Development on an oil shale research lease in Western Colorado. Copyright Peter Hart, 2009.

Climate change deniers like to say there's no proof of global warming, or no proof that it's human caused, or no proof that's it's a bad thing.

But it's those who are hoping to torpedo efforts to do something about global warming that have recently been exposed as liars and frauds. Last month, media reports confirmed that opponents of the cap and trade bill resorted to just making stuff up, sending in forged letters to Congress on behalf of advocacy groups who did not, in fact, oppose the House legislation.  

And this week, Congressional investigators found a new batch of forgeries prepared by the same lobbying firm representing the oxymoronically-named "Clean Coal" coalition.

For a group of folks unconvinced by mountains of data, global warming deniers certainly are good at creating their own alternative reality.

Unhappy with the Waxman-Markey climate bill, polluting industries are planning their own version of Town Hall disruptions recently seen over health care reform. The goal is to shout down any public discussion of the most important environmental issue facing the world.

Greenpeace obtained a copy of a secret memo allegedly being distributed by the American Petroleum Institute that encourages industry workers to  "aim a loud message at those states’ U.S. senators" with a series of rallies. They want senators to reject "tax increases, and access limitations on jobs and on consumers’ energy costs" and call on sentaors "to oppose unsound energy policy and 'get it right'."

If the latest Zogby poll is right, Americans have taken a green flip-flop in favor of Congress acting on climate change. The poll says 65 percent of us feel that way, and even believe that jobs growth is tied to clean energy investment.

Most politicians guide their votes on the basis of public opinion, so this would seem a good omen for the climate legislation passed earlier by the House into Senate hands. The "American Clean Energy and Security Act" is in part based on the premise of creating economic growth by fighting global warming.

Trouble is, the Senate is too fixated on health care reform right now to feel any wind shift on climate change. Nor is the Obama administration able to take quality time off from that ruckus to rouse action on ACES. It's supposed to be taken up early next month, but most political wags think it is on a slow, slow track. The hoped-for December deadline for a full Senate vote is in jeopardy.

Source: Dan Wasserman, Tribune Media Services

Maybe what Jim Inhofe needs is a good therapist.

Inhofe, R-OK, is notoriously the Senate's global warming denier-in-chief. But why? Maybe because he gets big campaign contributions from oil companies. Or maybe he has deep-seated control issues, and the prospect of global warming makes him feel helpless.

That's one explanation suggested in a new report by the American Psychological Association (which of course doesn't specifically discuss Inhofe) on why, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, many Americans are skeptical or deny the existence of global warming.