Sen. James Inhofe Lashes Out At CNN, Grossly Distorts Global Warming Science
Sen. James Inhofe Lashes Out At CNN, Grossly Distorts Global Warming Science
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has responded angrily to yesterday’s CNN segment debunking his diatribe against global warming science. His rebuttal is shockingly dishonest. Here’s a sample:
[CNN's Miles] O’Brien also claimed that the “Hockey Stick” temperature graph was supported by most climate scientists despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts have made it clear that the Hockey Stick’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was unsupportable.
Actually, that National Academy of Sciences just released a study supporting the so-called “Hockey Stick” study (by Mann et. al). Here’s an excerpt from the report:
The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence…Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. [pg. 3-4]
The National Academy of Sciences did note that “less confidence” can be placed in the conclusion that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade” because “not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.” This is a scientific reality. But, unmistakably, the NAS study bolsters the “hockey stick” and, more importantly, the fact that global warming is real and caused by human activity.
Inhofe protested that, contrary to O’Brien’s report, he did agree to be interviewed by CNN about his global warming claims. What he didn’t mention was that he agreed to be interviewed by right-wing CNN host Glenn Beck, who said of An Inconvenient Truth, “It’s like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in ‘and it’s the Jews’ fault.’”
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Jeebus, what a whiner.
What about the Interrogation Bill?
September 29th, 2006 at 10:23 amWhy should anyone bother being concerned about anything any longer? It’s all “an inside Job” and a “done deal”…..now watch this drive!!
September 29th, 2006 at 10:26 amWhat TP and others fighting this fight fail to realize is that Inhofe DOES NOT CARE if he is right or wrong….all he strives to do is muddle the issue long enough so that the real facts do not come out….by constantly putting TP, Al Gore, CNN on the defensive Inhofe achieves his goal of protecting the oil and gas industry from having to make any real changes to their destructive policies……
Basically you can yell and scream at these people til you are blue in the face and it will not change their minds….other avenues of change will have to be explored in order solve the problem of Global Warming…
September 29th, 2006 at 10:27 amHow could any intelligent person ever vote for any of these current Republicans? They’re all liars and crooks.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:28 amI am surprised he didn’t say “But Michael Crichton said…”
September 29th, 2006 at 10:29 amHe’s “angry” because Republicans have learned that you just keep pushing back—just be angry regardless of the issues or the need for responsibility for one’s actions. And they can do this because they have no conscience, conception of dialogue, fairness, or morals. As of yesterday and the passage of the torture bill ( including retroactive pardon for the dictator) …our rights are gone. Guess it’s a pretty good tactic eh?
September 29th, 2006 at 10:31 amI am surprised he didn’t say “But Michael Crichton said…â€
Comment by Bruce+Gorton
Personally, I was suprised he didn’t say “But Jason Hendler said…”
September 29th, 2006 at 10:31 ami’m outraged at his outrage
September 29th, 2006 at 10:33 amI’m so tired of “in-your-face” lying. It’s blatant, it’s frequent, it’s all we get from the GOP anymore. If the lie is debunked, get mad and make up a lie about the debunker. It’s like living on a playground, dealing with children day in and day out. I want the company of adults for a change! I want to see adults in our Congress and on our tv screens telling us what they will FOR us, and telling truth! Not constanting telling us which Americans we should hate, what a great thing pollution is, and how expediently we can kill more Muslims. This is sick. Sick in the mind, sick in the heart and rotten to the core.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:44 am#3 Good point lib4. You don’t argue with people who won’t argue rationally and fairly. But you have to take issue with these people so that the public will not be misled. You can’t let people like Inhofe & Anne Coulter go unchallenged. That’s how they win over the public.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:53 am#7 dlet, that’s “Jason M. Hendler, Ivy League graduate”, to you.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:55 amLies and they lying liars who tell them
September 29th, 2006 at 10:56 amIf James Inhofe is the product of an Oklahoma education, then each and every university application for a science degree from an Oklahoma high schooler should be rejected as unsuitable – and redirected to a school of theology.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:57 amInhofe is a hockey PUCK
September 29th, 2006 at 11:00 amThanks for the correction Terry. How could I have forgotten.
Isn’t it nice that he says he would debate this on CNN only if he can debate someone that wasn’t involved in the story that caused his “outrage”. Only infantile weak men can’t have a discussion with the people that disagree with them.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:00 amInhome reminds me of the guy who dreamed he was laying an egg while shitting the bed. No amount of truth or logic will prevail over a mindset that will not accept contrary input, regardless.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:01 amBut then, who knows, maybe the family needs the eggs?
