James Inhofe

The United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is responsible for dealing with matters related to the environment and infrastructure. And the chairman of this committee is none other than James Inhofe of Oklahoma. A statement from these paragraphs caught my eye as disappointing, "Global warming is still considered to be a theory and has not come close to being sufficiently proven." Science cannot prove, it can only disprove and consist of highly corroborated evidence. I wish the chairman of a science committee for the most powerful nation in the world was less ignorant of this fact. Here is the section discussing his work and perspectives of the environment:

Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is a strong critic of the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring as a result of human activities. In a July 28, 2003 Senate speech, he said that he had "offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists." He cited as support for this the 1992 Heidelberg Appeal and the Oregon Petition (1999), as well the opinions of numerous individual scientists that he named (although most climate scientists, as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now believe that climate change is an existing phenomenon). In his speech, Inhofe also claimed that, "satellite data, confirmed by NOAA balloon measurements, confirms that no meaningful warming has occurred over the last century." However the satellite temperature record corroborates the well-documented warming trend noted in surface temperature measurements. Also, the satellite record begins in 1979 and the balloon record effectively in 1958, so it is unclear what Inhofe means by "last century".

In a 2006 interview with the Tulsa World newspaper, Inhofe compared environmentalist to Nazis. He said, "It kind of reminds... I could use the Third Reich, the Big Lie... You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their [the environmentalists'] strategy... A hot summer has nothing to do with global warming. Let's keep in mind it was just three weeks ago that people were saying, 'Wait a minute; it is unusually cool...." He then said, "Everything on which they [the environmentalists] based their story, in terms of the facts, has been refuted scientifically." Inhofe had previously compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo.

Inhofe, claiming uncertainties related to climate science and the adverse impact that mandatory emissions reductions would have on the U.S. economy, voted on June 22, 2005 to reject an amendment to an energy bill that would have forced reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and created a mandatory emissions trading scheme. "Global warming is still considered to be a theory and has not come close to being sufficiently proven," he said.

Inhofe has similarly criticized predictions of ozone depletion, particularly in relation to the Arctic.

On September 25, 2006, Inhofe gave a speech on the Senate floor in which he argued that the threat of global warming was exaggerated by "the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture." Inhofe claimed that "From the late 1920s until the 1960s they [the media] warned of global warming. From the 1950s until the 1970s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years." He also accused the media of ignoring scientists, such as Roger Pielke and William Gray, who disagree with global warming.

Inhofe was briefly shown in the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Only Texas senator John Cornyn received more campaign donations from the oil and gas industry in the 2004 election cycle. The contributions Inhofe has received from the energy and natural resource sector since taking office have exceeded one million dollars.