It must be very lonely being the last flat-earther.
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, committed climate-change denier, found himself in just such a position Tuesday morning as the Senate environment committee, on which he is the ranking Republican, took up legislation on global warming. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was in talks with Democrats over a compromise bill — the traitor! And as Inhofe listened, fellow Republicans on the committee — turncoats! — made it clear that they no longer share, if they ever did, Inhofe’s view that man-made global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
… Agitated, his utterances disjointed, Inhofe went on: “Now, I also was — was kind of — I don’t want any of the media to think just because I had to sit here and listen to our good friend Senator Kerry for 28 minutes, that I don’t have responses to everything he said.”Nobody doubted that Inhofe had a response. The doubt was whether the response would make any sense.
That’s Dana Milbank in his regular “Washington sketch” column writing about yesterday’s Senate climate hearing. Milbank is being kind not to count his fellow WashPost colleagues George Will and Fred Hiatt in calling Inhofe (R-OIL) the last flat-earther (see “WashPost recycles another denier WSJ op-ed, this time from coal apologist Bjorn Lomborg. Funny how two new senior Post editors came from the WSJ” and “Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie“).
If you’ve been dissed by the WashPost as being too head-in-the-sand on global warming, you must be buried up to your toes. Milbank shows just how out of the mainstream, how devoid of sense Inhofe has become by quoting from his fellow Republicans on the science:
“Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming,” admitted Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). “If fire chiefs of the same reputation told me my house was about to burn down, I’d buy some fire insurance.”
Hmm. Lamar, if fire chiefs of the same reputation told me that I was about to burn down my own house by throwing gasoline and coal all over the furniture, I’d stop doing that first. And who the heck is going to sell an arsonist fire insurance? So we appreciate the shout out to scientists, but let’s work on our metaphors.
An oil-state senator, David Vitter (R-La), said that he, too, wants to “get us beyond high-carbon fuels” and “focus on conservation, nuclear, natural gas and new technologies like electric cars.” And an industrial-state senator, George Voinovich (R-Ohio), acknowledged that climate change “is a serious and complex issue that deserves our full attention.”
Then Milbank skewers Inhofe again:
Then there was poor Inhofe. “The science is more definitive than ever? You keep saying that because you want to believe it so much,” he said bitterly. He offered to furnish a list of scientists who once believed in climate change but “who are solidly on the other side right now.” The science, he said, “already has shifted” against global-warming theory. “Science is not settled! Everyone knows it’s not settled!”
Ouch!
Though none of the committee Republicans are supporting her cap-and-trade plan for carbon emissions so far, Boxer made it clear that her primary grievance is with one Republican. “Since John Warner retired, I don’t have a Republican partner on the committee, but I am appreciative for the productive conversations I’ve had with Senator Alexander, about nuclear energy, and for the wide-ranging conversations and meetings I had with Senator Voinovich,” Boxer said, pointedly omitting Inhofe.Inhofe began by expressing surprise that Boxer would even use the term “global warming,” asserting that “people have been running from that term ever since we went out of that natural warming cycle about nine years ago.” And he turned with a fury on Graham, his fellow Republican, for an “apparent compromise will also entail a massive expansion of government bureaucracy.”
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the first witness, turned up the temperature further on Inhofe. He gave a Gore-like tour of climate catastrophe: “the science is screaming at us to take action . . . pine beetles have destroyed 6.5 million acres of forestland . . . 180 Alaskan villages are losing permafrost . . . we have columns of methane rising now in the ocean.”
Kerry went on like this for an extraordinary 26 1/2 minutes…. At various points, Kerry signaled an end with “I’ll just close” or “I’ll just end on this note” but continued on. This infuriated nobody as much as Inhofe, whom Kerry repeatedly singled out for a lecture. “Senator Inhofe, you just talked about the costs of doing some of this,” he said. But “the cost of doing nothing,” Kerry countered, “is far more expensive for your folks in Oklahoma.”
Inhofe, who glared back at Kerry, still seethed a few minutes later when he interrupted the chairman. “You know, I sat here for 25 minutes listening to Senator Kerry talk about me, and I didn’t have a chance to respond,” he complained. “I will, however.”
“I so appreciate it,” Boxer said.
Inhofe molested the majority by having committee staffers put up on the dais a series of 3-by-5-foot posters with messages such as “Congressional Budget Chief Says Climate Bill Would Cost Jobs” and “U.S. Unemployment High/Why Kill More Jobs With Cap & Trade?” But this failed to cool Inhofe’s temper, and by the time his turn came to question the administration witnesses, Inhofe was so steamed that he used his entire five minutes to vent.
He described the Democrats’ proposal as “the largest tax increase in — in history!” Agitated, his utterances disjointed, Inhofe went on: “Now, I also was — was kind of — I don’t want any of the media to think just because I had to sit here and listen to our good friend Senator Kerry for 28 minutes, that I don’t have responses to everything he said.”Nobody doubted that Inhofe had a response. The doubt was whether the response would make any sense.
Double ouch.
Okay. I printed that last bit twice. I just wanted to make it clear that this is settled science: Inhofe is a flat earther whose responses make no sense.
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Joe wrote: “Milbank is being kind not to count his fellow WashPost colleagues George Will and Fred Hiatt in calling Inhofe (R-OIL) the last flat-earther …”
I don’t think Milbank is being “kind”.
I think he is being mindful of his big fat paycheck.
Inhofe is a hopeless case.
It’s nice to see other Republicans are moving to a more moderate stance, although I gather there’s still many steps to go…
Of course, that would be the same Dana Milbank who mocked Al Gore as the “Goracle of Doom” at excruciating and unfunny length on January 30, for Gore’s crime of testifying to essentially the same list of climate risks that Sen. Kerry just described. He may be dead-on right about Inhofe, but the terms “mercenary” and “opportunistic” certainly come to mind – Inhofe’s know-nothing position is declining and there’s not much risk taking a swipe at him.
