Although the Republican Conference voted to adopt the moratorium, it’s important to remember that — currently, at least — it’s a nonbinding resolution.

“I’m going to look out for my state of Oklahoma,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Poltico today, in apparent defiance of the upcoming decision. “Obviously, that’s what the Constitution says I’m going to do, and I’m going to do it. Let’s keep in mind this is over. I’ll be the last conservative standing.”

Whether Inhofe’s small act of civil disobedience — or Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C) hedging — prevents Republicans from claiming the moral high ground on the issue remains to be seen.

In a series of one-on-one conversations with incoming and sitting senators, McConnell is encouraging his colleagues to keep an open mind and not to automatically side with DeMint, whose plan calls on Senate Republicans to unilaterally give up earmarks in the 112th Congress, according to several people familiar with the talks.

While McConnell is not demanding that rank-and-file Republican senators vote against the earmark ban, he’s laying out his concerns that eliminating earmarks would effectively cede Congress’ spending authority to the White House while not making a real dent in the $1 trillion-plus budget deficit. And McConnell is signaling his concern about the awkward politics of the situation: even if the DeMint moratorium passes, Republican senators could push for earmarks, given that the plan is nonbinding and non-enforceable.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), for one, is siding with McConnell. “They should quit worrying about this phony issue,” he told Politico.“The ban doesn’t accomplish anything.”

But if the issue is so insignificant, others on the right are wondering why McConnell is risking a fight over it so soon after the election of six new Republican senators, many of whom ran on an explicitly anti-earmark platform. From the conservative blog Hot Air:

Again, the fact that the resolution’s nonbinding and that tea partiers like DeMint will continue to speak out against earmarks anyway means that there’s virtually nothing to be gained by McConnell in opposing the measure. He’s still going to infuriate the base if he continues to earmark; he simply won’t be in technical violation of any “sense of the caucus” resolution if he does it. In fact, Rand Paul has already reminded his supporters that he’ll have no problem demanding Kentucky’s fair share of pork so long as it’s appropriated through normal procedural means, not snuck into a bill at the last moment. Which is yet another reminder that this is mainly a symbolic measure, so why not get behind it? Especially since opposing this measure is apt to intensify calls for McConnell to be replaced as minority leader — possibly with Jim DeMint. I don’t get it.

The addition of new faces like Senators-elect Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) should be sufficient, in theory, to give the proposal enough votes, assuming all the Republican senators who voted for a similar DeMint plan in March do so again. But we already know that won’t be the case, because Sen. McConnell was among those voting for DeMint’s proposal the last time it was raised. And because the ballot on Tuesday will be secret, a number of GOP senators might feel less pressure to vote for the measure than they would were the vote to be held in the open.

At least one Republican and long-time climate skeptic, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is already delighting in Bingaman’s comments. Inhofe’s press office blasted the story to reporters today.

Today, the bill’s sponsors tried a different tack, offering a version of the bill that removed the liability cap altogether.

It went exactly nowhere.

Objecting for the Republicans, Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) said that putting oil companies on the line for unlimited liability would push all but the largest companies out of the offshore drilling business — the same argument he made last week in rejecting the $10 billion cap. In fact, Inhofe said, removing the liability cap could push even the giants of the industry — BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil and ConocoPhillips — out of contention for contracts, leaving only the big nationalized firms (like those in China and Venezuela) to do the drilling.

“If you take the 10 billion [dollar cap] off and make it unlimited,” Inhofe said Tuesday on the Senate floor, “that could very well shut out even the five [oil giants], and leave nothing but national oil companies in a position to be doing [offshore drilling].”

Back to the drawing board for Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) et al.

“We need to increase the caps,” Inhofe said on the Senate floor this morning. “[But] we don’t know just how high that should be.”

Meanwhile, as BP executives are downplaying the threat posed by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, thousands of barrels of oil and gas continue to gush from the damaged well head — though no one seems to know the true number.

“Now we see that that science has been pretty well debunked,” Inhofe told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

And not only that, said the Oklahoma Republican, but the “Climategate” scandal also undermines (1) the EPA’s finding that greenhouse emissions are a public-health hazard, and (2) the need for Congress to pass a climate change bill.

