New Senate Environment Chair Gets His Gavel, Goes On Rant...

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/22/3614235/seriously-we-are-all-doomed/

New Senate Environment Chair Gets His Gavel, Goes On Rant Arguing Climate Science Is A Hoax

by Emily Atkin
Posted on January 22, 2015 at 11:54 am


Wednesday was a big day for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). In the morning, he officially took the gavel as chairman of the Senate’s Environment Committee. In the afternoon, he took the Senate floor for a long speech about how human-caused climate change is fake.

Here’s the video-@ link

In sum, the speech has everything. References to the oft-debunked “ClimateGate” stolen e-mail “scandal”, a poster of a Time Magazine cover from 1974 claiming an ice age is coming, and multiple references to former Vice President Al Gore. It has a mention of a survey of weather-casters who think global warming is caused by natural variation, but does not mention that weather-casters are not climate scientists. It even includes the claim that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “started” the whole idea that climate change is happening, even though the idea was conceived about 200 years ago.

snip//

Conversely, one of the most recent peer-reviewed studies on the state of climate science showed that out of 4000 abstracts from peer-reviewed papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of global warming — 97 percent of these endorsed the point that it was human-caused. In the video, Inhofe says this is “just not true.”

snip//

Don’t expect this speech to be the end of climate denial in the Senate. Indeed, Inhofe ended his speech by promising more of it, citing his new position as head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“Now I’m back in that position so we’ll have a chance to have hearings, and Mr. President, we’re going to have hearings with prominent scientists to come in and talk about this thing,” he said. “We’ll be there to be the truth-squad.”

[tuhaybey]

1. Big oil money

Big oil donates almost $700k to Senators who are willing to deny climate science publicly. But, for Senators who are willing to go way above and beyond the call of duty- spending hours a week making up new conspiracy theories about climatology, devising more and more extreme ways to denounce science and coming up with more and more questionable sources of support for their denials- they pay even more. Inhofe has received almost $1.8 million from big oil for his constant displays of disbelief in climate science. And that's just direct contributions. Counting in dark money and direct advertising and whatnot, it would likely be several times that much, but of course, nobody knows exactly how much it is due to the Supreme Court.

[librechik]

2. but didn't the Senate just vote that it isn't a hoax?

truth squad?

[tuhaybey]

3. Not quite

The Republicans weaseled out of it somewhat. They voted that climate change was real, but not that humans cause it.

[Vinca]

4. At least we know why the world is laughing at us.

[Orsino]

5. It's not getting warmer.

Inhofe is just insulated with a thick layer of oil money.

[azmom]

6. Wow just wow

So painful to listen to. No words....

[GliderGuider]

7. Utterly horrifying. And embarrassing.

Even with the tar sands, there are days I'm really glad to be Canadian. This would be one of them

[beam me up scottie]

8. “We’ll be there to be the truth-squad.”

[2naSalit]

9. Well....

if there are aliens in space watching, would you please come and help us?