Regarding global warming and the search for cleaner ways of using energy, it was day and night at the state Capitol on Monday.

At the governor's office, Democrat Brian Schweitzer was talking with U.N. ambassadors from Denmark, Finland, Iraq and Thailand, who wanted to know how the state is promoting "clean and green" energy technology in response to climate change.

Elsewhere in the building that same day, Republicans on the Environmental Quality Council, which was considering suggestions in a state global-warming report, were calling the very concept of global warming caused by carbon emissions into the atmosphere a "lie" that has been "politicized" by forces insisting that industrial pollution is to blame.

Yeah, and Ralph Nader still doesn't think there's any difference between the parties.

Several Democrats on the council expressed frustration with those attitudes. Rep. Sue Dickenson, D-Great Falls, said arguing about whether humans have a role in climate change is like a debate over the stork's role in human reproduction. "Eventually you get to the point where the scientific information is so overwhelming that it's time to discredit the stork as a deliverer of babies," she said.

Sen. Dave Wanzenried, D-Missoula, wondered what amount of science would ever be enough to convince skeptics.

By now, it seems clear that the answer is no amount. Not when "faith-based" politics based on the gospel according to the likes of Rush Limbaugh judges scientific findings not by the consensus of the leading experts but by how well those findings fit into a rigidly conservative political orthodoxy.

After all, when you reject science, rigid orthodoxies are about all that's left.