You can’t play this one down. This is a huge, huge deal. The fact that they are going into an endangerment finding using this as that science, that makes it that much worse. It’s a recognition that we have won and they have lost in terms of a legislative cure for this.

Your bill is dead. It’s not going to go anywhere. The [Barbara] Boxer bill is dead and for that reason, in order to save face at the big meeting that’s watching this right now in Copenhagen they had to come up with an endangerment finding.

Markey had other ideas, pointing out the broad scientific consensus that human behavior is affecting global temperatures.

The National Academy of Sciences of every country in the world has endorsed these findings. It’s not just the United States. It’s not just the British. It’s every country in the world.

Still, Inhofe is right on at least one count: Climate change legislation in Congress is going nowhere fast.

SuperFreakonomics and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) (HarperCollins, WDCpix)

The early reviews for “SuperFreakonomics” have been harsh. The book, wrote Brad Johnson in The Guardian, is a “super freaking mess.” According to environmental journalist Joe Romm, it contains “many, many pieces of outright nonsense” and “major howlers.” In The New Republic, Brad Plumer attacked the book for “garden variety ignorance.” And all of those pans appeared before the book actually hit the shelves this week.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner didn’t face anything like this three years ago when they published “Freakonomics,” a surprise smash that sold 4 million copies. Unlike that book, which was based entirely on Levitt’s economic research from the University of Chicago, “SuperFreakonomics” is a guided tour of other peoples’ contrarian research and ideas. The final chapter deals with global warming, characterizing the beliefs of pessimistic environmentalists as “religious fervor,” and arguing that the climate change solutions proposed by Al Gore and many Democrats are ineffective and unworkable. It repeats claims that environmental journalists have debated or debunked for years. As a result, the authors are getting some early support from climate change skeptics who feel that attitudes toward their stances are getting brighter.

“It reminds me of what happened when Michael Crichton wrote ‘State of Fear,’” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, which gets some of its funding from the energy industry. “The problem for the left is that there are still some people who don’t toe the party line who have megaphones. And anyone who has a megaphone, they’re going to go after.”

Ebell’s reference to “State of Fear” demonstrated just how meaningful “Freakonomics” could be to people who challenge conventional wisdom about climate change. The late author’s novel, published in 2004, cast as villains environmentalists and eco-terrorists who were perpetrating hoaxes to maintain their power. Coming after Crichton had made some well-publicized and much-maligned remarks skeptical of climate change science, the book was pilloried by environmentalists. It sold more than 1.5 million copies anyway.

In the years since, many climate change skeptics feel that the environmental movement has lost ground culturally and politically. A Pew Research poll released on Thursday found that the number of Americans who believed that man-made global warming was occurring, or that a hotter planet was a serious problem, had fallen precipitously. In April 2008, 71 percent of Americans said that global warming was happening, and 47 percent said it was man-made. In the new poll, only 57 percent of Americans said any global warming was happening, and 36 percent said it was man-made. Many skeptics are taking that poll as a sign that their message is getting through.

“There’s just so much … skepticism now,” said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Environmental and Public Works Committee and one of the most prominent skeptics of climate change in Washington. In making the case that Americans are growing more skeptical, Dempsey said, “the Pew poll is one data point. This book is another data point.”

Levitt and Dubner have engaged their critics in the environmental movement, accusing them of “smears” for suggesting that the climate change chapter of “SuperFreakonomics” makes them “global warming denialists.”

“I think anyone who actually reads that chapter will come away with a better fact-based understanding of the actual issues surrounding global warming,” Levitt told TWI. “That said, I also think that partisans love to cherry-pick, regardless of what side of the aisle they sit on.”

Indeed, the climate change skeptics who are excited about “SuperFreakonomics” and the environmentalists who are criticizing the book are focusing on some of the same material. The controversial chapter opens with ironic quotes from Newsweek and New York Times articles from the 1970s that published frightening, if slapdash, research about “global cooling.” That phony scare is a favorite of climate change skeptics, who have attempted to bring it back from obscurity in books and in films like the just-released “Not Evil Just Wrong.”

