Despite environmentalists’ best efforts, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe believes his colleagues are becoming less alarmed about global warming.
“I find fewer and fewer members of the United States Senate that are sympathetic to this whole cause,” Inhofe told WABC-AM’s Aaron Klein.
Global warming became a hot button issue in the Senate this year as President Obama urged Congress to pass legislation to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. His calls for action were met by Senate Democrats who have tried to push a carbon tax, a national renewable electricity standard and have even set up a climate task force.
“Those who have read my book, ‘The Greatest Hoax,’ know that this goes way back a long period of time, started by the United Nations,” Inhofe said. “When they first started talking about the Kyoto Treaty [President Bill] Clinton and Gore, they were all excited about it, and they never submitted it for ratification because they didn’t have the votes.”
Republicans have opposed these efforts, arguing that such solutions would harm the already fragile economy based on the unproven assertion that human activity is warming the planet. Inhofe admitted that he was originally intrigued by the idea of man-made global warming. But he quickly became skeptical when he saw the price tag.
“I thought there might be something to it — until we found out the cost it would be to the United States of America of $300 billion to $400 billion a year,” Inhofe said.
“Then we pursued some of these fine scientists who said that the U.N. had rigged the science; then of course in ’09 when ClimateGate came, people realized the United Nations committee, the IPCC, had rigged the science on this thing,” Inhofe said. “Now they’re trying to say this cold thing we’re going through now is just a bump in the climate. That isn’t true at all. It is a hoax.”
Last year seemed to vindicate the skepticism of Inhofe and others. Climate scientists scrambled to explain why there had been no warming trend in the last 17 years. Some have argued that the oceans have absorbed the excess heat that would have otherwise gone into the atmosphere, while others say it’s due to natural climate cycles.
Global warming believers have hit back by saying this relatively brief timeline ignores long-term warming trends. However, a recent study suggests that global warming was even more pronounced more than 1,000 years ago, long before the invention of internal combustion. (RELATED: Study: Earth was warmer in Roman, Medieval times)
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