If there was a competition for the worst member of the Senate, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) would have to be near the top of the list. No matter what the new Democratic Senate majority does over the next two years, removing Inhofe as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has just improved the country.
Consider, for example, how Inhofe is spending his remaining days with the chairman’s gavel.
James Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, is spending his last days in power attacking a children’s book on climate change. The book, published by the United Nations in March, is “based on the theme of climate change and on what children can do to mitigate effects of climate change.” Inhofe’s staff breathlessly notes, “The book features colorful drawings and large text to appeal to young children.”
Inhofe claims the book conveys inaccurate information about climate change to children. Actually, it’s Inhofe’s press release that’s inaccurate. Here’s an example:
“The morning after his dream, Tore sets out on a quest for knowledge about the dangers of catastrophic manmade global warming. A “snowy owl” informs Tore that “the planet’s heating up” and that both the Arctic and Antarctica “are warming almost twice as fast as elsewhere.” [EPW Note: The Arctic, according to the International Arctic Research Center was warmer during the 1930’s than today and both the journals Science and Nature have published studies recently finding — on balance — Antarctica is both cooling and gaining ice.] (emphasis added)
Except Inhofe doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The author of the only study of Antarctica’s ice sheet shows that climate change is having an adverse effect. He told ThinkProgress that using his study to claim Antarctica is gaining ice is “completely wrong.”
The irony to me is that Inhofe attacks non-fiction work that’s true, but embraces fictional work that isn’t true.
As some of you may recall, Inhofe held a hearing in September on “the role of science in environmental policy making.”
Michael Crichton appeared as an expert witness. Yes, the novelist.
Of course, the science behind Crichton’s book has been debunked, repeatedly. It’s fiction. And yet, the senator who heads a committee on environmental protections was so impressed with the novel, he invited the writer to offer expert testimony on the subject, in the hopes that Crichton could further influence public policy on a looming environmental catastrophe.
Thank goodness Dems are going yank that gavel out of his hand. Not a moment too soon.