by Chris Mooney, reposted from DeSmogBlog
James Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has a new book out. It is entitled The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.
I have not read it yet. So I cannot say much about its contents, but I can say this: The title suggests that Inhofe, like Rick Santorum, is endorsing the global warming conspiracy theory. Indeed, where Santorum only muttered the word “hoax” without a great deal of elaboration, it looks like Inhofe is going to put some real meat onto those paranoid bones.
Let me once again reiterate why the global warming conspiracy theory is, well, just plain ridiculous.
To believe that global warming is a “hoax,” or that there is a “conspiracy,” you must believe in coordinated action on the part of scientists, environmental ministers, politicians, and NGOs around the world. It won’t do just to situate the hoax in the United States and its own scientific and NGO community, because the idea of human-caused global warming is endorsed by scientists, and scientific academies, around the globe.
Any one of these could blow the whistle on the so-called “hoax.” That this has not happened either means there is no hoax, or that the degree of conspiracy and collusion—among people who are notoriously individualistic and non-conformist, by the way—is mindboggling. We’re talking about some serious cat-herding going on.
Oh, and by the way: You also have to believe that the colluding hoaxers have nefarious objectives—basically, they want to kill capitalism and strangle economies. This is even less plausible.
In other words, there is no hoax, and to believe in one is to be a conspiracy theorist. Inhofe himself uses the word “conspiracy” in his subtitle, so I do not think it at all unfair to describe him in this way. Either he is actually right in his claims—not likely—or else he’s conjuring a conspiracy where none exists. It’s that simple.
I point this out, incidentally, because I am continually amazed that our national discourse basically shrugs at conspiracy theories. That’s saddening evidence that we live in an “anything goes” political culture that has become unmoored from reality.
And how did this happen? Here’s a hint: Inhofe will debut his book on Fox’s Sean Hannity program tonight.
Let me end this post with a dose of reality. Inhofe, the climate conspiracy theorist, not only hails from but represents the state of Oklahoma. Here is what has been happening, climatologically, to Oklahoma lately, according to NOAA and other sources:
* The summer of 2011 was the hottest summer on record for the state. According to the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, “Oklahoma experienced the hottest summer of any state since records began in 1895 with a statewide average of 86.9 degrees.”
* July 2011 was the worst. Says the Oklahoma Climatological Survey: “July’s average temperature was 89.3 degrees, becoming the hottest month for any state on record, besting over 67,000 other months.”
* August also fried Oklahoma, and was the hottest August on record.
* This, of course, caused serious damage and monetary losses: “Agricultural damage alone from the drought and related heat has been estimated as high as $2 billion.”
From the perspective of Inhofe’s constituents—say, an Oklahoma farmer—the global warming conspiracy sounds like an intellectual dalliance that the state simply cannot afford.
– Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine, senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and author of the bestselling book The Republican War on Science. This piece was originally published at DeSmogBlog. The top graphic is from Grist.
Related Posts:
- After Getting Sick From Algae Bloom Exacerbated by Heat Wave and Drought, Inhofe Jokes the “Environment Strikes Back”
- U.S. Sees Most Extreme July Climate, Oklahoma Sees Hottest Average Temperature of Any State on Record
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Training points,
It might hurt him to show concern as a person for those impacted with high food prices etc.
The “climate change hoax” nonsense is several notches less credible than “we have alien technology — and the actual aliens — stashed at Area 51″ idiocy.
But of course nothing Chris or I say will derail Santorum or Inhofe or any of the other people who have a perceived incentive to see evil in every shadow even when there are no shadows. They will spout their nonsense and the deniers will line up to buy their books (and swarm Amazon with gushing reviews) or, even worse, vote for them.
And so it goes.
Don’t let’s look a gift horse in the mouth. Senator Inhofe is a self-admitted conspiracy theorist, in his own words, in black and white. He’s eagerly promoting that fact.
So, henceforth, it’s “conspiracy theorist James Inhofe,” not “Senator Inhofe.”
In fact it seems high time the terms “denialist,” “contrarian” and other synonyms were retired and replaced with “science conspiracy theorists.”
