Warning: Explicit Content
Climate deniers apparently have a simple, albeit crass, message for the world: “We don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about.”
At least, that’s what Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” and soon-to-be host of CBS’s “Late Show,” said during his show Nov. 6, 2014. Colbert was mocking Senator Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who is soon expected to become chairman of the Senate U.S. Environment and Public Works Committee.
Colbert said, “Everyone who denies climate change has the same stirring message: We don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about. I hope that these conservative leaders can inspire all the children out there watching to think to themselves, ‘Hey, maybe someday I could grow up to be not-a-scientist.'”
Colbert went on to tell children that they can “completely lack any understanding of science and then grow up to be the chairman of the Senate Environmental Committee.”
Yet Colbert failed to note that the science on climate change is actually far from settled.
Inhofe’s skeptical views on climate change are actually shared by many legitimate scientists. After ClimateGate in 2009, Inhofe interviewed skeptical scientists and published a book called on the subject of climate change.
“Those who have read my book, ‘The Greatest Hoax,’ know that this goes way back a long period of time, started by the United Nations,” Inhofe told WABC-AM according to Raw Story on Jan. 13, adding that “people realized the United Nations committee, the IPCC, had rigged the science on this thing.”
Although the media recently touted the claim that 97 percent of scientists agree on anthropogenic (man-made) climate change, this statistic is massively doctored and inflated. Marc Morano, the publisher of Climate Depot and former staff for Inhofe and the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has a list of his own, with more than 1,000 scientists who disagree with the “accepted” theory of anthropogenic climate change. Yet, media outlets were quick to promote the 97 percent statistic without question.
Colbert is an outspoken liberal, famously coordinating the “March to Keep Fear Alive” in October, 2010, in mockery of alleged conservative positions.
Colbert also used his program as a platform to praise such liberal Democrats as former president Jimmy Carter for his “left-of-center take on Christianity” and MSNBC’s newest “liberal darling,” Ronan Farrow.
CBS announced in April that it had chosen Colbert to replace David Letterman on the “Late Show” beginning sometime in 2015.