I wonder if big oil has any influence in O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A where the graft comes sweeping down the plain…
September 29th, 2006 at 11:03 amTo recap on my favorite subject, it is the rapid release of all that stored chemical energy in fossil fuels that is causing urban areas to have elevated temperatures, which are then used to skew data about average global temperature. If we used hydro-electric, solar, wind and wave power, then the net heat at the Earth’s surface would be zero. Nuclear power is like chemical power, in that it’s rapid release (as opposed to natural decay) would increase the net heat at the Earth’s surface, but at least it doesn’t pollute the air, and it’s waste can be properly stored, so it should be more extensively used.
As for Imhofe, general references to Hitler tends to hurt your arguments, as opposed to helping them, so he would have been better off not mentioning him, especially in a topic in which Hitler is not related in any conceiveable way. If he wanted to make a point about disinformation, he should have referred to Goebels, not Hitler.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:07 amI’m still amazed that CNN would fact-check a Republican and refuse his interview terms. Way to go! I absolutely love the fact that demanding to be interviewed by Glenn Beck equals “refusing to talk to us”. LOL!
September 29th, 2006 at 11:09 amlib4, An+American+Voter, and others are absolutely correct. While we don’t know exactly who Inohofe’s intended audience is for his blatant NEWSPEAK lies, it matters little to them what the real truth is. There are a handful of voters who have to hear or read them to be reassured of their world view, and then vote for him.
The thing about people like this is that rational, real-world people like everyone else cannot fathom how someone could lie, and lie, and still look their collegues and us in the face. But there it is every day, mastered by Bush himself. It has become the way of politics Republican in this country, and it is only going to end by all of us calmly pulling the Democrat lever this fall and flushing them all down the toilet.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:09 amHe reminds me of the “Thank You for Smoking” guy.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:12 amthe people get what they deserve. not that we voted for it, not that we asked for it. only what we deserve by not being involved in the process.
have you gone to an attorney to get paper ballots in your state? if not, you will get what you deserve, again
September 29th, 2006 at 11:12 amUgh, just saw the Democratic House response to Bush’s speech today. Have you ever seen such a defeated, disheartened group in your life? These guys are getting steam rolled legislatively, and the vote talleys are being effectively used to pummel them in their district races. Who would vote for these bunch of sad sacks?
September 29th, 2006 at 11:17 amYesterday Lou Dobbs had NASA climate scientist James Hansen on his show to discuss Hansen’s latest work showing we are perilously close to dangerous climate change. Dobbs noted that President Bush had invited fiction writer Michael Crichton to the White House to discuss global warming and Dobbs asked Hansen if he had ever been invited to talk to Bush. Hansen replied that he did not know of any climate scientists who had been asked to talk to Bush about climate change.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:19 amSenator Imhotep has some pretty thin skin for a reptile.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:22 am“It’s like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth”
What or who is Hitler? Al Gore? or Global warming?
The Right wing’s poster boy -Hitler -is a gift that keeps on giving.
Can’t these nut jobs realize that money can be made in solving or slowing down global warming????
September 29th, 2006 at 11:33 amTo recap on my favorite subject, it is the rapid release of all that stored chemical energy in fossil fuels that is causing urban areas to have elevated temperatures,
Ahhh, my favorite. I will agree with this as soon as I see a map that shows all of these urban areas in Greenland and the polar region that are causing all this disappearence of the ice shelf. I guess the eskimos have really become industrialized in the past few decades.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:37 am#17 – Inhofe – about $850,000 of O&G lobby influence. That buys a lot of hot air.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:39 amIf we could convince Republicans that stopping global warming will prevent gay marriage then Republicans will take quick action.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:43 amRepublicans are the fear and smear party
Nah, we tried pointing out that a lot of stopping global warming means less funds for Islamic Jihad, but it wasn’t like they were interested.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:45 amInhofe is a douchebag who is mad that someone called him on his bs.
September 29th, 2006 at 11:46 am#27 – right – the global average tells of nothing of the causes or effects. What is important is the positive feedback loop of fewer sq miles of ice covere leading to less relfection of sun’s energy which leads to fewer sq miles of ice cover… then the release of methane from melting permafrost leads to warner temperatires which leads to more methane from the permafrost…. Is the arctic ice melting, yes or no? Is the permafrost melting, yes or no? Is elevated CO2 and methane in the atmosphere contributing to these feedback loops yes or no? Where did the CO2 and methane come from – is the human race responsible, yes or no? Is Michael Crichton a respected climate scientist, yes or no?
