Amid invocations of “ClimateGate,” House Republicans have voted to abandon the work of this leading, and celebrated, international scientific body, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. The vote was 244-179, with Republicans charging that the IPCC would receive an undeserved $ 13 million in the president’s next budget. I’m not clear on the true funding amount because I’m seeing contradictory figures–but it’s clearly tiny in the context of total federal spending.

Rick Piltz has much more about how the debate went down. It’s pretty staggering that we’re now at a point where the most definitive outlet for information about the state of the climate is being not only rejected, but defunded, on partisan grounds.