Here’s a wierd cross-section of climate change coverage that shows how much of the global warming conversation occurs at arm’s length from reality.

Here is a story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about how Republican Rep. Dave Reichert received the endorsement of Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP), an organization dedicated to helping GOP candidates who support conservation and environmental protection – despite the fact that Reichert dismisses the human link in climate change. Justifying the endorsement, the REP policy director Jim DiPeso says, “It’s an educational process.” Or not.

Here’s an unsigned editorial from a Washington State University blog called the Daily Evergreen that concludes, without a hint of scientific argument, that “There is no such thing as human-caused global warming.” Well, thank goodness.

Here’s a piece from a Republican blog called The American Daily that explains that the United Nations cooked up the whole whoo-haw about climate change as part of a complicated plot aimed at “keeping people ignorant and ultimately dependent on a vast one-world government based on failed socialist utopian policies.” I must reread the UN‘s mandate, ’cause I missed that part the first time.

Finally, here’s a well-meaning plaint for reason – what appears to be a letter to the editor in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The writer concludes:

”Global warming will never be reversed without American leadership at home and with other nations of the world. New policies must be established that set tough emission limits, enable trading of emissions credits, and incentivize American industry to apply its technology and capital to developing carbon-free energy alternatives.”

When you think about it, America is shockingly good at solving huge, unwieldy technical problems and it is an incredibly powerful force in the world. It’s pessimistic to think climate change cannot be solved without U.S. leadership, but it’s easy to think that if Wall Street got smart about the profit potential in, say, solar energy (the source of which is free, easy to find and, reliable for billions of years), things could turn out  pretty well.