September 29th, 2006 at 11:48 amAnd the ‘urban heat island myth’ from Wikipedia:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued several influential reports on climate trends, says that the effects of urban heat islands on the recorded temperature “do not exceed about 0.05°C over the period 1900 to 1990.” Note that this is a maximum: it does not exclude zero influence. This statement rests on various sources, contributing reasons being:
land, sea, and borehole records are in reasonable agreement over the last century. (Much more heat has gone into the earth and the ocean depths than remains in the wispy atmosphere, and the ocean and borehole records have not been questioned.)
September 29th, 2006 at 11:59 amthe trends in urban stations for 1951 to 1989 (0.10°C/decade) are not greatly more than those for all land stations (0.09°C/decade).
simlarly the rural trend is 0.70°C/century from 1880 to 1998, which is actually larger than the full station trend (0.65°C/century).(Peterson et al., GRL, 1999)
the differences in trend between rural and all stations are also virtually unaffected by elimination of areas of largest temperature change, like Siberia, because such areas are well represented in both sets of stations.
Over the Northern Hemisphere land areas where urban heat islands are most apparent the trends of lower-tropospheric temperature and surface air temperature show no significant differences. In fact, the lower-tropospheric temperatures warm at a slightly greater rate over North America (about 0.28°C/decade using satellite data) than do the surface temperatures (0.27°C/decade). “
global warming? Isn’t that what will replace my microwave? now watch this drive!
September 29th, 2006 at 12:17 pmRepublicans by their very nature are sociopaths and compulsive lying just comes with the territory. What’s truely shocking is that the american public is so gullible, but we have the pathetic state of our education to partially blame for that. Another factor is the incessant indoctrination to illogic and uncritical thinking that religion pummels us with year after year.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:31 pmLiar, liar, pants on fire.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:45 pmWhat’s can one expect from a blathering, bible-thumping idiot like Inhofe.
As a matter of fact, I think the word idiot doesn’t do justice to this freak.
Inhofe as some of you may recall made a statement as to the cause of the 9/11 attacks which echoed the bilious rantings of the crazed stick-figure she-thing Ann Coulter who said, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
Inhofe, parroting the insane Coulter stated, “One of the reason I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America is that the policy of our government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them.”
With such ground-breaking, divinely intellectual insights such as that, does anyone other than the Fundamentalist nutball crowd take serious the deluded ravings of the clownish Inhofe on matters related to science??
September 29th, 2006 at 12:49 pmSurprised he didn’t scream “Clinton did it” and run away.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:02 pmOh, we silly left-wingers with our facts and all. We just don’t get the Inhofe faith-based science system.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:17 pmAmerica’s Least Wanted
Miles O’Brien also thinks that Rove, Bush, Cheney, SUVs, Halliburton, Diebold and Fox News caused the end of the last ice age. Right?
September 29th, 2006 at 1:19 pm#40 here that rustling sound, Tom? It’s the sound of your strawman drying up and blowing away…you should go after it.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:30 pmThe citizens of Oklahoma must demand that Inhofe resigns from the Senate > he is a disgrace to their state, so get rid of him or be ridiculed!
September 29th, 2006 at 1:30 pmWho would vote for these bunch of sad sacks?
Comment by Jason+M.+Hendler
Stalin’s opponents were defeated and disheartened, also. Would you vote for Stalin, since he was so confident and strong?
September 29th, 2006 at 1:40 pmOK’s idiot. He refuses to know not of what he speaks. He ought to return to selling grass seed.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:50 pmThe citizens of Oklahoma must demand that Inhofe resigns from the Senate > he is a disgrace to their state, so get rid of him or be ridiculed!
Comment by Jay Randal — September 29, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
Have you ever been to Oklahoma? Apparently not. You’re talking Oral Robertsville. Can you name the two states that still allow cock-fighting? One is Oklahoma, or at least it was, when I left. This is where, not too long ago, a general stood at the lecturn of a Baptist chuch in full uniform, and delivered a sermon about the evils if Islam. Snake handling, speaking in tongues, faith-healing telethons – and a devotion to football so intense that it resembles religious fervor, with every coach on every team telling their poor, brainwashed, flock before the game “We’re ‘gonna win, ’cause the Lord God’s on our side!” Inhofe truly represents Oklahoma.
September 29th, 2006 at 2:10 pmLOL barfly > I drove through Oklahoma last year, and stayed overnight in a small town near Oklahoma City, but otherwise I do not know much about the state! I would NOT want to live there, since tornadoes occur often, and Inhofe is there!
September 29th, 2006 at 2:17 pmJay
The only thing good one can say of Oklahoma? That its not Texas!
