This year, they're passing out Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.

Both are meant to broaden lawmakers' minds. But while Friedman's book gave lawmakers an air of sophistication, Singer and Avery's work has revealed more base motivations:

Either legislators are industrial apologists. Or, they're brilliant political strategists laying the groundwork to rein in Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. before he signs another greenhouse-gases compact with crazy moderate Republicans like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a bonus, laying doubt among lawmakers allows conservatives to sculpt state energy policy to promote fossil fuel and nuclear energy.

"We think that the debate on global warming and climate change as well as our state energy policy deserves a thorough review of all the facts by every state legislator," Conservative Caucus members Greg Hughes, Craig Frank and nuclear power buddies Aaron Tilton and Mike Noel wrote in a letter attached to packages of anti-global warming literature given to every lawmaker.

I'll call them the World is Flat Caucus.

Along with Singer and Avery's book, they passed out a binder in September compiled by the Science and Public Policy Institute, a conservative think tank funded by Exxon and run by Robert Ferguson, a Brigham Young University graduate. Then this week, the caucus invited their go-to guy for conservative theory, Sutherland Institute Director Paul Mero, up to Capitol Hill to make the case against global warming.

Now, Mero's a Renaissance guy if ever there was one, willing to speak authoritatively about every subject. But even he acknowledged a scientist might do a better job. "Why would you want a policy guy in here at this point?" he asked.

Unfortunately, Alabama state climatologist John Christy, a leading global warming skeptic, was already booked (by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens), so Mero gamely soldiered on, doing his best to channel Christy, quoting his testimony before Congress in 2006.

Christy, in turn, did his best to channel novelist Michael Crichton. "Consensus reports are not inherent, nor infallible," said Mero, quoting Christy, paraphrasing Crichton. In essence, because a few scientists disagree with the overwhelming majority, global warming theory is suspect. Christy doesn't dispute that greenhouse gases are accumulating, but he rejects the idea that carbon dioxide, "the source of life on the planet," is a pollutant.

Meantime, Utah is basking in an unseasonably warm, dry and increasingly hazy November. Ski resorts are postponing their opening days.

After letting intelligent design get a hearing last year, it makes sense conservative legislators would continue science-baiting. Somehow, Utah lawmakers are going to resolve this debate for their little patch of the globe, adopting the theory that climate variations are a blip in Earth's history - nothing to worry about, and certainly no reason to trade in our Chevy Tahoes.

I wonder, though, if this is really about disputed science. It seems more like a political ploy, a semantics argument used to box in the governor, who increasingly strays from acceptable conservative talking points on this topic.

Meantime, by acknowledging Utah's growing pollution problem, lawmakers raise the stakes for "clean" nuclear energy.

They're multitasking.

When he was done, Mero passed out a DVD - on one side, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," on the other, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" featuring Christy.

"One of the things we hope we do at Sutherland is facilitate debate," Mero said.

Mission accomplished.

walsh@sltrib.com