As NewsBusters readers are aware, Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.) has been one of the nation's most outspoken critics of Nobel laureate Al Gore's favorite money making scheme anthropogenic global warming.
On Monday, the Senator debated this issue with Fox News Radio's Alan Colmes (video follows with rough transcript):
ALAN COLMES, FOX NEWS RADIO: I’d like to welcome Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. He has now written "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Our Future." It’s a pretty scary title, Senator.
SENATOR JAMES INHOFE (R-OKLAHOMA): Yeah, it is, isn’t it? I liked the picture, too. Did you like that?
COLMES: Yes, well it’s certainly startling. Tell me what’s behind this and why you’re calling global warming a hoax.
INHOFE: Well, of course, this starting way back in 19 – 2003and that was at the time when, if you remember, they never did submit – the Clinton Administration never submitted Kyoto for ratification. Then right after that, it became very popular. There was a lot of money behind it, the moveon .org people and the rest of them that they started introducing the cap-and-trade bills. The first ones that were actually done were by Republicans. That was John McCain and I guess.. McCain-Lieberman. But when we started looking at them and evaluating them, it appeared that the cost of that, at that time, came out and it was from WEFA,which is the Wharton Econometrics Forecasting Association or something like that. They said the cost of cap-and-trade would be between $3 and 400 billion a year. So I thought let’s be sure there’s something to it. And that’s when I started making my speeches on the Senate floor, questioning the science, and Alan, I know it’s hard for you to believe but my phone was ringing off the hook by scientists from all over who had been rejected by the IPCC because they didn’t buy into this thing. So I knew, at least I think almost everyone agrees that the science on this thing is at least mixed.
COLMES: And you say the thing is mixed, that’s a matter of great dispute because many of these so-called scientists, well, scientists, not so-called scientists but they are so-called climatologists you know, you’ve got the UN reports, you’ve got the organization you just mentioned you got the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which you just talked about --
INHOFE: IPCC.
COLMES: Yeah. They assess information put out by the scientific community that shows graphically the effects of human-induced climate change, and you don’t want to believe it but these are climatologists who they have consulted on this.
COLMES: Discredited by whom? We can go to the Climategate – we’re not going to have enough time to get into all of the things you’re now saying. Climategate has been discredited as some kind of itself being a hoax, phrases like “hide the decline” and “trick” were taken way out of context --
INHOFE: But wait a minute, Alan, what about all of these publications? The Guardian and UK said it’s the worst scientific disgrace in the history of science, and I can go on and--
COLMES: Let’s talk about the actual data. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: their 2010 state of the climate report; three data sets show climate global surfaces continue to rise; air samples collected weekly continued to show a rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide. The ice sheet in Greenland is losing more mass, trans and snow cover duration, permafrost, vegetation… these are all data points that climatologists cite as proof that there is climate change going on.
INHOFE: And I can give the other side of each one of these things. You want to talk about glaciers? Time magazine talking about the Himalayan melting, how the climate panel got it wrong. The hurricanes, everything in here, sea levels for example. The Journal of Geophysical Research--there has been no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise over the past 100+ years. You have the other one, the Rural Netherlands Meteorological Society: no evidence of accelerated sea level rises. In fact, the IPCC themselves said it was something like the width of a thumbnail over a period of a year and that was when – that was following up with Al Gore said it was 18 feet. A little bit of exaggeration.
COLMES: In your own state, Senator, summer of 2011 was the hottest summer on record for the state. According to the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, they experienced the hottest summer of any state since records began in 1895. July was the worst. August also fried Oklahoma, the hottest August on record. In your own state, this is what climatologists are saying.
INHOFE: First of all, what they’re saying is I don’t agree with that. And secondly, even if that were true, which I don’t think that is, all the people say you never want to take one incident and say that this is some evidence of climate. There’s a difference between weather and climate. And as you well know, if you take all Gore’s speeches – I have a long list in here of all of Gore’s speeches that he had to stop in the middle of them because of the cold weather—
COLMES: The extreme weather—
INHOFE: One of the famous one had “Pelosi Snowed Out at Global” -- that was the headline of the newspaper – “at Global Warming Rally.”That was in Washington. The “Gore Decries Global Warming in Bitterly Cold New York City December.”
COLMES: But Senator, you know that climate change and global warming also means extreme temperatures on all ends.
INHOFE: Oh it does? Well, where’d you come up with that?
COLMES: Well, this is what the scientists say.
INHOFE: Oh, the scientists. Well I’ve got some scientists here --
COLMES: That’s what climatologists claim. Also um what would be the goal-- you use the word “hoax.” Why would there be a hoax? What would be the goal, what would be the motivation for there to be a hoax about this?
INHOFE: Well first of all, hoax is something that is accepted or established by fraud or fabrication. And that’s exactly what we’re dealing with here because they put down – let me go back. Remember Richard Linzen? I’m sure you’ll say something bad about him.
COLMES: No, I don’t know who he is.
COLMES: So the Liberals are trying to control life and that’s the goal here, to control our lives through controlling carbon? That’s why there’s this hoax that’s going on?
INHOFE: Oh, you don’t think that the Liberals want government to control our lives?
COLMES: Of course not.
INHOFE: They want the multinational organization--
COLMES: Of course not. Well I know Conservatives want to control women’s birth control and wombs. I know that to be the case. Well what about the fact that you’ve got the big oil companies – they’ve got these huge profits that depend of course on their assets. Their assets are the oil that’s in the ground that they want us to drill. And the oil companies, to have to move toward green technology and give up those assets sitting in the ground, that’s what they’re motivated by along with the big think tanks that get big money from the big oil companies.