Different topic, but who saw Jon Stewart get Levitt’s back last night? Stewart showed a very poor understanding of climate science in asserting that carbon isn’t a problem as long as we can geoengineer. Joe, when you going on to provide the opposing view?
Sec. Chu tells us that China is spending $100 Billion / yr on developing clean energy and we are worried about Inhofe, the living example of the Peter Principle?
The committee ought to challenge Inhofe to produce his list of “scientists,” and then bring in some of them to testify in public. His list includes TV weathermen, economists, and scientists whose work has been taken out of context. Have those people point out in Inhofe’s presence once and for all what a fraud his assertion is.
I’m glad to see that at least one person in the media has a shadow on his x-ray where a spine would normally be found, but it’s still not nearly enough.
I want to hear the mainstream media treat the climate changew deniers the same way they treat the AIDs, moon landing, Obama place of birth, et al. deniers: Either ignore them completely or come perilously close to ridiculing them.
A good example of this happened a few weeks (months?) ago on the NBC news, when Brian Williams did a story on the “birthers” (the people who claim President Obama wasn’t born in the US). He presented the evidence, used at least one reporter, and the whole thing fairly dripped of contempt. I was delighted to see it handled so directly and without a hint of faux balance. If only we could get the media to treat the climate change deniers the same way…
6. Dennis - The EPW committee was chaired for years by Inhofe. They’ve all heard from his skeptics, third-rate scientists and first-rate charlatans many times. The panelists live for such exposure, to be cleverly amplified in denialist and conservative echo chambers. No. They won’t be brought back for yet another round.
who is Inhofe ?
Jay Alt,
Yes, but those were the ones Inhofe (and Marano) chose to testify. Inhofe’s “report” of 700 “scientists” is so full of fraudulent information they should goad him enough so that when he waves it around next time they call his bluff and bring in some of the so-called “scientists.” At that point they can bring in the TV weathermen to speak about their research (zilch) and the real scientists whose work has been quoted out of context.
That would make for good theatre, and may even help paint Inhofe in the public eye as the Joe McCarthy of Science.
I see a rather familiar resemblance between Inhofe and Capt. Philip Francis Queeg, the character Humphrey Bogart played in the 1954 movie “The Cain Mutiny”.
Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg: “This is the captain speaking. Some misguided sailors on this ship still think they can pull a fast one on me. Well, they’re very much mistaken. Since you’ve taken this course, the innocent will be punished with the guilty. There will be no liberty for any member of this crew for three months. I will not be made a fool of! Do you hear me?”
“Ahh, but the strawberries that’s… that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with… geometric logic… that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers…”
Captain Queeg finally takes out his metal balls..
Dennis wrote: “The committee ought to challenge [Imhofe] to produce his list of ‘scientists,’ and then bring in some of them to testify in public. His list includes TV weathermen, economists, and scientists whose work has been taken out of context. Have those people point out in Inhofe’s presence once and for all what a fraud his assertion is.”
Please, not again.
Your description is correct as far as it goes. But you can be sure that any list Imhofe produced would name people such as William Happer, who can most charitably be described as having “gone emeritus.”
* * *
Lore wrote (in part): “I see a rather familiar resemblance between Inhofe and Capt. Philip Francis Queeg, the character Humphrey Bogart played in the 1954 movie The Caine Mutiny.”
Funny; I was thinking the same thing as I read Joe’s post. I imagined Imhofe in the hearing room working those ball bearings in his hand while tensely declaiming, “The science is not settled — I proved it by geometric logic!”
You obviously know the script better than I.
OK, I got the Senator’s name wrong: It is indeed India-Nancy-hofe, not India-Mary-hofe.
Maybe Paulm, who is a regular here, will explain what he meant by his question in #9.
“Inhofe began by expressing surprise that Boxer would even use the term “global warming,” asserting that “people have been running from that term ever since we went out of that natural warming cycle about nine years ago.””
Would that be the denier/sceptic meme that it’s now called “climate change”? I see that a lot from people who don’t know:
a) when the IPCC was set up
b) what IPCC stands for.
Inhofe ist kaputt, und peinlich auch, glube ich. Dass ist gut.
Also, in another interesting note relating to terminology, I learned on a recent conference call with a very climate-informed Senator Kerry, that he’s no longer going to describe his bill as a cap and trade bill, but rather, in so many words, as a pollution control bill.
This terminology properly shifts the emphasis from the mechanics of the bill to its real purpose: to control climate-killing carbon dioxide pollution, 80 percent of which is generated by a handful of companies that are now free to put their profits ahead of a planetful of people.
The Washington Post itself is one of the flagship newspapers of the eastern financial establishment.
Are they mad at Inhofe for being wrong on the science, or for being an ineffective spokesman for that same eastern financial establishment? He’s actually been quite effective up until this point, by the way, considering the lies he has to tell to protect his fossil fuel sponsors.
The problem is that ExxonMobil is part of a vast eastern financial establishment, built on oil, which has vast financial resources and a proven ability to use every form of deception known to man to protect their profits.
Inhofe is just an errand boy.
If he’s become ineffective they’ll toss him overboard, and find another errand boy. This latest Washington Post article critical of Inhofe may in fact be a sign that the oil industries are seeking another errand boy.
One of the Senators during the hearings recently talked about the U.S. being the “captive of the oil cartel”.
Now, that’s getting close to the truth, IMO.
Leyland,
I had not thought about it that way, but your analysis rings depressingly true. Still, it would be good to see Inhofe’s masters tip him overboard.
Is that why Morano left?