

“It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it,” she said.

The TCEQ commissioners are appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, and include noted climate-change skeptic Bryan Shaw.

The Texas Observer’s Forrest Wilder, who has covered complaints about the TCEQ for years, called it a “straight-up hatchet job,” and “a new low for the highly-politicized agency,” and wrote that simply following the “track changes” feature in Microsoft Word showed TCEQ employees simply snipping out references to global climate change.

Wednesday, the Chronicle reports Anderson has refused to sign off on the report, forcing TCEQ to abandon the study.

“I’m willing to live with not having it published,” Anderson told the paper. “I refuse to have it published with their deletions.”

According to the Chronicle, Anderson’s colleagues backed him in the conflict with the agency:

Two scientists at the Houston Advanced Research Center backed Anderson. The center has a contract with TCEQ, valued at less than $100,000, to publish The State of the Bay.

Research Center Vice President Jim Lester and scientist Lisa Gonzalez, co-editors for the project, had informed TCEQ they did not want their names associated with the TCEQ version, fearing it would hurt their credibility as scientists.

In Mother Jones last week, Anderson told reporter Kate Sheppard that whether or not the report got out, Texas is going to face dramatic changes to its coastline like those already happening next door:

“Sea level doesn’t just go up in Louisiana. We’re the next in line,” he says. “We are in fact starting to see many of the changes that Louisiana was seeing 20 years ago, yet we still have a state government that refuses to accept this is happening.”

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.

Environment Minnesota, in an email to supporters, blasted Klobuchar for her votes last week. “With these votes, Sen. Klobuchar had a choice: stand up for the health of our children, elderly citizens and other vulnerable populations, or do the bidding of America’s biggest polluters. And Senator Klobuchar chose to side with polluters.”

ThinkProgress called Klobuchar one of the 17 “dirty Democrats.”

Klobuchar voted for the Baucus amendment which would have exempted agriculture and small emitters. It failed with the GOP opposing it for not being strong enough and only a handful of Democrats voting “aye.” Klobuchar also voted for the Stabenow amendment which would have put restrictions on the EPA enforcement of greenhouse gases for two years.

Phil Kerpen of the Koch brothers–backed Americans for Prosperity trashed those measures calling them “phony amendments that only pretended to stop the EPA’s job-crushing regulations.”

The White House praised the Senate for rejecting the efforts that Klobuchar backed.

“The administration is encouraged by the Senate’s actions today to defend the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect public health under the Clean Air Act,” President Obama said in a statement. “By rejecting efforts to rollback EPA’s common-sense steps to safeguard Americans from harmful pollution, the Senate also rejected an approach that would have increased the nation’s dependence on oil, contradicted the scientific consensus on global warming, and jeopardized America’s ability to lead the world in the clean energy economy.”

The Senate cast its votes to curtail the EPA’s authority on greenhouse gases last Wednesday, and the House — with the help of a few Democrats — attempted to add them to the budget resolution that almost shut down the government.

Rep. Peterson was at the heart of those efforts.

He was a cosponsor of the attempt to curtail the EPA. According to the New York Times, he offered legislation because of “all this stuff the EPA is doing to ethanol and every other damn thing they are doing.”

In a statement, Peterson cited agricultural concerns.

“This bill hits the pause button on EPA’s current efforts to regulate greenhouse gases,” he said. “America’s farmers and ranchers are committed to preserving our natural resources for the next generation, but what we’re seeing from EPA could potentially interfere with conservation efforts already underway. EPA’s regulations would not only make it harder for agriculture producers to meet increased demand but raise costs on all consumers. If Congress fails to act the economic effects could be devastating.”

The measure was cosponsored by Peterson as well as Republican Reps. John Kline and Michele Bachmann, and was eventually pulled in the final budget agreement late Friday night.

“I think climate change occurs, but the bulk of it is natural, historic trends in the climate,” Pawlenty said. “There is some suggestion that humans have caused some of it, but the answer is not a government, top-down scheme.”

Pawlenty was responding to a question about his previous support of cap-and-trade legislation, including participating in a radio advertisement in 2007 with then-Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano urging Congress to tackle climate change.

Also in 2007, Pawlenty signed legislation in Minnesota that required the state to reduce its emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent in 2050. The bill also endorsed the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group, a panel charged with drafting a comprehensive greenhouse gas emission reduction plan to meet those goals.

The Pulitzer Prize winning website Politifact found Pawlenty to have completely flipped his long-held position on cap and trade in recent years, going from an adamant supporter to full-throated critic.

