A short Times news article reports on Senate developments on climate change:
On Thursday, the Senate voted 56 to 42 not to take up an amendment offered by Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, that declared that climate change is real, is caused by humans and wreaks devastation. The amendment also called on the federal government to lead the way in the national transition away from dependence on fossil fuels.
Senators voted 54 to 46 not to take up an amendment offered by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, that also declared human-caused climate change to be real and devastating, and urged the government to support research on technologies that would capture carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
A third, Republican-sponsored amendment, which was rejected 51 to 46, was more political in nature. Offered by Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, it called on the Senate to nullify a climate change agreement in November between the United States and China in which both nations pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.
Never mind the Times' incredibly lame lack of hyperlinks to the votes on these amendments (the roll calls are here, here, and here, a service that SmarterTimes is able to provide with a staff less than one twelve-hundredth of the size of the New York Times's news and editorial staff, and that provides some useful information, such as the fact that among those siding with the Republicans against the Sanders amendment were three Democrats — Heitkamp of North Dakota, McCaskill of Missouri, and Warner of Virginia). What's striking is the way that the Times describes the Republican-sponsored amendment as "more political in nature," as if it's somehow less political for the Democratic politicians to try to put the Republicans on record as denying anthropogenic climate change and for the Democrats to want to use the government to counter it. Without further explanation from the Times of why the Republican move was "more political" than the Democratic move, this sure looks like biased coverage.