Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

Remember that gargantuan climate change bill we told you about last week? It's gotten bigger. Over the weekend, the bill grew from 946 pages to 1,201 pages, according to the Sunlight Foundation. It's still changing, with important amendments in flux. But Democratic leaders in the House say they'll push for a vote on the bill as early as Friday. They think they can pass it. This is an incredibly expensive undertaking. If anyone in Congress tells you that he has read and completely understands this bill, and can explain exactly how the system to reduce carbon emissions would work and what its effects would be, he's lying. Democratic leaders need to slow down. This proposed legislation would affect every American individual and company for generations. There's a huge amount of money at stake: $845 billion for the federal government in the first 10 years. Untold thousands of jobs created -- or lost. This requires careful study, not a Springfield-style here's-the-bill-let's-vote rush job. This page has supported many of the principles in the bill. It would curb carbon pollution, a key to global warming, through a system known as cap-and-trade. It would work this way: The government would set a limit or cap on large sources of carbon dioxide pollution such as coal-fired utility plants and refineries. Companies would buy or be given a certain number of permits, or credits, to pollute a specific amount over a year. If a plant emits less pollution, the owners save some of the credits. Those can be sold to other plants that aren't so clean or ambitious. The idea is to build market flexibility into a system that gradually reduces pollution and arrests global warming.

President Obama says the greenhouse-gas emissions cutting Waxman-Markey bill before Congress will "spark a clean energy transformation." But a new analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency casts doubt on that claim. (Warning: the file is quite large.) According to page 27 of the analysis, published Tuesday, the legislation, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, would actually result in slightly less new renewable energy generation capacity by the year 2020 than if the U.S. continued on a business-as-usual path with no emissions caps. The reason for this, the EPA says, is twofold. First, the bill's efficiency measures - such as those that requiring more efficient buildings and appliances - would reduce overall electricity demand "significantly." Less demand means less need for new generation, including power from the wind, sun and biomass.

Oklahoma's U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, met with LaHood this week to discuss the administration's approach to fixing the trust fund.

Inhofe said he will raise the option of using interest on funds transferred from the trust fund in the 1990s to shore up the fund now.

"Last year, we were able to return the $8 billion to their rightful place, but we are still missing 10 years' worth of interest," he said.

"Repaying the interest would give the trust (fund) between $13 (billion) and $17 billion."

Inhofe said he remained confident that a fix would be found soon.