Watch:

Here is the transcript:

CHRIS HAYES, “THE NATION”: Good evening, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Why did “The Washington Post” let us get lectured about science and politics by someone who quit her only state office, and has a pastor who runs these precautionary exorcisms on her so she can stave off witchcraft.

HAYES: I thought it was a really atrocious decision on the part of “The Washington Post” to run this op-ed. What exactly it contributed to the debate-there are people like Greg Mankiw, who worked in the Bush White House, an economist at Harvard. He’s a very conservative guy. He strongly opposes the cap and trade. He wants to see a carbon tax. There is a debate to be had.

But to give over your op-ed page to someone who makes, essentially a conspiracy claim, it would be like if they turned it over to someone who wanted to argue that 9/11 was an inside job. “The Washington Post” would never, in a million years, do that and they shouldn’t be doing this.

OLBERMANN: From Mrs. Palin’s point of view, from the GOP point of view, is this at all about getting elected anymore, or is this just kind of political cover for big business? Keeping the country safe from polluters for another hour, another month, another year, whatever it is they can manage?

HAYES: Luckily, they go hand in hand. I actually think what’s motivating Palin-and you can actually see, she has moved, you know, in the direction of the conspiracy theorists on this issue. What’s motivating her is the fact that the polling on this is really disturbing, because it has become an article of faith among the right wing base that this is a grand socialist conspiracy to usher in state control.

So I think she’s really, as she is want to do, pandering to that base right now. I think what’s driving that kind of op-ed, more than any kind of business shilling, is the fact that it has become one of these issues, like the birth certificate, that you can sort of win points with the base with.

OLBERMANN: And by the way, the video we’re seeing right now, that was taken in July in Washington, D.C. All right, that’s-bad joke, I’m sorry. But let’s put all these points together now about the predilections of the far right and what they believe and what they don’t. What is the Palin explanation for polar ice melting, which she acknowledges. If it is witchcraft, why has she not sent Pastor Moothy (ph) to fix it. A slightly more serious version of that, and if this is not man-made, if it is part of the right-wing agenda, if it all should be theocratically interpreted, if it’s all in God’s hands, how come Sister Sarah, with her direct line to God, has not instructed God to fix this?

HAYES: You know, what’s really interesting about this op-ed is that it’s not even internally logically consistent conspiracy mongering. There are two alternate theories of the conspiracy the denialists make. One is, yes, the world is warming, but it is not caused by humans. The other, the science that says the world is warming is fake and part of the conspiracy. And she endorses both. Those both cannot obtain.

The fact of the matter is, she governs the one state in the union that is most immediately seeing the effects of climate change. The permafrost is actually melting. There are houses that have cracked because of it in the state of Alaska. And because of that, she was forced to kind of acknowledge the fact that warming is happening. She can’t have it both ways.

And the editors of “The Washington Post” didn’t see fit to make any kind of intervention, to at least have a logically consistent piece of work on their pages.

OLBERMANN: Which brings up the idea of an end game for the GOP and Palin. What is the end game? Let’s say they are 100 percent right, that climate-gate exists, that this is a scam, that changes in climate are natural. Do they have a plan for how to keep the government together, to criminalize abortion during the rapture and the upcoming ice age and/or universal sweat lodge, whichever comes first?

HAYES: You know, I don’t know what the right-wing government’s plan is. But I will say, on an extremely serious note, that this-you know, we’ve talked about this in a million different ways-and Al Gore-and there are a lot of messengers who are better at this than I am. But it’s hard to over-state the stakes right now, in Copenhagen, in the climate change legislation moving through Congress. We are at a sort of pivotal moment in the fate of the Earth, but also as a test of the moral fabric of American democracy. And history is going to look extremely, extremely unkindly on this op-ed and the people that are using their platform to sort of propagate this very monstrous deception.

Several folks have already taken the Washington Post to task for publishing a factually incorrect Sarah Palin Op-Ed in today’s paper.  And many have already noted that the piece is an updated version of a rant Palin published on Facebook six days ago.

But his appears to violate the Post’s own Op-Ed guidelines, which unequivocally state: ‘Op-eds may not have been submitted to, posted to or published by any other media.’