“The man who came up with that theory, Stephen Snyder, is now one of the people scaring everyone about global warming,” said Martin Hertzberg. The retired meteorologist, who lives in Colorado, has been skeptical of man-made global warming for decades. He has converted the liberal journalist Alexander Cockburn to the belief that, as Cockburn quoted him saying, “the greenhouse global warming theory has it ass backwards,” while getting into scraps with environmental journalists like George Monbiot.

“The idea of man-made global warming is fear-mongering and hysteria,” said Hertzberg. “There are a large number of know-nothing journalists and environmental lobbyists working hard on this, and they’re completely wrong. Al Gore is not a meteorologist. He knows nothing about science.”

Levitt and Dubner do not challenge all of Gore’s arguments about climate change science. What they do challenge is the idea that man’s use of carbon is speeding along a major catastrophe, and that something like cap-and-trade could be the answer. “It’s illogical,” they write, “to believe in a carbon-induced warming apocalypse and believe that such an apocalypse can be averted simply by curtailing new carbon emissions.” Prominent skeptics told TWI that such an argument, from such high-placed experts is long overdue.

“They’re absolutely right,” said Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Look at the numbers. If every nation that has obligations under the Kyoto Protocols adopted the restrictions of Waxman-Markey [cap-and-trade legislation], you’d see a 7 percent drop in warming by 2100, about 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Michaels, who has not read the book but is planning to pick it up, saluted Levitt and Dubner for tackling an issue that few popular economists touch. “It’s about time that people who do popular economics tell people the truth,” he said. “Fortunately, the planet is not warming.”

While Levitt and Dubner do not actually argue that the planet is not getting warmer, some skeptics are hopeful that the book could direct people to studies that suggest that. “I think it is very important to question the [environmentalist] true believers,” said Patrick Moore, an early member of Greenpeace. Now, as the chairman of Greenspirit Strategies, he does some work for energy companies and supports new nuclear power. “[It's important] as they display all the qualities of doomsday fanatics. There is ample reason to be skeptical, including the fact that the world has been warmer than today for most of the history of life, and the fact that CO2 has been much higher than today through most of the history of life.”

The controversial phrasing and criticism in “SuperFreakonomics” is in the book to make another point. Levitt and Dubner present research into geoengineering, a Gordian Knot solution to a warming planet that, for example, would replicate the effect that a massive eruption of volcano ash can have in making the planet cooler. It’s not a popular idea among some skeptics, who argue that bogus data is responsible for much of the global warming panic. One of those skeptics is Ross McKitrick, a professor at Canada’s University of Guelph whose research suggests that numbers suggesting a spike in global temperature are out of whack. He was hopeful that “SuperFreakonomics” could cut through the “groupthink and political correctness” and expose environmental journalists such as Joe Romm as dishonest activists who can’t accept criticism.

“He’s a former Clinton staffer who runs an attack blog funded by Soros money,” said McKitrick of Romm, whose ClimateProgress blog is a project of the Center for American Progress. “He’s only respected by people who approve of his inflammatory tactics and relentless politicization of the issue.”

Climate change skeptics are excited by the prospect of the general public reading Levitt and Dubner, but they’re expecting the authors to remain targets of an active and desperate green movement. “It will make people think and say, yeah, that’s right, it doesn’t make sense to do this,” said Ebell. “But that will just make the environmentalists even angrier.”

Phelim McAleer, the director of “Not Evil Just Wrong,” said his movie had begun to inspire protests and interruptions. His advice for the authors: Develop tough skin.

“Be prepared for it to get worse before it’s going to better,” said McEleer. “They don’t like questions, as Al Gore showed. Enviromentalist journalists are environmentalists, and they will always side with the environmental establishment. Don’t expect fairness from journalists.”