I find ‘madman’ more succinct.
Climate change threatens everything these people believe in.
It threatens the global economic system, global monitary systems, our ‘let them eat cake’ sensitivities.
They’re like smokers, hooked on the way things are to such a degree they’ll die before ‘breaking the habit’.
Yes, which points up the fact that the future progress of humanity is NOT among the things they believe in.
And it’s irony-meter-pegging ironic that the status quo they aim to preserve by these nonsensical positions is the one most likely to bring about what they claim to oppose — namely a global collapse of civilization, or at best massive last-minute expenditures to stave off that collapse.
I think it would be better to see them as morally insane. And stupid. And ignorant. And paranoid. In other words, quite typical Rightwing Authoritarians.
Confronting the ridiculousness of this conspiracy theory is important, because doing so presents an alternative (and more plausible) story to displace the “scientists are conspiring to get grant money” story that sounds superficially plausible to many folks. See my blog post on Skeptical Science called “Climate Scientists and Money”, which presents data on the total revenues for the fossil fuel industry in 2010 (about 10 times greater than those for the tobacco industry in that year, and probably 500 to 1000 times bigger than climate science funding): http://www.skepticalscience.com/Koomeyonscientistsandmoney.html
The blog post is an excerpt from my book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs, which came out on Feb 15, 2012: http://goo.gl/ekApS
The sheer ridiculousness and stupidity of this story is actually its selling-point with the Dunning-Krugerites.
C02 at Mauna Loa reached 394.73 last week.
Should line up the twits that believe this goofy stuff and throw pies at them.
There is exactly one political party in the entire world that denies climate change science: The Republican Party in the United States.
I recall when Jimmy Boy showed up in Copenhagen a couple of years ago to denounce climate change, and a reporter from Der Spiegel — one of the two or three people who happened to be standing there when Inhofe gave his “speech” — asked if he knew how ridiculous he was. Crickets….
Don’t be so sure. The Right in Canada, the UK and Australia contain a lot of similarly challenged specimens. It is, however, unquestionably a Rightwing mental disorder.
On Amazon, the book has a single review — five stars, from one Mel Gerst. In one of the most unintentionally humorous sentences I’ve seen, he writes: “I’m well read on earths climate, so I haven’t picked up much new scientific info . . . but, the inside info on what has been going on in congress regarding CO2 is priceless.”
Since the book officially hits the stands tomorrow, the lack of reviews shouldn’t be puzzling. Oh, the publisher is WND Books (as in “World’s Nuttiest Daily”).
Gosh, even the grapes are in on the climate hoax James Inhofe. Who would of thought.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/02/27/3439016.htm
Yes, Leif, and I’ve seen reports of Communist subversive daffodils popping up and blooming weeks early, just to fool God-fearin’ folk like Brother Inhofe.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has been moving on. The only ones who seem to be stuck in stupidity seem to be US policy makers, the UN negotiators (for their apparent inability to grasp the importance of immediate action), and a reasonably small fraction of the US public. Calling the science a hoax is simply ludicrous! Most universities offer a class, usually by the science department, which covers the issue. One text that I am aware of is titled Earth Systems, currently in its 3rd edition, by Lee R Kump, James Kasting, and Dr Robert Crane; all well respected and distinguished professors at Pennsylvania State University in the fields of geosciences (Kump and Kasting) and climatology (Crane). The text is a scientific investigation of the subject for both science and non-science majors and we all know Dr Kump as the co-author with Michael Mann of Dire Predictions. He recently (June 2011) wrote a paper for Scientific American, “The Last Great Global Warming”, that is a fascinating examination of the PETM warming as compared with the current manmade event we are doomed to experience because of immoral buffoons like Inhofe. If Inhofe has not bothered to investigate the subject I would suggest that his book is nothing more than toilet paper in a fancy binding or kindling!
Nero Inhofe fiddles with conspiracy theories while Oklahoma bakes. The Romans were stuck with Inhofe, but Okalahomans don’t have to be stuck with Inhofe. He has to stand for re-election and there’s always the recall mechanism.
