Climate Progress : Pelosi backs off summer floor vote

E&E News (subs. req’d) reported this morning:

“Cap and trade is dead,” Barton said. “It’s just dead. They’ve got to get the coroner to conduct the autopsy and make it official…. I don’t think they can get it out of committee.”

E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reported this evening:

Barton said. “He has a chance to get the votes. It is not a done deal.”

Barton estimated that there are roughly five to eight Democratic swing votes. “It is going to be a real close call,” he said.

Here are more details from the latter article on the floor schedule:

A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it would be premature to commit to House floor action this summer. For now, Pelosi’s only stated goal is to ensure passage this year.

Not gonna say “told ya” (see Sen. Reid: “Health care is easier than this global warming stuff.” Las Vegas odds on bill in 2009 now longer shot than Mine That Bird).

That said, a House debate during the hot summer may make more messaging sense.

Joe Barton would rather we do nothing than do something incredibly stupid

E&E Daily (subs. req’d) reports, “Barton would not rule out forcing Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to read aloud the entire bill, which in draft form numbered nearly 650 pages.” … During Senate debate over a cap-and-trade bill last summer, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) forced clerks to read the entire measure, stalling Senate business for at least 8 hours.

Delay, delay, delay. Modern conservatives [Note to self: That is an oxymoron] would make Nero proud.

Arctic Cooling Has Begun

I hope to be around in 2020, when some have suggested those of us on the sceptics’ side should have been vindicated, but I think we will prevail much sooner. The Arctic heat-wave of 1920-1940 is of course well-known to real Arctic climate scientists. I reviewed 32 temperature data sets for Arctic stations to 2004 some with very long records. In 2006 I could find only one with higher temperatures in 2004 than in the late 1930s or early 1940s – that was on the eastern coast of Greenland. Since then I have reviewed dozens of papers on surface air temperature, sea surface temperatures, ice-mass, glacier speeds and sea-ice, and all show a clear cyclic pattern of roughly 70 years. Some Greenland and Alaskan temperatures peaked in 2006-2008, but the pattern looks set to repeat.