As the old Paul Simon song says, “Still crazy after all these years.”
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) had a televised debate yesterday. He was asked about his 2005 comment that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and about whether John McCain is a “victim” of the hoax or a “perpetrator.” Inhofe’s amazing answer on McCain:
People are afraid of some of the environmentalists out there because they pour all the money into campaigns and, consequently, we have a lot of people who fall in that category, and some of them are Republicans.
Yeah, McCain is afraid of environmentalists — that’s why he has a voting record on clean energy and the environmental that is indistinguishable from Inhofe’s! (see “The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma“). And that’s why McCain flip-flopped on off-shore drilling — to get all that environmentalist money for his campaign (see “Why did McCain sell out to Big Oil? Ask Charles Keating“).
You can watch Inhofe’s full reply here:
Yes, Inhofe still stands by the hoax comment and loves to push the well-debunked global cooling myth:
I think I was right on that, and I do believe — first off, let’s keep in mind, though, what the issue is. It’s not whether or not we’re going into a global warming period. We were. We’re not now.
You know, God’s still up there. We’re now going through a cooling spell. And the whole issue there was is it man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane. I don’t think so.
Exactly what he meant by “God’s still up there” isn’t clear. Normally a denier like Inhofe would, in this context, use the language a denier like Sarah Palin does, and talk about “the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.” I guess Inhofe means that God is in charge of the planet’s thermostat. If so, God does not appear to be a believer in homeostasis or cooling:
Lou Grinzo has more on Inhofe’s nuttiness.
One last point for those still on the Pickens bandwagon, Pickens has given $4,600, the maximum contribution allowed by law, to Inhofe.
Related Posts:
- UK Ministry of Defence: Global warming goes on, deniers are deluded
- Yes, the planet has kept warming since 1998
- Sorry deniers, hockey stick gets longer, stronger: Earth hotter now than in past 2,000 years
- Sen. Inhofe: Stop Obsessing Over Hockey Sticks — They will be Obsolete Soon Enough
- Yes, the planet has kept warming since 1998
- Yes, the globe is warming. But how fast?
- This just in: Great Ice Age of 2008 is STILL over
- “Hadley Center to deniers: We are STILL warming”
- Hansen throws cold water on cooling climate claim
- Nature article on ‘cooling’ confuses media, deniers: Next decade may see rapid warming
- Where is the media on the incredible warming and extreme weather of February?
- Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January doesn’t mean climate stopped warming
- No warming since 1998? Get real, deniers!
- NASA: 2007 Second Warmest Year Ever, with Record Warmth Likely by 2010
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He mentions David Bellamy in his quick list of skeptic scientist, a botanist.
Heres how Bellamy was Bamboozled in to becoming a skeptic…Not checking facts…
On David Bellamy’s Climate Myth, and the Tenacity of Memes
28 July 2008, 16:09 (GMT)
http://www.layscience.net/node/209
“People are afraid of some of the environmentalists out there because they pour all the money into campaigns and, consequently, we have a lot of people who fall in that category, and some of them are Republicans.”
Who are these strange Republicans who are environmentalists? Do you have any donor names? That is so sad, sort of like Log Cabin Republicans: deluded about the party platform.
They will never get environmental policy from McCain, they should have run one of the three or four Republicans who do vote for renewable energy and the environment – like say, Collins, Snowe or Oregan’s Smith. They are the few, the very few Republicans who do tend to vote for clean energy.
Don’t they look at voting records? You would think, if you were a big bucks donor who cared enough to try and influence policy, the least you could do would be to have your personal assisistant staff check the record!
Do fruitcakes have a “best-before” date?
Who is running against Inhofe and do they have a chance?
When does delusional ranting become dangerous speech?
According to today’s TNYT, we are most likely to have Senator Inhofe around for another six, long years.
Here are the five year averages of the HadCRUTv3 global surface temperature product:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/5yrave.jpg
Actually the “God’s still up there” is key to understanding a vast majority of religiously inspired deniers, including, I’m guessing, Inhofe. They are providentialists, believing that God is in all things. The notion that people can change the world for the worse through GHG emissions is at war with their religiously held beliefs about the natural world…i.e. that God is in control, providing for us. This also contradicts more recent religious doctrine that equates unregulated economic activity stoked by a compliant natural world as “God’s will”.
It is then in many cases not so fruitful just to line up “our facts” vs. “their facts” without considering this set of assumptions behind the denier “their facts”. In fact, if I were involved in arguments with deniers, I would call attention to the religious or philosophical foundations of their preferences for certain findings and facts and their ignorance of other more salient facts.
James Inhofe is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the good people of Oklahoma. Would love to see Andrew Rice come out of nowhere and take that seat.
A subset of the population needs the Inhofes of the world.
If he were not there, someone else would fill the vacuum, much like feral cats cr*pping in your flower beds – you can get out the .22, but another one will be there next week. This is why cities with feral cat programs spay the existing ones so they can’t reproduce – the devil you know, so to speak.
Best,
D
I would expect that Jim doesn’t plan to watch Heat (http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/ pages/ frontline/ heat/ #press)