All the big-name potential presidential candidates have embraced climate change at one point or another, Pawlenty said Friday, but supporting cap-and-trade was a mistake.

Instead of a “a ham-fisted, unhelpful” approach to breaking the country’s addiction to foreign oil, Pawlenty said it is time to “Americanize our energy sources.”

“I’m tired of having our energy future tied to places and people and leaders who don’t share our values and don’t like the United States,” he said.

As president, Pawlenty said he would push for development of all forms of energy, including coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables.  Several times during the interview he singled out natural gas as one of America’s best options, saying it “burns cleaner than coal and is less controversial than nuclear.”

Pawlenty’s assertions that humans play only a minor role in climate change came the same week that noted climate-change skeptics at The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project went before Congress to report that while they had set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming, they had in fact ended up with results “very similar to that reported by the prior groups.”

The global scientific community is overwhelmingly unified in the belief that the climate is warming as a result of human actions, among them the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

The list of cities is lead by Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Chicago; New York; Atlanta; Houston; Sacramento; Detriot; and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The agency estimates that the growth in energy star certified buildings across the country has prevented greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions from the energy use of nearly 1.3 million homes a year, which has protected health while saving more than $1.9 billion.

Des Moines first made an appearance on the national list in 2009, when it was part of a three-way tie (alongside Fort Collins, Colo. and Philadelphia, Penn.) for 24th place on the list of 25 top cities.  For the 2010 rankings, Des Moines has pushed forward one spot to hold the 23rd rank in the country. Philadelphia rocketed to 14th place, and Fort Collins no longer appears in the top 25.

According to statistics released by EPA officials, Des Moines had 60 energy certified buildings in 2010, which provided 8.3 million square feet in floorspace. The agency estimates that the space provided $3.7 million in savings, or the equivalent of about 6,000 homes.

In comparison, the top compliant city, Los Angeles, maintained 510 such buildings providing 106.1 million in floorspace. That city’s savings estimate was $117.9 million, or the equivalent of about 39,800 homes. Los Angeles has topped the list for the past several years.

“When it’s more important than ever to cut energy costs and reduce pollution in our communities, organizations across America are making their buildings more efficient, raising the bar in energy efficiency and lowering the amount of carbon pollution and other emissions in the air we breathe,” said Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA. “Through their partnership with Energy Star, metropolitan areas across the US. are saving a combined $1.9 billion in energy costs every year while developing new ways to shrink energy bills and keep our air clean.”

EPA debuted its list of cities with the most Energy Star certified buildings in 2008. Surpassing the growth of the past several years, in 2010 more than 6,200 commercial buildings earned the Energy Star, an increase of nearly 60 percent compared to 2009.

According to a database on the government’s Energy Star website, the entire state of Iowa was home to 67 Energy Star labeled buildings and plants during 2010. Of the total, eight were banks or financial institutions, two were courthouses, 37 were K-12 schools, five were office buildings, 11 were retail establishments, three were unrefrigerated warehouses and one was an industrial plant. The two courthouses making the list are the U.S. Courthouse in Des Moines and the Des Moines County Courthouse in Burlington.

Commercial buildings that earn the Energy Star must perform in the top 25 percent of buildings nationwide compared to similar buildings and be independently verified by a licensed professional engineer or registered architect each year. Energy Star certified buildings use 35 percent less energy and emit 35 percent less carbon dioxide than average buildings. Fourteen types of commercial buildings can earn the Energy Star, including office buildings, schools and retail stores.

The Carbon War Room is a US-based nonprofit that “harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change.” One of the features of its website is a tool to measure shipping efficiency. According to a press release from the Carbon War Room:

Shipping produces almost 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide emissions each year, or a thousand million tonnes, more than the total emissions of Germany. The Carbon War Room saw an opportunity to support its ambitions of rapid, large-scale emissions reduction by entrepreneurial means, in targeting the sector. They, and others, have estimated that there is more than 30% profitable efficiency potential on current technology.

The Carbon War Room’s homepage offers a scrolling list of dramatic facts, such as:

3,641,114 MILLION TONS OF CO?E IN THE ATMOSPHERE IN 2009

Atmospheric concentrations of CO?e are rising due to increasing anthropogenic emissions. Unchecked, rising concentrations of CO?e in the atmosphere will lead to catastrophic climate change.

and:

Public electricity and heating in Annex I countries accounted for over 6.68 billion tons of CO?e emissions annually in 2007.

and:

4,626,841 THOUSAND TONS OF CO?E IN 2007
Transport is responsible for approximately 20% of global anthropogenic emissions, or more than 4.63 billion tons of CO?e annually. Source: UNFCCC, 2009.