[Old Oklahoma football joke]: What do you get by mating a hog with a University of Texas cheerleader?
Nothing. There’s some things even a hog won’t touch!
September 29th, 2006 at 2:29 pm#46, actually the general paths of tornados is predictable. At least more so than the earthquakes in CA.
Quit knocking Okies football, T Boone is going to buy the OSU top ranking. Mucho $$$s for athletic team playpens. Pennies for academics and facilities for the majority of the college population.
September 29th, 2006 at 2:30 pmGlobal warming is an ‘emergency’ so scientists can get funding to do whatever they see as pet projects. No real emergency here, this is just the standard way of obtaining funds these days – make a movie, scare everyone, ridicule those who dont agree, etc… In 10 years we will be debating global cooling like in the 60’s and again, more funds will be needed. I think they should raise their own money from private sources if it’s so important and quit trying to waste my tax dollars.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pmIn the end we humans may prove to be no more intelligent than cancer cells which are so stupid that they continue to multiply and consume until they kill their host, and thus themselves.
Especially if we believe the dangerous lies Reptiles like Inhofe tell us.
He is willing to sacrifice the Earth itself and the future of YOUR family so he and his Reptilian band of snakes can profit now. They are your enemies!
September 29th, 2006 at 5:12 pmHold on a minute! I checked it out and this is what I found: All (especially the moderate)Muslims and the Jews are responsible. for global warming. There. Don’t you feel better now?
September 29th, 2006 at 5:48 pmIt’s proven than the Earth has warmed over the past century, however it has not been proven than human carbon dioxide emissions are the cause. One volcanic eruption can release more carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere than Humans have in their entire existence, we really aren’t that big of a deal. How ever the Sun is huge, last time I was out walking in the Sun it seemed a lot hotter than it did when I was a kid for some reason, maybe it’s just me. Stop and think what has more of an effect on Global temperature, you, or the Sun? So sure lets put up wind farms and wave farms, green energy all around but don’t assume that’s going to solve global warming.
September 29th, 2006 at 6:05 pm#49 – that’s an opinion you are entitled to. Tell you what, you can get a tax rebate for scientific funding into climate change when I get mine from subsidizing oil and gas companies. Is that a deal, sonny jim?
September 29th, 2006 at 7:44 pmActually I have a hypothesis for you, Tom. This whole global climate change thing is an event like the Yucutan meteor was for the dinosaurs. They couldn’t evolve to survive that so that was it for them. Darwin says we will evolve and survive or we won’t. So we should just put Darwin in control of the bus, is that it Tom?
September 29th, 2006 at 7:47 pmJust so you guys know, not everyone in Oklahoma is as ridiculously ignorant as this guy. Sure there’s a lot of simple minded people here who only vote for a guy cuz he believes in Jeebus, but there is a fair amount who actually think for themselves. Thank goodness i’m getting the f*ck out of this place soon cuz I think I would go f*cking crazy.
September 29th, 2006 at 8:51 pmYou don’t even have to be a good liar to be a Republican Senator these days.
All it takes is someone willing to sell out his fellow Americans and enable the destruction of the planet for 30 pieces of silver.
September 29th, 2006 at 8:51 pmI blogged about Inhofe’s interfence with the EPA August 1. Read about it here.
http://comlogic.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_comlogic_archive.html
The blog was about Inhofe putting a stop to the EPA’s effort to measure air pollution in natural-gas fields using infrared camera to detect gas leaks.
Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, outlined his complaints in a recent letter to Robbie Roberts, administrator for the EPA’s Region VIII office in Denver.
In the letter, Inhofe seeks answers to 14 questions about the EPA’s activities, including whether it had permission to film oil and gas activities on private property. … (Inhofe complains that) the agency’s actions … “give rise to concern†and threaten the “trust†between regulators and industry.
Yeah, like we should “TRUST” the O & G indusrty.
September 29th, 2006 at 9:10 pmWell, at least it’s not the fault of that pesky liberal media again
September 29th, 2006 at 11:37 pmGlobal warming is real but is not directly related to human activity.
September 30th, 2006 at 12:00 amYeah, everybody takes monsieur blastocyst seriously.
September 30th, 2006 at 1:01 amI’m from Oklahoma and that’s my senator you’re talking about. You misunderstand. Inhofe misspoke and meant to say “Hockey PUCK” graph.
