Climate dolt to head Senate environment committee

Eco Watch - Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the author of the 2010 tome The Greatest Hoax: How The Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, is in line to become the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and climate denier-in-chief.

“With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?” said Inhofe. “It sure sounds like it.”

He has compared the EPA to “Gestapo” and said the movement to address climate change reminds him of the “Third Reich.”

Inhofe’s record of trying to block, hamstring or delay messages to address climate change isn’t pretty. In 2012, he sponsored a bill to overturn an EPA-issued regulation to cut certain toxic emissions such as mercury from coal-fired plants. It garnered a majority of votes, including several from Democrats, but not the 60 required to pass legislation in the Senate. In September he demanded a delay in action on curbing methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industries, claiming the EPA was using outdated information to implement them and that there needed to be more discussion i.e. more time of doing nothing. In October, he demanded that the EPA refrain from looking into the risks fracking posed to water supplies and what states were doing to handle those risks.

Inhofe claimed in The Greatest Hoax that God controls the world not humans, therefore global warming cannot exist.

“Genesis 8:22 said that as long as the Earth remains there will be springtime, harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,” he said. “My point is, God’s still up there, and the arrogance of people who think that we, human beings, would be able to change what he is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

Probably not coincidentally, his biggest campaign donors are the oil and gas industries, which have donated millions of dollar to his campaigns since he entered the U.S. Senate in 1987. Koch Industries, Oklahoma-based oil and natural gas producers Devon Energy, ExxonMobil and Ohio coal company Murray Energy were among his most generous benefactors.