Washington climate circles are abuzz over a National Journal poll released last weekend suggesting that concern over climate change is waning among Republican House members just as public alarm is mounting.

The Journal, a highly respected print and e-magazine covering politics from Washington, DC, asked Members of Congress, "Do you think it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?" While the number of Democratic members answering No was a gratifyingly low 2%, the same as last April, the share of Republican naysayers rose to 84%, from 77% in April.

Though the Dem-Rep split is noteworthy, the absolute percentages should be viewed with caution. For one thing, the response rates were low: 1 in 7 Republicans, 1 in 8 Democrats. (Hmm, could it be that the more "extreme" Senators and Representatives from either party were more apt to respond, skewing the divisions between the parties?) Second, the poll predated the Feb. 2 release of the IPCC-4 report. The Journal's questionnaire was sent out Jan. 29 and the answers were received Jan. 29 - Feb. 1, too early to reflect the sobering findings from the report and the extensive media coverage.

The second (and last) poll question concerned solutions: "Which of these actions to reduce global warming could you possibly support?" Respondents could vote Yes or No to six choices, which included measures such as higher CAFE standards and greater spending on alternative fuels.

A carbon cap-and-trade program far outpolled a carbon tax, by 83% to 50% among Democrats and 42% to 3% among Republicans. We regard this, at least in part, as a reflection of the active promotion recently of cap-and-trade and the relative silence from carbon-tax supporters. In addition to the  poll's unfortunate timing, we wonder if the wording ("A 'cap-and-trade' carbon dioxide emissions-reduction program" and "A carbon tax", respectively) inadvertently tilted responses toward cap-and-trade. Perhaps next time National Journal can ask about "An emission-reducing carbon tax" or "A revenue-neutral carbon tax".

We also expect that Congressional understanding of the merits of carbon taxing will increase as a result of efforts by carbon tax supporters who can now benefit from the information on this site.

Times science blogger John Tierney beamed the spotlight on CTC big-time in his front-page blog today:

If you thought there was something missing in the energy section of the State of the Union Address, there's a new Web site to fill in the gap.

President Bush last night dutifully mentioned the "serious challenge of global climate change" and reeled off ways to address it – burn less gasoline, subsidize other forms of energy. In the Democrats' response, Sen. James Webb of Virginia dutifully talked of "affirmative solutions" and "a wave of entrepreneurial growth in the form of alternate energy programs." But neither he nor Mr. Bush went anywhere near economists' favorite prescription for slowing global warming: a carbon tax.

The tax is taboo in Washington, but now there's a place it dares speak its name: the Carbon Tax Center, which opened this week with the aim of becoming "the village square for civic and political conversations about the why, who, and how of taxing CO₂ emissions in the U.S. and, eventually, the world."

Tierney notes that taxing carbon is an uphill fight. Okay, carbon taxers, let's start evening the odds. Post a comment on his blog and let the fur fly!

Last week's New Yorker magazine carried a profile of energy-efficiency apostle (and, as it happens, my college classmate and longtime acquaintance) Amory Lovins by the magazine's global-warming reporter Elizabeth Kolbert. "Mr. Green -- Environmentalism's most optimistic guru" is a fair, digestible (at just 8 pages) portrait of the Rocky Mountain Institute CEO who reconceptualized the energy debate in the 1970s and is still tirelessly pitching his message of synergistic, human-scale energy solutions to the world's political, financial and industrial leaders.

Back in the day, I was a member of Amory's worldwide web of energy analysts who fed him our cutting-edge research (mine concerned cost escalation in the building and operating of U.S. nuclear reactors) and benefited in turn from his incisive editing and brilliant framing of our work. Along the way, however, I grew skeptical of his faith that human ingenuity and care would catalyze the dreamed-of wholesale shift to energy efficiency and renewables. Advances in efficiency, and there were many, seemed scattershot and outweighed by humankind's capacity to invent ever more uses of energy and our boundless appetites for using them.

The key difference in our outlook turned out to concern price. Amory, the physicist and optimist, considers high energy prices helpful but not necessary, whereas I, an economist and, dare I say, a realist, regard them as necessary though not sufficient. Thus, the Carbon Tax Center.

Toward the back of Kolbert's article, which unfortunately is not on the magazine's Web site, is this useful passage:

... the example Lovins likes to point to -- the drop in oil use in the early nineteen-eighties -- is, at best, equivocal. As Lovins notes in his book, what made people "pay attention" to oil consumption was the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the second, even more severe 1979 oil shock. Part of the drop was due to structural shifts in the economy away from oil-intensive activities. Part of it was fuel substitution by both individual consumers and industry, as homeowners and factories switched from oil to, for example, natural gas. The largest part of it was increased fuel efficiency in both automobiles and buildings, led by the creation of federal auto effiicency standards in 1975. And, finally, part of it was a change in consumer behavior as Americans bought smaller cars and turned down their thermostats. Thus what Lovins offers as a demonstration that federal regulation and new taxes are unncessary could just as plausibly be seen as evidence of exactly the opposite.

My point -- and CTC's point -- exactly.

And Thomas Friedman's point too, perhaps. In his first New York Times column after Kolbert's article appeared, Friedman wrote of the need to require "power utilities, factories and car owners ... to pay the real and full cost to society of the carbon they put into the atmosphere." In case the point wasn't clear, Friedman added: "... prices matter. They drive more and cleaner energy choices."

Although Friedman didn't mention Lovins by name -- he's a big admirer of Amory, as am I -- I'll bet he wrote with the New Yorker profile in mind.