Like others, I've gone from skeptic to believer on the subject of climate change. The debate is over. Pollution has altered global weather patterns. Even ExxonMobil concedes the point in recent advertising. "We are taking steps to address the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," says the petrochemical giant.

As a consumer and voter, I want action from business and government. We've got to get serious about global warming, right? But lately, I've begun to worry about hot air of a different sort - hype and hoopla - as politicians lead the parade.

One sign of hoopla is the gap between talk of the seriousness of the problem and the scale of the response. The news media play a willing role in glossing over this fact.

One morning, I picked up my paper to read an almost-adoring article about Gov. Chris Gregoire's plan to combat climate change. The article used adjectives like "bold" and "daring," and mentioned the advent of more low-emission vehicles, "green building" standards, and a new Office of the State Climatologist.

As a result of all this, we were told, Washington state was "catching up with other Western states." But there was little analysis of how the announced actions would make a measurable difference. And nothing about the cost of these actions.

As it turns out, at least some of Gregoire's pronouncements reaffirmed existing policies. Washington was not following California's lead in adopting mandatory emissions controls. Instead, Gregoire asked a group of industry, environmental and other groups to give her advice on such measures. So much for "catching up." The study process is expected to take a year.

Not to pick on Gregoire. She won't seek wholesale changes to our carbon-based economy without vetted ideas and political support. That makes sense. And she's not the first politician to use the press conference as stagecraft to accentuate a package of modest ingredients. I've seen other politicians show up at press conferences to promote hybrid cars - and head back to the office in a limousine.

Another indicator of hoopla is the lack of scrutiny for incentives to boost the market for alternative fuels. It doesn't take much to find disappointments in the record.

In response to global warming, our state put in place tax breaks, discounted loans and other incentives to help businesses in the alternative fuel industry.
 And incentives lure investors. Bill Gates put money in Fresno-based Pacific Ethanol, which makes ethanol fuel from corn. Two former executives from the collapsed Seattle Monorail Project joined Seattle-based Washington Biodiesel to build a plant near Moses Lake with a low-interest loan of $2.5 million in public money. Paul Allen and others put money in Imperium Renewables of Seattle, which is building a $40 million plant in Grays Harbor to produce biodiesel.

Last year, the Legislature passed a law that says all diesel sold in Washington state must contain at least 2 percent biodiesel.

Getting the government to require people to buy your product is a sweet deal for those in that business. I'm hopeful this will work. But let's keep our eyes open.

Synfuels was the hot idea during the Jimmy Carter era, one that went bust, leaving gouged mountains and no path to energy independence.

Ethanol is embedded in today's energy policy, boosted by a subsidy worth about 51 cents a gallon and celebrated on TV by its leading supplier, Archer Daniels Midland. You can't win a presidential caucus in Iowa without praising ethanol.

But despite more than $37 billion in subsidies to ethanol since 1995, the U.S. is more dependent on foreign oil than when we started the program. Equally troubling, environmentalists are often cool to ethanol because it takes almost as much energy to make it as it provides in fuel. Cars running on an ethanol-gasoline blend get less mileage than do cars running on pure gasoline.