There’s no mention, however, of one of Branson’s own projects, New Mexico’s Spaceport America, emissions from which are expected to accelerate climate change.

As Bryant Furlow reported earlier this year in the New Mexico Independent, the study appeared in Geophysical Research Letters and:

suggest that emissions from 1,000 private rocket launches a year would persist high in the stratosphere, potentially altering global atmospheric circulation and distributions of ozone. The simulations show that the changes to Earth’s climate could increase polar surface temperatures by 1 °C, and reduce polar sea ice by 5–15%.

The New Mexico Independent sent an an e-mail seeking comment to the Carbon War Room’s director of communications, but has yet to receive a reply.

During a two-week summit, which ends December 10, negotiators and world leaders will once again attempt to hammer out agreements on climate change, carbon emission reductions, adaptation and mitigation. Tagged “COP 16,” the meetings are the 16th annual Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The convention, which encourages countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, was adopted in 1992 and has been signed now by 194 parties, including the United States.

As negotiators and political leaders the world over prepared for two weeks of meetings in this resort city along the so-called Mayan Riveria, Calderón implored them to realize that it is “less expensive to respond to climate change now than to respond to the consequences of not putting a stop to it in time.”

Some perpetuate a dilemma between the environment and the economy — but that is a false dilemma, said Calderón. “It is perfectly possible to sustain economic growth and fight poverty,” he said. “It is perfectly possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and not only sustain economic growth, but even find new ways of generating productivity and jobs in green development, green growth and sustainable development.”

Expectations built — and dashed

Leading up to last year’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen, expectations were high — in large part because of President Obama’s election. But after the United States again thwarted agreements by refusing to take action on emissions reductions, many people worldwide lost faith not only in the UN process but in the willingness by the US to ever take action on climate change.

The Copenhagen Accord, as it’s called, was signed by more than 190 countries in December 2009. Within it, leaders agreed that worldwide temperature increases should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius — according to NASA, temperatures have already risen by 1.4 degrees — but did not actually commit to achieving that goal by making cuts to carbon emissions.

Speaking at a press event in Cancún, author and 350.org founder Bill McKibben found this vague focus on two degrees troublesome, and he admitted frustration with the conference negotiations. “We’re already in a world of hurt, and we’re already doing things we can’t sustain or deal with,” he said. “And it shows the institutional — I’m looking for a more polite word — insanity of talking about a two-degree rise in temperature on the planet as if it were some kind of goal for which we should strive.”

Many regions across the world are already experiencing the impacts of climate change, said McKibben. Against that backdrop, the climate talks themselves are infused with an air of “unreality.” Not only does Arctic sea ice continue to melt, but Russia experienced a tremendous heat wave — one that prompted the Kremlin to cease grain exports and cause a spike of prices on markets worldwide — and this summer, almost a quarter of Pakistan’s lands were submerged beneath flood waters.

“If we’re already melting the Arctic, what should that tell us?” McKibben asked, and added: “We can’t be sitting here having strategies on how to get more carbon in the atmosphere and call it good; we need to be figuring out strategies for figuring out how to get it out of the air.”

Kyoto redux

This year’s meeting in Cancún is also the sixth annual meeting of the members of the Kyoto Protocol. Beyond encouraging countries to cut their emissions, that international agreement set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions five percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

Although the United States never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, 184 countries worldwide have (PDF), and one of the goals for COP 16 is to negotiate Kyoto’s next commitment phase, which will begin in January 2013. But it now looks as though some countries previously committed to Kyoto are now having second thoughts.

As a legally binding agreement, Kyoto is the tool by which developed countries — that is, the countries whose historic and current emissions are causing climate change — measure and verify their emission reductions. “Those rules have already been adopted, and we’ve spent ten years waiting for governments to elaborate on them,” said Tove Ryding of Greenpeace International. But now, precisely when developing countries want to see developed countries stick to their original commitments, developed countries are trying to change those original requirements. “There are no technical reasons, there are no practical reasons, there are no scientific reasons why you could not continue with the Kyoto Protocol,” she said. “This is all about politics.”

While the European Union has been open to moving forward with Kyoto—having already committed to a 20 percent reductions in its carbon emissions—both Japan and Canada are now backing away from Kyoto. “It could be because the Kyoto Protocol has a compliance mechanism, that if you violate your commitments, there will be consequences,” she said. “But that’s why the Kyoto Protocol is so vital—to keep and build on the future regime.”

