He Probably Doesn't Believe in The Holocaust, Either

Sometimes I wonder which of two members of Congress holding powerful positions on committees with oversight on the environment is actually the worst enemy of the environment. Richard Pombo (R-CA) is presently serving as Chairman of the House Resources Committee.The committee has oversight and sets policy on matters involving natural resources, Indian Country and Indian gaming. Then there's James Inhofe, who has been chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since January 2003. Both in fact are mainly devoted to real estate development and the oil industry. Which one is a worse enemy of the planet may be in question, but there are no odds on which one is dumber.

During the last week of triple digit temperatures in which seven Oklahomans died, Inhofe stuck to his guns, and went beyond his infamous 2003 quote: "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He evidently confused a famous Republican propaganda strategy often used by his president and others in the administration, applying it to the environmental movement:

...he heaped criticism on what he saw as the strategy used by those on the other side of the debate and offered a historical comparison.

"It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie," Inhofe said.

"You say something over and over and over and over again, and people will believe it, and that's their strategy."

As for anyone trying to use the current heat wave to bolster the case, he said even those on the other side of the debate concede that no one should link a single weather event to climate change.
"A hot summer has nothing to do with global warming,"

Inhofe, who has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions over the course of his political career from oil and gas interests, electrical utility companies, and the mining industry, over $550,000 of this sum since 2001, hasn't bothered to watch either An Inconvenient Truth or the Tom Brokaw documentary on the Discovery Channel, and he seems proud of this fact:

While declining to watch either the Gore movie or the Brokaw documentary, the senator said he armed himself with the statements used in both.

"I know the text, and I know they are using old stuff that has been totally discredited," Inhofe said. "Everything on which they based their story, in terms of the facts, has been refuted scientifically."

He offered his point-by-point response to both.

They include such claims as that polar bear populations are shrinking along with their food supplies, and the glaciers in Glacier National Park are disappearing.

Inhofe insists that the number of polar bears is not dropping and that some of the glaciers in the national park are actually getting bigger.

As for the Kilimanjaro glacier, which reportedly is disappearing, Inhofe said the loss can be blamed on the cutting of trees, which once held the moisture.

"One by one, you can refute everything they are saying," Inhofe said.

He includes in that claim the warnings by some that the planet is closing in on a tipping point or a point of no return when it comes to climate change.

Inhofe is clearly the kind of American of whom we have far too many, a man who staunchly refuses to be confused by actual facts.

(All quotes from Tulsa World article, Heat Wave Has Senator Sticking to Beliefs)

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