INHOFE: You know, I’m really pleased with some of the findings of the Marcellus up in New York and Pennsylvania. There are just huge finds right now. And we right now -- Alan, I’m sure you’d probably agree with this because this came out from the CAS (?) less than a year ago. The United States of America has more recoverable oil resources in oil gas and coal than any country in the world, and all we have to do is develop our own like every other country in the world does and we wouldn’t have to be worried about the Middle East.
COLMES: Well, we don’t want to be worried about the Middle East but the question is what way to go and–
INHOFE: The way to go is to develop our own resources.
COLMES: The whole resources -- develop wind and solar for the long term, that would be the way to go and have renewable energy.
INHOFE:They’re developing those things but until such time as the technology catches up, Alan – and I say this very seriously – you can’t run this nation on wind and sun now. Maybe someday you can, but in the meantime, you’ve got to run this machine called America.
COLMES: That’s right.
INHOFE: And let me tell you, those people who really believe and agree with you instead of me… if we were to have some kind of cap-and-trade in this country and they’re trying to do it through regulation right now, and you know the cost it’s going to be to our taxpayers, and they were successful in doing that, it still wouldn’t make any difference. Lisa Jackson. I like her very much. She’s the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, appointed by Obama. I asked her the question on the record,not long ago, “If we were to pass, either by regulation or by legislation, cap and trade in the United States, would that lower emissions world-wide?” She said no, no it wouldn’t, because this is where the problem is. Now you can carry that to the next step. If we were to do something in this country and chase away our manufacturing base because they would have to find the energy someplace, it would actually end up in places like China and India and Mexico where they don’t have all of these emissions requirements. It would actually have the effect of increasing, not decreasing, CO2.
COLMES: And as long as we’re dependent on the global oil market we’re at the behest of not the President -- he doesn’t set oil prices -- but of the global market and the speculators. And when the Middle East unrest that causes the prices to go up at the gas tank for average Americans who can barely afford to get to work.
INHOFE: And that, Alan, is why we need to develop our own resources so we don’t have to depend on anyone in the Middle East. And we can do that --
COLMES: Let me ask you something --
INHOFE: --in a matter of months if we get out of the way and allow us to go ahead and develop our own resources.
INHOFE: Oh I love liberals. What you need to do as soon as we hang up here, is call Barbara Boxer and ask her who her favorite Conservative Republican is.
COLMES: Is that right?
INHOFE: Uh-huh.
COLMES: Now you were on WABC radio recently. You called President Obama an extreme liberal. You said, “Let’s face it. This is going to sound maybe a little hysterical but someone who really is an extreme liberal doesn’t think we need a military anyway.”
INHOFE: What I’m saying is there are a lot of liberals who really don’t believe that.
COLMES: Who?
INHOFE: And if you look at what’s happening to our military -- here we have a President of the United States who developed his own budgets – four budgets in a row. Now the results are in. The total deficit that he has put together out of his budget – not the Senate or the House or anybody else -- $5.3 trillion. Now, why is it that we are losing all of our systems and the only hits are being taken by the military? Right now, he has included over the next 10 years in his budget a cut of a half trillion dollars and if we go into sequestration, which he supports, that would be another half trillion dollars.
COLMES: We can debate cuts but you don’t think he doesn’t think we should have a military.
INHOFE:No, we can debate cuts and that shows you where his priorities are.
COLMES: But you said a liberal, someone who is an extreme liberal, doesn’t think we need a military. You don’t think the President doesn’t believe we need a military.
INHOFE: Again, let’s talk about the cuts. In his first budget he came along with, he did away with our only fifth generation fighter. That was the F22. He did away with our lift capacity, the C17. He did away with our future combat system, our only ground capability. He did away with the ground base based in Poland. And that was just the first budget. In fact, I went to Afghanistan so I could respond to his military budget, thinking I’d be able to get some attention and it did work.But the pay cuts are in military.
COLMES: But he was listening to the Defense Department that basically said, “Here’s what we need. Here’s what we don’t need.” He didn’t make the decision himself. The Department of Defense said, “Here’s where we can cut.” He was taking the advice of the Pentagon.
INHOFE: Alan, Alan, Alan. Do you know what the title is of the President? He’s Commander in Chief. The Pentagon salutes and says, “Yes, Sir.”
COLMES: But wait a minute. The Pentagon just told him what he wanted to hear.
INHOFE:No, they didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. They were repeating what he wants to hear.
COLMES: Now, Senator, let’s end on something we can agree on.
INHOFE: Oh, good.
COLMES: The president was born in Hawaii, correct?
INHOFE: (Laughter) I guess so. Yeah, I don’t know where he’s born.
COLMES: But you know he was born in the United States.
INHOFE: Alan, I don’t care where he was born because if something happened that he were not qualified to be President, by the time the courts got through with it, he would be gone anyway.
COLMES: But you would concur that he was born in the United States?
INHOFE: I don’t know.
COLMES: You’re not sure?
INHOFE: I have no idea. I’ve never alleged that he was not.
COLMES: Well, why don’t you just say that you agree that he was?
INHOFE: Well, because I’ve never looked into it. Because I haven’t really cared.
COLMES: But he presented his long-form birth certificate.
INHOFE: What?
COLMES: He presented his long-form –
INHOFE: Well that’s fine. If he did, there seems to be some question in someone’s mind. I don’t care. And the reason I don’t care -- I’m going to repeat it again. If we found he was not, it wouldn’t make any difference. He’d still be there until the courts got rid of him anyway.
COLMES: Well we might as well concur that was born here.
INHOFE: You can if you want to. I don’t care.
COLMES: Okay, Senator. The book is called "The Greatest Hoax." Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Sir, I appreciate your coming on the program very much.
INHOFE: Thanks, Alan. Nice to be with you.
COLMES: Thank you, Sir.
