"The vast majority of scientists do not believe that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a major contributor to global warming." Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), at the beginning of his statement yesterday during floor debate on the Climate Security Act.

We're now well into the second day of deliberations on the Lieberman-Warner bill, and to say thing are not going smoothly would be quite the understatement. As we write this, a tag team of Senate clerks are reading a 491-page substitute amendment to the 157-page bill.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, the reading of an entire amendment such as this is waived and entered into record by a quick vote. Not this time. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected to the amendment -- proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) -- as being taken as read. He said his colleagues haven't had enough time to read the amendment, which Boxer released two weeks ago.

Which is how we ended up here, watching a beleaguered public servant reading the entire document on C-SPAN2 to a very empty Senate chamber. If Republicans don't relent, this this is going to take over 10 hours. Needless to say, it's good to see the GOP focusing on what's important here.

McConnell's successful attempt to shut down deliberation comes after the GOP forced 30 hours of debate on the motion to proceed. So after two days of stall tactics, we may finally get to meaningful debate on the amendments by sometime tomorrow.

The 30-hour discussion on whether to proceed did include some interesting moments, most of which have been wonderfully covered by Climate Progress. They've included analysis of the several dozen senators who spoke yesterday and this morning, including Inhofe's speech, which "may set the record for most misstatements in Senate history."

Essentially, the GOP is doing a great job staying on message, warning of higher energy and gas prices and the largest tax in American history if the bill is approved. The Democrats are going to have to get organized in a hurry. If they can't, the leadership should just pull an already-diluted piece of legislation and wait for next time.