GOP Senator Inhofe's Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) surrounded by reported at the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark Virginia Mayo/AP

Outright insanity and a refusal to accept modern knowledge has become de rigueur in today's GOP.  And not just among the party's increasingly ignorant, bigoted, religious extremist base.  It infects even high elected officials such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)  who will be taking the helm of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee next month.  Like much of his party's base, Inhofe wears ignorance as a badge of honor and is only too ready to see a conspiracy under every bush, especially when it comes to climate change.  Mother Jones looks at Inhofe's lunacy and the danger he poses.  Here are excerpts:

The recent news on the front page of the New York Times was stark. As thousands of diplomats were gathering in Lima, Peru, to work on an agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, scientists and climate policy experts were warning

that it now may be impossible to prevent the temperature of the planet's atmosphere from rising by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a large body of scientific research, that is the tipping point at which the world will be locked into a near-term future of drought, food and water shortages, melting ice sheets, shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels and widespread flooding—events that could harm the world's population and economy.

But with an effort under way in Lima to protect the difference, as the newspaper put it, "between a newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one," one fellow in Washington is readying himself to prevent any progress toward a climate accord: Sen. James Inhofe. The 80-year-old Republican from Oklahoma is one of the most notorious deniers of human-induced climate change. He has contended that God controls the Earth's climate, not Homo sapiens, and he has quoted the Bible to make this point: "As long as the Earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night." And Inhofe, thanks to the recent elections, is in line to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans assume control of the Senate next month.  He has vowed to do all he can to block regulations aimed at cutting emissions.

In December 2009, the United Nations hosted a global gathering in Copenhagen to hammer out what some participants hoped would be a binding accord that would compel a reduction in emissions around the world.  . . . [Inhofe] slithered in and out of the cavernous media filing center, ever at the ready to speak to reporters looking for the other side quotes denigrating the proceedings, claiming that climate change was no more than a hoax, and celebrating the summit's failure to produce a binding and comprehensive treaty.

I said [to Inhofe], spreading my arms wide. There are thousands of intelligent and well-meaning people in this gigantic conference center: scientists, heads of state, government officials, policy experts. They believe that climate change is a serious and pressing threat and that something must be done soon. Do you believe that they have all been fooled?  Yes, he said, grinning.

That's some hoax, I countered. But who has engineered such a scam?  Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists, Inhofe replied.  Really? I asked. Why would they conspire to scare all these smart people into believing a catastrophe was under way, when all was well? Inhofe didn't skip a beat: To advance their radical environmental agenda. I pressed on: Who in Hollywood is doing this?
The whole liberal crowd, Inhofe said. But who?  Barbra Streisand, he responded.

Did this senator truly believe Barbra Streisand was the devious force behind a completely phony global campaign to address climate change? He seemed to.

In his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Inhofe does mention Streisand—but only once, lumping her together with Leonardo DiCaprio and John Travolta as celebs whose environmental "alarmism" had to be debunked. But his book did not shy away from clearly identifying the charlatans and hoaxers who have hornswoggled the planet: "environmental activist extremists," Al Gore, MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, and, yes, "the Hollywood elites."

The man belongs in a mental institution, not the U.S. Senate.   This man is down right scary.  And he's the face of today's Republican Party.