September 30th, 2006 at 1:03 amVolcanos can release alot of SO2 into the stratosphere (which exerts a cooling influence) but not much CO2 ! This “volcanoes release way more CO2 than us” is just dead wrong. It is not the sun either…been o real trend in solar output since the 50’s. See http://www.realclimate.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change
Or just bother to pick up “scientific americian” or “New scientist” now and then. If you feel up to it, go to you local university and flip through, Nature, science or Geophysical Research letters etc… or even go through a introductury text book on Atmospheric radiative transfer, Climate, or even just Earth Sciences.
September 30th, 2006 at 5:04 amWell gang…I live in Tulsa mind you…and Jimmy-boy is once again touting his arrogant character. Just recall that he holds a position concerning energy…that took years to get him there…but…it is now accomplished…and…his oil and gas buddies are doing quite well. I shall refrain from further rambling – and let you know…some people in Oklahoma are rather embarrased of Inhofe. #
September 30th, 2006 at 2:49 pmNo one alive knows the the answers to questions about global warming. It could even be good, preventing or softening ice ages, which are the real danger.
October 1st, 2006 at 9:24 ami saw an interview w/ this guy yesterday aft….what a moron….a junk science dude.
said more than once that “in the 70’s the scientists were predicting another ice age. and it didn’t happen”. also said “in the 40’s, humans spewed more co2 than in any other previous decade, and the earth cooled after the 40’s”
this guy isn’t worth my time, but i’ll take a moment to rebut these two points. on point #1, approximately 3 decades later, science has advanced in such leaps and bounds – ie. unravelling and mapping in detail the entire human genome which incidentally is composed of 3.1 billion base
pairs of dna – to the extent that man has a superior grasp of the sophisticated climate mechanisms in place on this planet, mechanisms that take decades to understand given their scale. Further, unlike the 70’s where scientists weren’t focusing on any single chemical culprit to make grand scale climate predictions, in the past decade, they have intensely scrutinized a single compound – co2 – and its effect on earth’s climate. The analysis has reached the point where to quote Al Gore, “out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero”. Amazing. There isn’t any disagreement
whatsoever among the top peer-reviewed climate scientists that human activity is responsible for most of the warming in the last 50 years and that this human-induced warming from ghg emissions
will accelerate in the coming decades. Who are you going to believe, a republican politician from oklahoma who is incapable of backing up his junk science assertions with scientific proof, or the professional climate
scientists who study the climate for a living every single day.
on point #2, again, pure junk science at work. Mr. Inhofe fails to recognize that the global climate system is much like a super-tanker. You cannot just turn a steering wheel on a supertanker and expect it to do a u-turn
right away. Mr. Inhofe demonstrates the mentality of a 4 yr old child in suggesting that the 1940’s co2 uptick should have produced subsequent warming. There were probably a myriad of other natural climate systems at work that would have produced a cooling effect, with or without a ’40’s co2 uptick. Perhaps the co2 uptick in the 40’s simply
muted the cooling in the 1950’s.
It is important to challenge junk science at every moment. Disgusting that Mr. Inhofe can mutter junk science on national television, probably influencing millions of redneck minds in the process
October 1st, 2006 at 3:18 pm[...] This morning on CNN Senator James Inhofe continued his tirade against the media, making accusations of fear-mongering and claiming global warming to be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." [...]
October 3rd, 2006 at 6:50 pmTwo by two…
Fortunately, the number of way-out skeptics getting the spotlight has shrunk, isolating them more all the time. We’re approaching the Silent Minority of skeptics and un-, mis- or dis-informed people with a grassroots effort, through a pre-election awareness effort built around The Great Warming
On the individual level, we’re inviting everyone who can get to a screening of The Great Warming, opening on Nov. 3rd across the country, to “Convert 2 Skeptics” – bring two friends, family members or co-workers to this more inclusive but still hard-hitting documentary, and talk with them about it afterwards.
On the broader level, we’re working with groups that are new to – and were sometimes hostile to – environmental activism like Evangelical Christians and Churches of Christ. Their pastors and leaders are starting to talk to congregations about reducing our impact on the planet, and people are listening. When you get beyond differences on where we came from, most families and individuals want the same things for where we’re going. Our core group includes Friends of the Earth and Union of Concerned Scientists as well as a range of faith groups, all of whom call tackling global warming a moral imperative.
I’m actually [slightly] grateful to Inhofe, for at least putting global warming front and center again before the election. It’s not showing up in the media or on platforms much these days, if at all, and it shouldn’t take a Katrina or a gasoline price hike to wake us up…
For more info on the film and campaign, you can visit
October 9th, 2006 at 6:58 pm[...] segment debunking his diatribe against global warming science. His rebuttal is shockingly dishonest.read more | digg story April 11th, 2007 | Category: Environment News [...]
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