Back in the U.S.

At the opening ceremony in Cancún, Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pointed out that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Average air and ocean water temperatures are rising, and due to melting snow and ice, sea levels are rising.

He added that global carbon emissions should peak no later than 2015 and decline thereafter. Such action must occur if abrupt and irreversible climate change is to be avoided.

The IPCC was created in 1988 by the UN General Assembly created so scientists could objectively assess the state of knowledge about climate change. Its scientists draw conclusions from the data and help policymakers assess the state of the science of climate change. So far, the IPCC has produced four assessment reports — in 1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007. Currently, the IPCC is working on its fifth assessment, which it will release in November 2014. The panel is also working on two special reports, one on renewable energy and mitigation and a second about extreme weather events.

But at the same time that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is releasing ever-more certain data about climate change — and other parts of the world are already experiencing the impacts of climate change — political leaders in the United States are moving backwards on the issue of climate change.

This summer, Congress failed to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. And now, the Republican leadership is launching an all-out attack on climate scientists and climate policies.

Earlier this fall, Rep. Fred Upton, R-MI, called for congressional hearings to investigate climate scientists. More recently, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced the disbanding of the US House of Representative’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. That committee was created in 2007 by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, and has held more than 75 hearings in three years on issues ranging from the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico to water scarcity and sea level rises.

On Dec. 1, the committee held a final hearing titled, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges.” And in his closing remarks, chairman Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA, noted that “while some in Congress may question the science of global warming, the rest of the world does not.”

For his part, New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Luján is “sincerely disappointed” in the GOP’s decision to disband the committee before its work had been completed. “We must not turn a blind eye to this issue when our leadership is sorely needed,” he said.. “I remain committed to fighting for clean energy initiatives that reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, create jobs in America and protect our land and water.”

But for American activists who have come to Cancún to try and convince the world’s leaders to take action on climate change, the political scene back home is bleak.

“It’s unlikely that emissions are going to peak by 2015 — and the later that peak is, the more dramatic the declines [in emissions] will have to be,” said Kevin Bundy, senior attorney of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “If we wait until 2020, it may be too late: Dramatic action is needed now.”

Laura Paskus is an independent writer and editor who is reporting from Cancún as an Earth Journalism Network Climate Media Fellow.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency responsible for tracking climate patterns, said yesterday that high ocean temperatures in 2005 led to the worst coral reef damage in the Caribbean on record. The high ocean temperatures resulted in the bleaching of some 80 percent of the coral reef surveyed in the Caribbean and tropical Atlantic. When coral is bleached, essential algae that grow on the coral are expelled. About 40 percent of the coral reef died, according to the new study, which is the most comprehensive on the issue.

NOAA scientists say the bleaching and coral death will have a severe effect on the ocean ecosystem. They also say that the problem is likely to get worse as ocean temperatures rise as a result of climate change.

“Heat stress during the 2005 event exceeded any observed in the Caribbean in the prior 20 years, and regionally-averaged temperatures were the warmest in at least 150 years,” said Mark Eakin, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program, in a statement. “This severe, widespread bleaching and mortality will undoubtedly have long-term consequences for reef ecosystems, and events like this are likely to become more common as the climate warms.”

Environmentalists are using this study and other research to call for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the new crop of Republicans entering Congress raise questions about climate science, environmentalists are redoubling their efforts to educate the public on the issue, even as prospects for climate legislation in the Senate and a binding global climate treaty appear unlikely.

In a call sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists last week, Brenda Ekwurze, a climate scientist at the group, pointed to the NOAA data to underscore that “the science remains unequivocal.”

Eakin, who also spoke on the call, said, “Right now, coral reefs around the world are either bleached, dead from bleaching or trying to recover from bleaching.” Eakin added that scientists are seeing wide-scale bleaching in 2010 as well. Early data suggests the bleaching isn’t as severe as in the 1990s, when about 50 percent of the world’s coral reefs were destroyed. But Eakin said, “How bad does it have to be? Is one atomic blast worse than another?”

Another issue UCS is focusing on to build a case for action on climate change is forest fires. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that continued increases in greenhouse gas emissions will result in never-before-seen instances of global forest fires.

Olga Pechony, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who conducted the research and spoke on the call last week, said, “If we take care of the base cause of this increase, global warming, this would be something that would help. Reducing the levels of warming would reduce the levels of fire activity.”

