The reliable Paul Krugman has published a remarkably slippery piece today full of fatuous claims, such as that long-time GHG rentseeker PG&E dropping out of the U.S. Chamber over the latter’s opposition to cap-and-trade is proof that “Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers.”

Oh, having been reading with amusement the escalating tantrums by the windmill rentseekers and Natural Resources Defense Council over opposition to their silly claims, I would be remiss if I didn’t join the fun and note that I’m speaking about former Enron consultant Paul Krugman. Remiss, except that this claim is actually true, unlike most of what AWEA and NRDC belched forth in recent days in outrage over the facts coming out about Spain’s experience, to which our president referred us as a model. Incidentally, since NRDC worked with Enron to bring Kyoto about, it would also seem that Krugman’s ties with the group are even more direct and go way back.

Now, about the particulars of Krugman’s snit today: It is one for the ages that informed readers will have to review for themselves to fully appreciate. What they will find is a series of claims of questionable intellectual vigor such as cherry-picking the year 2020, just before Waxman-Markey kicks in, to claim that “even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family.” The terms “deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions,” “2020,” and “Waxman-Markey” simply do not belong in a sentence together, as Waxman-Markey does not in fact require “deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions,” either in 2020, or ever (since the massive offset schemes etc. ensure that this bill would prove to be like Europe’s emissions-trading scheme, and not actually reduce emissions). Claiming “deep cuts in GHG emissions” is, at best — to borrow a term Krugman applies to those who disagree with him — “absurd.”

Krugman ignores that the “postage-stamp” claim to dismiss the cost in 2020 involves double discounting and therefore is false, and surely more phony than anything or anyone else he alludes to or references. He claims that Heritage’s work is absurd because hardly anyone he reads has cited it (and Nixon didn’t really win, because after all, no one Krugman knows voted for the man).

But Krugman’s thrust is that the $1,700 per-household cost from cap-and-trade derived by CBS columnist Declan McCullagh is phony and a “false claim.” Specifically, he derides supposed claims that the Treasury documents “show . . . that Waxman-Markey would actually cost the average family $1,787 per year,” yet McCullagh did not make that claim. Krugman is correct. No such assessment exists. But then again, I’m guessing Krugman never read the memos he sniffs at.

That is to say that, intentionally or otherwise, Krugman fails to grasp that raising Waxman-Markey in response to the Treasury documents is to change the subject: the Treasury documents express the administration’s expectations from cap-and-trade. They do not purport to be anything else, although the subject-changers and sloppy media continue to shriek otherwise.

Still, McCullagh has been clear how he arrived at that figure for the “average household,” and both he and Heritage have transparently detailed how you can easily arrive at a higher figure. Per McCullagh:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that “the price increases resulting from a 15 percent cut in CO2 emissions could cost the average household roughly $1,600,” but that because households tend not to be average, annual costs would generally range between $700 and $2,200. The CBO says higher prices are “essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make economically motivated changes in investment and consumption that reduced CO2 emissions.”

The report McCullagh cites, by the way, is the same to which Krugman lights incense (perfect word here, actually), and therefore implies he has read.

Paul, the Enron retainer has expired. You can stop pushing Kenny Boy’s cap-and-trade scheme, already.