Who did you mean, Jay? Nero, Caligula, Commodus, Elagabalus-Incitatus? Or is Inhofe really that old?
We like to think that the truth wins out…that logical evidence-based arguments trump garbage rhetoric like what comes from Inhofe, Heartland, and other denialists. But who has won the debate? Not in terms of science, but won in terms of actionable results? Looks like the deniers, to me. Would Gleick have done what he did, if he felt like truth was winning? By the time science wins, it will be far too late, if it isn’t already.
Reading the one review of the book on Amazon, I was reminded of something I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. Those who do not “believe” in AGW are now referring to the rest of us as “alarmists” and to themselves as “realists”. I think this has the fingerprints of Frank Luntz all over it.
Inhofe can write? When did he learn to read?
I think an alien virus has infected the brains of some humans.
It is the only explanation.
Hard to believe I share a planet with people who are so willfully ignorant, so utterly resistant to scientific facts, and so willing to take such a massive gamble with their childrens’ and grandchildrens’ future. How anyone can deny global warming is beyond me.
I’m pretty convinced that there is more than one ‘human’ species. The DNA might be almost identical, but the internal wiring, of intelligence, curiosity, human sympathy and the relation to nature and our insignificant but potentially noble spot in space and time all vary wildly.
I always point out to my conservative friends that if we scientists were smart enough to start this conspiracy over 100 years ago in order to score some extra grant money today, this obviously proves that we are so superior in intelligence that we DESERVE to be your overlords. Grovel before us, grunts! Muahahahahahaha!
Meanhile…
James Delingpole of The Telegraph joins Rick Santorum in longing for the 11th Century:
“Why I am so rude to Warmists”
Feb 28, 2012
“Does anyone imagine that back in 1012 they were all agonising about how the children of the future might cope in 2012, what with all the scarce resources being used up at an alarming rate to make ships and spears and light warning beacons for the next Viking raid? Somehow I don’t think so. Yet this is precisely the kind of unutterable boll***s you hear being advanced almost every day by people like this liberal-leftie media type with whom I had my big row.”
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100139690/why-i-am-so-rude-to-warmists/
Very, very, near the bottom of the feeding-chain. That he has a cosy sinecure producing donkey-headed bile at a major newspaper and not a nice, comfortable, padded cell (with long-sleeved jacket thrown in, compliments of the house)says it all about just what the Masters desire to occur.
Have him link names with specific acts. Then sue him blind for libel. Congress critters are immune from such suits for speeches made on the floor. But not for speech off of it.
Senator Inhofe himself is still attached to one of the most enduring conspiracy theories of the latter 20th Century, which names him as an “Accessory After the Fact” in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. The case still being made by some veteran theorists against Inhofe is actually far less of a theory than any accusation he’s ever made about Global Warming.
From Suzanne Goldenberg – Guardian Environment correspondent http://twitter.com/#!/suzyji
Sigh. Sen Inhofe’s new climate change book, Greatest Hoax, ranked #2 on Amazon for enviro science http://amzn.to/yES3ab #eg
One despairs of the human species!
In other news (same twitter a/c):
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73445.html#.T06Brzv3YTk.twitter
Bill and Hillary Clinton coming out in favour of Keystone XL
Please somebody tell me this is a mistake!
Hello. It’s me “Joshua” here.
Sorry if I have done our cause a dis-service by trying to take down Lindzen for hypocrisy/obfuscation/misdirection/other (please circle all those that apply). In an attempt to prevent Lindzen from ignoring me, I posted a summary of my position on Judith Curry’s blog recently and invited Lindzen to sue me. Unfortunatley all I got was a lot of very pedantic abuse; and a new nickname.
However, this is an excellent summary of a central issue. I also like the suggestion that we dump all the tired old labels and just start calling people “scientific conspiracy theorists” because, as much as many protest they are not, how else can you justify ignoring or rejecting or denying the legitimacy of the conclusions of the vast majority of relevant, active and respected researchers…?