An enthusiastic participant at Thursday's Freedom Summit (Photo by David Weigel)

The walk from the subway station to the Freedom Summit was quick, less than two minutes if the attendees didn’t dawdle. Every twenty or so paces, smiling volunteers with FreedomWorks shirts or badges ushered them towards the Armory, a sports arena more often used to host Rollergirl bouts and “American Idol” tryouts. Approaching the entrance, the people who’d trekked from as far away as San Diego and Maui could buy buttons — “Proud to be a Teabagger,” “ACORN is for Squirrels,” and “Quit AARP Now!”–and pick up information packets on how to make the most of what organizers assured them would be part of American history.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“Saturday’s going to be an incredible day,” said Dick Armey, the former Republican majority leader who has made a political comeback as the chairman of FreedomWorks. “On Saturday, we all be blessed to be a part of the greatest demonstration of free market, individual liberty devotion on the streets of Washington, D.C. in the history of this country. And we didn’t get here by accident! We came here by special invitation of President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi!”

The hundreds of people who trekked in and out of the rally cheered and stomped their bleachers. The resilient “Tea Party” movement, seven months on from its first protests against the economic stimulus package, was proud of its success. Over three hours, they listened to three current Republican members of Congress, got briefings on cap-and-trade and health care legislation from conservative think tank scholars, and got chances to take the mics themselves — often to launch into several-minute-long rants about the threat of an encroaching government. Occasionally they’d get up to talk to other activists and check out a small table of free Dunkin Donuts sustenance and affordable merchandise — $20 shirts and hats commemorating the weekend, political books by Armey and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), and T-shirts that read simply “FIRE CONGRESS.”

“Not every member,” said a volunteer for the T-shirt vendor, WeShouldFireCongress.com. “That fellow from South Carolina who spoke up at the president’s speech last night? We don’t want to beat him!”

The much-discussed outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a conservative congressman who shouted “you lie!” from his seat inside the Capitol when President Obama said that his health reform plan would not cover illegal immigrants, had gained instant legendary status with the people inside the armory. At several points in the morning, a loud chant of “liar!” rose up when speakers mentioned the president. One attendee from Florida said that she and her husband saw the “you lie!” moment on Fox News, before they headed in for the event, and cheered him from their hotel room. During one of the Q&A sessions, an Illinois attendee named Frank Dutton reported that Wilson’s Democratic opponent was fundraising off of the event.

“Let’s start a fund for Wilson!” said Dutton. “He was the only guy there on our side who was saying what the heck he wanted to say.”

Not every attendee was filled with such partisan fervor. Barry Bench, an Orlando activist who took a break from filming his own record of the morning by holding a sign reading “ACORN” over the head of a liberal reporter, confessed that he didn’t trust either party.

“The election between Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in 1912 was when it started going downhill,” said Bench, referring to the rise of the Progressive Movement and the birth of the federal income tax.

Rob Miller, a Richmond, Va., activist stood with Bench where the noise from the Summit’s panels was a little less oppressive, and discussed theories for what had gone wrong in the elections since then.

“Clinton only got elected in 1992 because Ross Perot got back in the race,” said Miller. He attributed Perot’s decision to pressure from the “Dixie mafia, Jimmy Carter’s organization — they ran half the South.” And according to Miller, Barack Obama had only won the 2008 election because of fraud by the community organizing group ACORN.

“You can assume 10 percent of Obama’s votes were fraudulent votes,” said Bench.

During the long, hot August, some Republicans who met crowds like this were drowned by boos. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), got a far warmer reception when they hit on issues that the audience had been learning about online and on Fox News. Shadegg’s declaration that he was reading Glenn Beck’s book “Common Sense” got the biggest applause of his entire presentation — after his speech, he was dogged by a photograph-seeker who held up a sign telling people to “READ G-B.”

Beck’s influence on the crowd was apparent in many of their comments, which reflected attacks and themes from his radio show, TV show, and books. At times, the professional conservative organizers onstage cast bemused looks at the people asking lengthy questions — multiple requests to “keep your questions short” had little effect on activists who often wanted to share their knowledge with the crowd. Annie Rupp, a Hawaii-based activist, compared Obama’s plans for the country to those of Fidel Castro in Cuba, and told attendees to look into the background of FCC adviser Mark Lloyd, “who has called Hugo Chavez’s revolution in Venezuela the incredible revolution.” She took the microphone twice; when she finished, she was swarmed by fans who signed up for her mailing list and heard her weigh forth on issues like Obama’s religion. “I think he might be a Muslim plant,” said Rupp.

