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More Inhofe on Global Warming

January 30th, 2007

We discussed Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-OK) September 26 address on the Senate floor in a previous post (see here). Now we have more perceptive words from the good senator to share.

The following quotes are lifted from an essay written by Sen. Inhofe for Environment and Climate News, a publication of the Heartland Institute (see here).

CNN’s [Miles] O’Brien also criticized me for saying polar bears are thriving in the Arctic. But he ignored that the person I was quoting is intimately familiar with the health of polar bear populations. Let me repeat what biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, said recently:

“Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”

CNN’s O’Brien also ignores the fact that in the Arctic, temperatures were warmer in the 1930s than today.

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 1990s was the hottest decade of the last 1,000 years was unsupportable.

The oft repeated claim that the 1990’s were the hottest decade on record is patently false. This canard pops up all the time, presented as fact, when in fact it is fallacious. More Inhofe:

Despite the traditional media’s failed attempt to dismiss the science I presented to counter global warming alarmism, the American people bypassed the tired old traditional media by watching CSPAN or clicking on the Drudge Report and reading the speech online.

From the flood of overwhelming positive feedback I received, I can tell you the American people responded enthusiastically to my message.

The central theme was not only one of thanks, but expressing frustration with the major media outlets because they knew in their guts that what they have been hearing in the news was false and misleading.

We confess to being part of the flood. And Inhofe hit the nail on the head; we were grateful for his words, but are still frustrated by the traditional media.

Yesterday the Portland dead tree press issued a nasty hit piece smearing Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor for his alleged recalcitrance and refusal to knuckle under to global warming alarmism.

Kudos to George Taylor. GT is a hero, a courageous scientist who remains true to real science and logical inference. The slanders against him by officious officials were despicable. Among the foul-mouthed cabal were Gov. Teddy “The Torch” Kulongoski, College of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Dean Mark “Bud” Abbott, and dipwad hysteric Jane “Media Ho” Lubchenco. What a bunch of jerks.

The jerk cabal declared that the global warming “debate” is over. Any further discussion just “muddies the water” according to Jane. Their comments amplify that their crumbling and increasingly indefensible position cannot withstand scrutiny, so they seek to censure any and all criticism. Censorship is the last refuge of scoundrels.

More from Inhofe:

I have been engaged in this debate for several years and believe there is a growing backlash of Americans rejecting what they see as climate scare tactics. And as a result, global warming alarmists are becoming increasingly desperate.

Perhaps that explains why the very next day after I spoke on the floor, ABC News’s Bill Blakemore on Good Morning America prominently featured James Hansen touting future scary climate scenarios that could/might/possibly happen. ABC’s “modest” title for the segment was “Will the Earth Become Too Hot? Are Our Children in Danger?”

The segment used all the well-worn tactics from the alarmist guidebook–warning of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, melting glaciers, mass extinctions … unless mankind put itself on a starvation energy diet and taxed emissions.

But that’s no surprise. Blakemore was already on the record declaring, “After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate” about manmade catastrophic global warming.

You have to be a pretty poor investigator to believe that. Why would 60 prominent scientists this last spring have written Canadian Prime Minister Harper that, “If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

On Tuesday’s program, the ABC News anchor referred to Blakemore as “passionate” about global warming. “Passionate” is one word to describe that kind of reporting, but words like objectivity or balance are not. …

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50 percent in the last five years.

Given the diminishing importance of the mainstream media, I expect that trend to continue.

I hope my other colleagues will join me on the floor and start speaking out to debunk hysteria surrounding global warming. This issue is too important to our generation and future generations to allow distortions and media propaganda to derail the economic health of our nation.

More kudos to James Inhofe for daring to speak the truth. And official (but not officious) SOS Forest kudos to the Heartland Institute (see here), a nonprofit organization devoted to discovering and promoting free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Kudos to James M. Taylor, managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a senior fellow for the Heartland Institute, and to Joseph Bast, president and CEO. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 10:50 am and is filed under The Dying Paradigm, Enemies of Forests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “More Inhofe on Global Warming”

  1. snot boy Says:
    January 31st, 2007 at 10:27 am

    Mike —

    You’ve certainly got a right to your express your opinions, no matter how fantasy-based. But you tread on thin ice when you call Jane Lubchenco a “dipwad hysteric.”

    Those are fighting words, and worse yet a gender-based slur on a highly accomplished researcher. You should retract them.