While today’s Op-Ed is not exactly identical to last week’s Facebook note, the similarities are overwhelming. In addition to making the same argument, many of the phrases and sentences are exactly the same.

The Post also offers the following guidance to would-be Op-Ed contributors:

You also don’t need to have an important title — and having an important title doesn’t mean we’ll publish your op-ed. In fact, because we realize that senators, business leaders, heads of state and the like have access to various platforms where they can express their views, we hold them to a particularly high standard when considering whether to publish them in The Post.

If this they held this piece to ‘a particularly high standard’ I’d hate to see their normal standards. Oh wait, we already have.

In the early stages of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, eight names are mentioned most frequently: Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and Dick Cheney.

Of these eight early contenders, five outright deny or question climate science, while the remaining three are opposed to all meaningful action.

If Gingrich, Jindal or Barbour wish to claim they are not opposed to all meaningful action, they’ll have to present plans that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the extent scientists say is necessary, which is on the order of an 80+ percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. An ‘All of the Above’ strategy of increased domestic oil and gas development and incentives for nuclear plants that will never be built does not even come close.

Mitt Romney, as part of the unveiling of the Massachusetts Climate Action Plan, wrote:

“If climate change is happening, the actions we take will help,” Romney wrote. “If climate change is largely caused by human action, this will really help. If we learn decades from now that climate change isn’t happening, these actions will still help our economy, our quality of life, and the quality of our environment.”

Mike Huckabee, speaking with Katie Couric of CBS News:

Katie Couric: “Do you think the risks of climate change are at all overblown?”

Mike Huckabee: I don’t know. I mean, the honest answer for me, scientifically, is I don’t know.

Dick Cheney, speaking to ABC news in 2007, said:

“We’re going to see a big debate on it going forward,” Cheney told ABC News, about “the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it’s caused by man.” What we know today, he added, is “not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that’s going to ’solve’ the problem.”

Sarah Palin, talking to GOP boss Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

RUSH: What’s our biggest energy challenge as a country? Do you believe at all or some or a lot in the modern-day go-green movement of solar and wind and all of these nefarious things that really don’t produce anything yet?

GOV. PALIN: I think there’s a lot of snake oil science involved in that and somebody’s making a whole lot of money off people’s fears that the world is… It’s kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate. Are we warming or are we cooling? I don’t think Americans are even told anymore if it’s global warming or just climate change. And I don’t attribute all the changes to man’s activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical and the earth does cool and it warms.

Brad Johnson has more on this, including audio, here.

Tim Pawlenty, who was once an advocate of clean energy solutions to the climate crisis, has steadily moved in the wrong direction as his national ambitions have grown. Think Progress recently documented his regression as follows:

Dec. 2006: Pawlenty lays out an ambitious clean energy program for Minnesotans to reduce their use of fossil fuels 15 percent by 2015. Cutting greenhouse gases, Pawlenty said, would “be good for the environment, good for rural economies, good for national security and good for consumers.” He also calls for a regional cap and trade program.May 2007: Pawlenty signs the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, requiring the state to reduce its emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent in 2050. At the signing ceremony, Pawlenty said Minnesota was “kicking-starting the future” by “tackling greenhouse gas emissions.”

Oct. 2007: Pawlenty declares that the climate change issue is “one of the most important of our time.” He also brushes off “some flak” from right-wingers who doubt climate change science.

Sept. 2008: During the election, Pawlenty backs away from his own cap and trade program, says such a system would “wreck the economy.” He then tells hate radio personality Glenn Beck (a climate change denier) that human activity only contributes “half a percent” to climate change.

Nov. 2009: Pawlenty backs away from acknowledging that any human activity is the cause of climate change.

While Newt Gingrich does not openly deny climate science, he is vehemently opposed to any meaningful legislation or regulation to address it. In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April (PDF), he said:

This is the wrong bill for our national security.

This is the wrong bill for our economy.

This is the wrong bill for government of, by, and for the people.

He went on to cite widely discredited cost estimates and tout the wonders of coal and oil shale, two of the most polluting energy sources on the planet. This is not an all of the above strategy as Gingrich would like to claim. The emphasis is drill here, drill now, more of the same.