Still, it was Inhofe who got the most thankful reception from the crowd. “There’s no greater champion for who we are and what we treasure than Senator Inhofe,” said Armey, introducing him. Once onstage, Inhofe thanked the audience for stirring up the August town halls — “it was the best recess I ever had” — and told them what the president looked like from his vantage point at the joint session of Congress.

“What I observed,” said Inhofe, “was a new sense of arrogance and defiance I’ve never seen before.”

The morning’s events staggered to an end, as some attendees moved out early to hold scheduled meetings with their members of Congress. “If you already have appointments scheduled with your lawmakers, please be on time,” was the recommendation on a sheet of “Lobbying Quick Tips” provided by FreedomWorks. “Remember, 5 minutes early is on time.”

Some activists ran up against a wall when they got their meetings on the Hill. Weeks in advance, Diane Reimer of Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots had set up a meeting with the staff of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.). On the way in, three of Reimer’s colleagues were tired but punchy, armed with quotes from conservative author and radio host Mark Levin. When they emerged, they were disappointed in what they described as a “smooth” and “knowledgeable” performance from one key staffer of a senator committed to backing a health care bill.

“He answered my questions, I think, as honestly as he could,” said Reimer.

“He was a smooth operator,” said Reimer’s husband Don. “The bottom line is they’re going to pass a bill.”

The energy of the activists picked up as they gained some distance from the congressional offices. On the way out, the Tea Party Patriots spotted a group of ACORN activists and rushed to take a picture of them. Outside, every member of the House Republican leadership gathered for a pep rally that boisterously praised and thanked the several hundred people who showed up to wave signs (“Texans Against Another Government Takeover”). First, a technical failure prevented Dick Armey, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) from speaking into microphones that worked.

“We can’t hear you!” shouted some in the crowd.

“Well, then,” said Armey. “Quiet down and listen up!”

The microphones crackled to life in time for Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the third-ranking member of the Republican conference. “Thank you for taking time from your families, from hearth and home, from enterprises, from children and grandchildren,” Pence said. “The sacrifices you made to be here will not be in vain.” The eventual goal, repeated by other members of Congress, would be a Republican takeover of the House.

Armey left the rally with the current members of Congress, stopping briefly to talk to reporters, spending most of that time arguing with a blogger from ThinkProgress (“I’m not used to talking to juvenile delinquents”) and explaining his own stance on Wilson: If it was unfair for him to shout “liar,” it was unfair for the president to accuse Republicans of “saying boldfaced lies.” As Armey made his way to a chauffered car, an activist named Kim Betz handed him a trinket she’d made — a plastic covering to go over his ears, an “Obama Bullshit Reflector.”

“Oh-ho-ho!” laughed Armey. “Where’d you get this?”

“We made it,” said Betz.

“Where are you from?”

“Florida.”

“Florida!” Armey laughed again. “I knew there was a little bit of Dixie in this!”

–

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Enter Common Cause, which, using figures gathered from Senate documents and the Center for Responsive Politics, reveals today that the gas, oil, mining and electric interests have combined to spend nearly $24 million lobbying Congress on the bill in the first three months of this year alone, while tallying another $4 million on direct campaign contributions over the same span.

“The energy industry is betting millions that they can buy influence in Congress and protect their profits, even if it means blocking an important step towards clean, renewable energy and a healthier planet,” Common Cause President Bob Edgar said in a statement accompanying the report.

House lawmakers passed their version of the controversial cap-and-trade climate bill last month, with Senate leaders hoping to take up their own (yet-unreleased) version later this year, even despite a tight legislative calendar. Leading the Senate charge is Environmental and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who held a hearing earlier this week to guide the direction of the bill.

Proving that the energy industry knows where to turn the screws, members of the EPW panel have received more than $2.1 million in contributions from the oil, gas, mining and electric industries in the last 30 months. Leading the list of recipients is Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), the senior Republican on the panel who for much of this decade fought the idea that global warming is real. Inhofe has toned down his message over the years — at this week’s hearing he merely accused Democrats of “subsidizing the East and West coasts at the expense of the heartland” — but his ability to pull in campaign cash from the nation’s biggest polluters has remained constant. Indeed, they’ve given him more than $630,000 since 2007.