Unlike Gingrich and Romney, Santorum says he's never supported the global warming 'hoax

Rick Santorum has hammered his opponents on the debate stage for their past support of policy addressing global warming, and is now calling out Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney on the campaign trail for believing what he calls a hoax.

POLITICO's Juana Summers reports that Santorum told supporters in Colorado Springs Tuesday that Romney and Gingrich would fail against President Barack Obama in the general election because of their views on cap and trade.

"'Let's go to cap and trade. Governor Romney proudly announced that they were the first state, Massachusetts, to put a cap on CO2 emissions in the state of Massachusetts,' Santorum told more than 100 supporters here.

Santorum also dinged Gingrich for filming a climate change ad with Nancy Pelosi, something Gingrich - as recently as yesterday - has admitted was a mistake. Both Gingrich and Santorum appeared at a Colorado energy conference on Monday.

'Speaker Gingrich has supported cap and trade for more than a dozen years. Now, he wants business incentives to go along with cap and trade, but he supported cap and trade, and sat on the couch with Nancy Pelosi and said that global warming had to be addressed by Congress,' Santorum said. 'Who is he or who's Governor Romney to be able to go after President Obama? I've never supported even the hoax of global warming.'

Romney and Gingrich, Santorum said, 'bought into the science of man-made global warming, and they bought into the remedy, both of which are bogus.'"

ABC News reports that Santorum used similar language during an address at the 2012 Colorado Energy Summit:

“'I for one never bought the hoax,' Santorum said. 'I for one understood just from science, there are 100 factors that influence the climate, to suggest one minor factor of which man’s contribution is a minor factor … is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face. And yet we have politicians running to the ramparts, unfortunately politicians that happen to be running for the Republican nomination of the president who buy into manmade global and bought into cap and trade. Congressman Gingrich and Gov. Romney both supported the idea of manmade global warming and in fact cap and trade; I never did. And unless the science is such that it is a heck of a lot better than what we see today, I won’t.”

While the ad was originally released in 2008, the image of Newt Gingrich siting on a couch in front of the capitol with Nancy Pelosi advocating policy to address climate change seems to be seared into our minds from its replay on cable news and within attack ads released by the former Speaker's 2012 opponents. Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune wrote a good blog post Thursday aggregating Mitt Romney's contradictory position(s) on global warming during this campaign alone.

It's worth asking though, whether or not you believe in global warming, if past support of cap and trade or other green issues will fail in the general election as miserably as Santorum predicts.

A 2011 Gallup poll did indicate that less Americans view global warming as a threat when compared to 2008, but a separate Rasmussen Report released this past January showed that the number of voters who believe global warming is a serious problem is at its highest level in two and a half years.