Bobby Jindal’s press secretary released the following statement in September 2009:

“Governor Jindal has made it clear he believes that the House passed cap and trade bill punishes the American energy industry and that’s the last thing we need to do when we are trying to become more energy independent. The legislation will make it harder to create new manufacturing jobs in the US, and the Governor opposes it.”

In a March 2001 memo to Vice President Dick Cheney (PDF, page 17), then energy industry lobbyist Haley Barbour urged the Bush administration not to let environmental initiatives trump sound energy policy. Specifically, he wrote:

A moment of truth is arriving in the form of a decision whether this Administration’s policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore. Demurring on the issue of whether the CO2 idea is eco-extremism, we must ask, do environmental initiatives, which would greatly exacerbate the energy problems, trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years?Most Americans thought Bush-Cheney would mean more energy and more affordable energy.

Excellent work by Media Matters. Here are a few of the falsehoods they have identified which may be of interest to readers of EnviroKnow.

1. Palin falsely suggests poor will be “hit hardest” by cap and trade

2. Palin still falsely claiming stimulus money for energy efficiency she vetoed required tougher building codes

5. Palin falsely suggests she did not support aerial hunting

Read the debunking of these falsehoods here.

Update: A. Siegel has more.

Three more Republican politicians have now used the heavily discredited and factually incorrect $1,761 figure as a per-family per-year price tag for cap and trade legislation, bringing the current total to 12.

• John Cornyn issued a press release saying “According to a the Department of Treasury’s analysis, new taxes would be between $100 and $200 billion each year, costing families up to 1,761 each year.” Unlike some of the others, Cornyn didn’t even try to hide his source. He linked directly to the conservative blogger who came up with the $1,761 figure. He attributes the figure to the Treasury Department — which is false.
• According to user casinclair on Twitter, Sarah Palin repeated the lie at her speech in Hong Kong yesterday. I’m assuming this is paraphrased, and am trying to find a full transcript: “Cap and tax (trade) will cause unemployment. Say it will cost $1800 per Americans and cause no change.”
• Republican Senate Candidate Scott Brown said yesterday: “They want a “yes” vote on cap and trade, even if it will raise energy costs on the average family in this country by $1,761 a year.”

Finally, this is not a new addition to the list, but according to Media Matters, House Minority Leader John Boehner repeated the lie for the third time yesterday:

Responding to President Obama’s climate change speech on September 22, 2009, House Minority Leader John Boehner cited a cap-and-trade cost estimate snatched from documents analyzing a cost-estimate of an out-dated, abandoned cap-and-trade plan that immediately auctioned 100% of carbon allowances.

If you are aware of or come across additional examples of politicians — Republicans or Democrats — repeating some variation of this lie, please let me know.

Alaska.gov:

Governor Sean Parnell said that he respects the Alaska State Legislature’s authority to override vetoed state energy stimulus funds. Today, Governor Parnell sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, providing required assurances to accept the $28.6 million in funds for Alaska.The Alaska State Legislature voted 45-14 to override Governor Sarah Palin’s veto of the funds.

“I respect the Legislature’s right to override the veto,” Governor Parnell said. “Given today’s action, we have applied for the funds in the least restrictive manner possible. I strongly believe that local communities should retain the option to set their own building energy codes.

“These funds can be spent for a broad range of energy-efficiency and renewable-energy purposes. I am committed to making effective use of these dollars to reduce energy costs for public facilities and to support ongoing energy-efficiency programs.”

Governor Parnell Letter to Sec. Chu –

H.B. 199, in which the Alaska Legislature overrode former Governor Palin’s veto, can be found here.

Associated Press:

In a final spat with former Gov. Sarah Palin, the Alaska Legislature voted Monday to override her veto of $28.6 million in federal stimulus funds intended for energy efficiency projects.Palin, who resigned July 26 with 17 months left in her term, had vetoed the money that the state can use for almost anything that will reduce energy costs, from retrofitting public buildings and homes to energy efficiency audits, lighting upgrades and public transit.

Alaska Legislature Overrides Palin Veto of Stimulus Funds –

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