Inhofe, Submerged

I caught a portion of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing regarding the California CO2 Waiver on CSPAN last night. You can read Senator Boxer's (majority) opening comments here and Senator Inhofe's (minority) opening comments here.

It's bad enough when Inhofe says things like this:

"When it comes to the issue of whether climate fluctuations are natural or caused by man, you all know my view that the cycles we are now experiencing - and have experienced for thousands and even millions of years - are natural."

but then he compounds it with this:

"...over the last two decades, California's temperature has cooled by .06 C - or about a third of a degree per century. Yes, I said cooled."

As if localized cooling would be impossible under any reasonable global warming scenario.

After Senator Lautenberg's (NJ) initial remarks, Boxer (CA) allowed Inhofe (OK-ey dokey) a few more words. Inhofe then proceeded to claim that the opinions of climate change researchers across the global were shifting to his position.

It's not so much that Inhofe drank the Kool-Aid, it's more that he's swimming in it.

More like this

Judd Legum at Think Progress reports some outrageous claims by Inhofe: Yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attacked Al Gore and global warming science, claiming that Gore was "full of crap" on global warming.
As of when I'm writing this post, a Google News search for the words "Inhofe" and "treason" returns no hits. When I search on "Inhofe" and "sedition", I get the same results. That's also true for a search on the milder combination of "Inhofe" and "inappropriate". What the hell is going on here?
Now you may well say, Inhofe talking nonsense is nothing particularly notable. But in this case he is talking about my particular hobbyhorse, the global cooling stuff.

oy, what a doofus. I did 6 years in Oklahoma and having this jerk (and his co-jerk at the time, Dandy Don Nickles) as my representation was unbearably embarrassing.

I wish I had a url for it, but Calif recently put out a map of recent
changes in temps for the last few decades. Only a small portion of the state saw cooling, with substantial warming being observed over the most populated regions. So he can't even get facts (to distort) right.