Paul Krugman might call them Benedict Arnolds: Any member of Congress who voted against the climate bill based on politics.

Congressional opponents of the bill on political grounds committed "treason against the planet," said Krugman, New York Times columnist and 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Businessinsider.com reported.

"If you saw the debate ... you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth," Krugman said.

"They (members of Congress) don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it — and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial," he said.

Krugman singled out Representative Paul Broun (R-Ga.) for the legislator's declaration challenging the veracity of the climate change claims.

Climate change, Krugman quotes Rep. Broun as saying, is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community."

"... To believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice," Krugman said.

Beyond the fact or fiction of global warming are the tax implications of the climate bill.

"(It) ... is likely to be the biggest tax in American history," according to The Wall Street Journal.