WASHINGTON — The climate-change bill ground to a halt in the Senate on Friday, a development that was not really surprising and left the legislation’s supporters consoling themselves with a moral victory of sorts.

Forty-eight senators voted to end debate on the bill and move to a vote on the legislation itself, while 36 voted no. The 48 “yes” votes were 12 short of the number needed to invoke cloture, or move to final consideration. Sixteen senators were absent, and six of them wrote letters expressing support for the bill.

Even if the measure’s supporters had mustered the necessary 60 votes on the cloture motion, they almost surely could not have amassed the two-thirds needed to override President Bush’s promised veto of the bill, which would have capped the production of heat-trapping gases and forced polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide.

The president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Frances Beinecke, said that even in defeat the bill “made history as the first comprehensive stand-alone global warming bill to reach the Senate floor,” only to be done in by “allies of Big Oil and Big Gas” and their “parliamentary tricks.”

“Once we have a new president who shows real leadership on global warming, defenders of the status quo will no longer be able to thwart the public’s desire for change,” said Beinecke.

But the bill that stalled on Friday had too many weaknesses to survive, especially in an election year when Americans are pumping $4-a-gallon gasoline into their cars and the bill’s opponents complained that the bill would only drive energy costs higher. The measure was fought not only by conservatives and industries dealing in or reliant on fossil fuels but by some environmentalists who considered it too weak.