UPPA/ZUMApress.com

The midterm elections brought an unprecedented number of climate skeptics into Congress, with no incoming Republicans acknowledging the existence of man-made climate change. Environmentalists have all but given up on passing significant climate legislation in the near future, but in the long term, it may be difficult for climate skeptics to hold their ranks: Young Americans are significantly more concerned about global warming than older generations, and there are no major organizations of young climate skeptics.

This raises the question: What will come of climate skeptics as young people begin to rise to positions of power?

[Environment1] The Washington Independent put this question to Warren Meyer, who runs the website climate-skeptic.com. Meyer, in an email, said younger generations are drawn to “the ‘civilization in peril’ line,” and he suggested that people’s views change over time. “The lack of teenage skeptics today is meaningless for whether there will be skeptics in 20 years,” he said.

Meyer said young people will eventually become more attuned to the economic cost associated with lowering greenhouse gas emissions. “This seems really compelling to the young,” he said. “Until you understand that on the other side of the equation is a 100% chance of really high economic costs.”

There is evidence to suggest that older people care much more about the cost of policies like cap-and-trade than younger people. A June National Journal/Society for Human Resources Management poll shows that while 65 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds favor “protecting the environment” — to 29 percent concerned with “keeping prices low” — those numbers change for older people: 40 percent of people over 65 care about protecting the environment, while 47 percent are concerned with keeping prices low.

Overall though, the issue breaks down along party lines. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that about 79 percent of Democrats and just 38 percent of Republicans believe the earth is warming. Among Republicans who identify with the Tea Party, just 23 percent say there is solid evidence of climate change. The majority of Tea Partiers are over 45, with just 7 percent between the ages of 18 and 29, according to an April New York Times poll.

In an effort to find young people who question the science behind global warming, I allowed Meyer to put a call out on his blog. During the last several weeks, I’ve heard from about half a dozen young people who question climate science.

Andrew Funk, a 27-year-old biologist at the Department of Agriculture, is one of those people. Funk rejects the term climate skeptic in favor of “rational optimist.” In a phone conversation, Funk said he believes climate science is “pretty shaky.” He added, “I think it’s a shaky platform to re-engineer large portions of society.”

In a city flush with young Democrats, Funk said he has found a small group of like-minded individuals. “I end up hanging out with friends that are more independent, a little more libertarian-minded,” he said.

Other skeptics preferred to remain anonymous. For example, one 26-year-old graduate student at the University of Maryland said in an email:

It would be imprudent of me to let my heterodoxy on this issue be publicly known, as, sadly, I feel this has become more of a political matter in academic circles than a scientific one. I would rather my name not be associated with dissent on this matter.

The student’s comments say a great deal about the way young people think about climate change and the potential implications for somebody who questions the broad scientific consensus on the issue.

Anthony Watts, a prominent climate skeptic who runs the popular and controversial site “Watts Up With That,” blamed the “liberal” education system for the lack of young climate skeptics. “I suppose such a group would be unlikely because our children are conditioned by textbooks and a generally liberal education process to believe in the [man-made global warming] premise as factual and without question,” he said.

“In colleges, there are so many activist groups recruiting to ‘save the planet’ that skepticism generally gets drowned in the cacophony,” he added.

Maura Cowley, national director of the Sierra Student Coalition, organizes the types of “save the planet” activists Watts criticizes. “My opinion is that this whole dialogue will just fade into the past,” she said. “If you look at the millennial generation, you look at a generation that is savvy and soon to be the best educated generation.”

Cowley said young people recognize what’s at stake if nothing is done to address climate change “It’s really clear that this generation has the most to lose with this issue,” she said. “I think that’s a big part of the reason they care about this.”

Polling shows that climate skepticism has increased significantly in the last couple of years, as the issue has heated up in Congress. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that between April 2008 and October 2009 — a period that saw the passage of a cap-and-trade bill in the House and the beginning of debate on a similar bill in the Senate — the percentage of Americans who believe there is “solid evidence” that the earth is warming fell drastically, from 71 percent to 57 percent.

Joe Romm, a former Clinton administration official who now runs the popular blog Climate Progress, said any effort to address climate change in Congress will run into opposition from a number of powerful industry interests.

“The disinformation campaign is incredibly well funded,” he said. “There’s a staggering amount of money in it.

But he said the effects of climate change will become more obvious over time, forcing skeptics to change their tune. “Come 2020 we’re going to be desperate to respond to global warming and the skeptics will be condemned,” he said.