Inhofe believes that his view of global warming has prevailed
On his radio show this morning, conservative talker Bill Bennett hosted the most prominent global warming denier in Congress, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). Opening up the conversation on the subject, Bennett declared, “I think you’ve prevailed on this.”
“I really believe it,” replied Inhofe, claiming that his opponents “won’t say global warming any more, they’re trying to say climate change.” He added that he thinks former Vice President Al Gore is “getting nervous” because, he claimed, “the science is totally changed.” Inhofe then claimed that more scientists are skeptical of climate change than those who believe in it:
INHOFE: So the science, the science is totally changed. It was the IPCC, those Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the United Nations. But keep in mind, the only report you get from them is their summary for policy docs. And those are not scientists. There’s only 52 scientists that signed on to those, to that, as opposed to what? Some 650 who now have rebuked that.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Inhofe’s comments are loose with the facts. The 52 scientists he refers to prepared the 2007 IPCC report’s “Summary for Policymakers,” but the report itself was “a synthesis of thousands of scientific papers” and was built on the work of “2500 scientists over six years.” As for Inhofe’s discredited 650 skeptical “experts,” some of them actually support the theory of manmade global warming.
Further proving the fallacy of Inhofe’s claims, a survey of 3,146 earth scientists released earlier this week found that 90 percent believe that mean global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels and 82 percent believe that human activity has been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures. Ninety-seven percent of climatologists said humans play a role.
Transcript at the link, where you can also listen to the interview.
