Senator Inhofe Gets AGW Wrong, Again
On Thursday March 15, 2012 Senator James Inhofe was interviewed by Rachel Maddow about his new book “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future”
During the interview, Senator Inhofe made a number of claims that Maddow could have targeted as misinformation, but let go unchallenged. Now Rachel isn’t a climate scientist, nor is she heavily involved in the ongoing war between climate science and the organized disinformation campaign so she should be forgiven for those lost opportunities.
On the other hand, since the information is available on the WEB, Inhofe’s comments on Maddow’s show gives us a prime opportunity to inform the disinformed.
The transcript to the show can be found here so the full context is available. Any and all emphasis seen in the quotes is mine.
“INHOFE: First of all, you talked about FOX News and some of the right wing, as you refer to them. Let me talk about the left wing and how they responded to it.
This climategate was a big deal, hold on, just a minute now, you got to listen to this. “The U.K. Telegraph”, one of the biggest ones in London. They said it`s the worst scandal of our generation. “The Financial Times” said the stink of the intellectual corruption is overpowering, the IPCC — this is one that came from the United Nations, was a fraud on a scale I have never seen before.
The U.N. scientists, and this guy, Dr. Phillip Lloyd, called it the fraud result is not scientific. “Newsweek” finally changed their position and came out and was condemning it.”
In Inhofe’s attempt to train the Magic Balance Fairy to dance, he goes to an article by Christopher Booker in the British tabloid “The Telegraph” which he labels ‘left wing’.
Unfortunately for Inhofe, the MBF takes a nose dive. Both Booker, and his colleague James Delingpole, are well known AGW pseudo-skeptics. Booker has even argued that secondhand smoke, asbestos and BSE are not dangerous. Delingpole has argued that consensus is unscientific.
The Financial Times comment was an opinion piece on Clive Crooks blog, so it was hardly an official point. Clive Crooks co-chaired the Copenhagen Consensus, a collection of economists, with the notorious AGW minimizer Bjørn Lomborg
While Clive doesn’t look to be far right, I think the characterization of him as left wing by Inhofe is untrue considering his faith in the discredited Wegman report.
As far as Newsweek is concerned, I’ll let Joe Romm handle that one. From a comment of his from Feb 21,2010:
“In a new black eye for Newsweek, their lengthy attack on climate scientists has been exposed as relying on massaged data and tawdry innuendo. “
In three short paragraphs, Inhofe makes nothing but mistakes.
Note: There was a science organization response to Dr. Lloyd’s letter but I’ve been unable to find it.
This next comment from Inhofe is just irrelevant nonsense as he tries to counter the question of his energy company campaign contributions.
INHOFE: “Because we hear things about big oil, what you named there is not all that big of oil. But it doesn`t really make any difference. There`s an article that you would love, and I dare say you haven`t seen it yet. It was in “Nature” magazine, a very liberal publication, or publication on your side, and they talk about this thing from American University, and they analyze.
They say, why is it we, on the global warming side, are not winning? We are spending more money, we have the media on our side eight to ten, 80 percent of the media is on our side, yet we`re losing. And then they go into the detail as to how much money actually comes out.
Did you know, and I dare say a lot of your guys on your program in your camp don`t realize that the environmentalist groups raised, and this is in the period of 2009-2010, $1.7 billion as opposed to the other side, $900 million. So, you`re talking about spending twice as much money. And that`s …
First he says his direct contributions from big oil don’t make any difference, then goes on to point out the amount of money being funnelled into environmental movement. It doesn’t seem to dawn on him that science is about the work done by scientists, not the PR battle, nor the amount of money given to groups outside of science that never makes it to the scientists.
He also doesn’t recognize, or admit, that most scientists are in it not for the money, but for the challenge and the curiosity. Not to appeal to some unnamed authority, but to most scientists I’ve had conversations with, the money is a means to and end, not the end itself.