The U.N. climate change talks that kicked off Monday in Doha, Qatar, have generated no buzz on Capitol Hill, even with lawmakers who have routinely called global warming the most pressing challenge of our time.

With a hectic congressional lame-duck session in full swing and discussions under way aimed at avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff, no lawmakers are planning to attend the U.N. conference, and only a few are sending staff.

"Well, we're here," said Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), when asked why she and other lawmakers who have attended the U.N. talks in the past are staying home.

Added Boxer's California Senate colleague, Dianne Feinstein (D): "It wouldn't be appreciated if four or five or six of us went to Doha."

Another senior member of the EPW Committee, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), made plain what he thought about a Doha trip. "It's a hell of a long distance," he said.

The senators said the lack of attendance by high-level U.S. officials doesn't show that climate change has diminished in importance since 2009, when several lawmakers attended the conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In fact, they said, interest in global warming is on the rise as the United States comes to terms with recent severe weather, notably Superstorm Sandy.

"I'm waiting to get the sand out of my eyes from Sandy in New Jersey," Lautenberg said.

Americans, he said, are more interested in ever in the factors that may have contributed to that storm. "The curiosity about what is increasing the frequency of the storms, the ferocity of the storms," he said. "We've got to find out what it is."

Some other members of the Senate Democratic caucus said the lack of attendance is unfortunate and reminds the rest of the world that the United States does not assign enough importance to dealing with the causes of climate change.

"It is not in any way being taken as seriously as it should, given the enormous crisis that we face," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said the United States must do more on the issue.

"We've got to move, and we've got to move dramatically," he said.

Whitehouse added that "until we get our own act together, it's hard to count too much on an international approach when we can't even do a national one."

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), the lead Republican contributor to a draft cap-and-trade bill in the last Congress, agreed that the fact that the dearth of attendance was significant.

"It shows you that the issue has fallen, I would think," he said.

The bill Graham worked on was later introduced by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) without his support. He said the time for a cap-and-trade carbon bill had come and gone, but that Congress could encourage carbon reductions by focusing on energy policy.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored with California Democrat Henry Waxman the cap-and-trade bill that cleared the House in 2009, will also not attend the talks this year. He blamed a packed lame-duck agenda.

But in a statement, he urged U.S. negotiators to show that the United States has heeded the lessens of Sandy and other severe weather.

"If the United States does not aggressively pursue sharp reductions in carbon pollution following the droughts, storms and other extreme weather events we have endured, the rest of the world will doubt our sincerity to address climate change," Markey said. "It's time to attack the carbon problem head on, and adapt to a climate already changed for the worse."

Boxer's EPW Committee is sending a staffer to the talks, while some other offices, including Kerry's, say they might.

Boxer also said she would address negotiators in a live broadcast from Capitol Hill. Her committee's ranking Republican, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, may also send his own message. The noted climate skeptic delivered a broadcast message to the talks last year in Durban, South Africa, informing the negotiators there that the United States would never act on climate change (Greenwire, Dec. 7, 2011).

"You are being ignored," Inhofe told them.

Reporter Nick Juliano contributed.