    Your quick resort to such appallingly ad hominem attacks undermines your arguments. That’s unfortunate, because there are some grains of wisdom lost in the chaff here.

  2. Mike Says:
    January 31st, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Dear Snot,

    So sorry. Did I mock a “respected researcher”?

    And what did Milstein and the Oregonian do? They extracted ad hominen attacks from Jane, Bud, and the Guv, and then printed them in the biggest newspaper in the state. And those attacks were meant to discredit George Taylor and raise public ire to get him fired.

    George Taylor has over 200 publications to his credit. He is a world class expert on global warming. None of the others are. They are purely political animals.

    The Guv recently sent the Sec. of State around Oregon showing Al Gore’s movie, at taxpayers’ expense, to Democrat Party gatherings. Does that tell you anything?

    The Left is using global warming as an excuse to incinerate America’s forests, among other destructive actions. Their notion is that we should burn them down now, rather than later, when it might be warmer. And if it doesn’t get warmer, their stated attitude is “No Regrets.”

    Fighting words? There is a war going on. A war. I don’t pull punches anymore. I don’t play nice. I intend to save our forests. You may not like my style, but you know what? I don’t really care.

    Mike

  3. Mike Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

    The latest press release from Sen. Inhofe is here. Some quotes:

    Momentum Shifting

    *Claude Allegre: The recent conversion in 2006 of Allegre, a geophysicist and French Socialist, from alarmist to skeptic, is just one example of a growing list of scientists leaving the alarmist climate camp. Allegre now says the cause of climate change is “unknown” and he also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”

    *Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young scientists recanted his belief in manmade emissions driving climate change. “Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming,” Shaviv said in January 2007. But Shaviv now points to growing peer reviewed evidence that the sun has been driving the temperature changes. “Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming,” Shaviv said. “I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go,” Shaviv added.

    *Climate scientist Henrik Svensmark, released a report last week from his team of researchers at the Danish National Space Centre which shows that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere. “We have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years,”

    *Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, also expressed his view last week that the UN rejects science it sees as “politically incorrect” and the UN denies that “climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis.”

    *Canadian climatologist Timothy Ball recently called fears of man-made global warming “the greatest deception in the history of science.” recently called fears of man-made global warming “the greatest deception in the history of science.”

    *Meteorologist James Spann said in January that he does “not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype” and he noted that “Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon.”

    Meteorologist Reid Bryson, who was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age”) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. Bryson now dismisses what he terms “sky is falling” man-made global warming fears in an article last week.

    *MIT Scientist Richard Lindzen and former UN IPCC reviewer, called fears of man-made global warming ‘silly’ in January 2007 and equated concerns to ‘little kids’ attempting to “scare each other”

    *Climate Scientist Fred Singer & Environmental Economist Dennis Avery’s 2006 book: “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years” details the solar-climate link using studies from peer reviewed literature.

    *David Bellamy: In addition famed UK environmental campaigner David Bellamy recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the new science and now calls global warming fears “poppycock.”

    *60 prominent scientists wrote the Canadian Prime Minister in 2006 saying that “If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.” 2006 was seen by many as year of vindication for climate skeptics.

    *Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has referred to the Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme” designed to suck money out of rich countries.

    *Canadian Environmental Minister John Baird said meeting Kyoto’s emissions reduction targets in Canada would require an economic collapse similar to Russia’s post-Communist fall. Baird said for Canada “to achieve that kind of [Kyoto emission reduction] target through domestic reductions would require a rate of emissions decline unmatched by any modern nation in the history of the world except those who have suffered economic collapse, such as Russia. Canadians do not want empty promises on a plan that we cannot achieve and they do not want our country to face economic collapse.”

    This recent scientific and political momentum shift to climate realism can only explain why the proponents of manmade climate change are growing increasingly desperate to silence scientific debate. A few examples of desperation include:

    *Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel recently called for decertifying broadcast meteorologists who do not tow the line on global warming alarmism. Cullen is also the star of a new politically charged global warming documentary that, according to the film’s website, accuses the U.S. government of “criminal neglect” and blames “right-wing think tanks” for helping to “defeat climate-friendly legislation.”

    *Calls by some climate alarmists in 2006 for ‘Nuremberg-Style’ trials for skeptics

    *Demonizing climate skeptics as “Holocaust deniers”

    *Alarmists threatening the job titles of State Climatologists in Oregon and Delaware who hold skeptical views on climate change