Twenty years ago, on this day, July 28, 2003, in a US Senate speech, James Inhofe stated,
“I have offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation’s top climate scientists.” He cited as support for this the 1992 Heidelberg Appeal and the 1999 Oregon Petition, as well the opinions of individual scientists that he named including John Christy, Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. In his speech, Inhofe also discussed the then current Soon and Baliunas controversy, and said that “satellite data, confirmed by NOAA balloon measurements, confirms that no meaningful warming has occurred over the last century.” However the satellite temperature record corroborates the well-documented warming trend noted in surface temperature measurements.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the US had pulled out of Kyoto, it was prosecuting its illegal attack on Iraq, thinking that it was going to be able to have a nice, stable dependency. The IPCC’s Third Assessment Report had come out. And the Republicans were doing everything they could to confuse matters. And this sort of showmanship from James Inhofe it’s part of the ongoing culture war and belief in American exceptionalism and human exceptionalism, endless ingenuity blah, blah, blah.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are no limits to the stupidity of old white men. Especially the right wing ones, (not that the so-called left wing ones are not all that great either).
What happened next
Inhofe kept going, kept attacking, as was his wont. He kept on being one of Oklahoma’s two senators until this year (2023).
(Someone could do an article comparing Inhofe’s snowball and Morrison’s lump of coal, I guess).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.