Inhofe’s Hoax: Senator Distorts Meteorological Study To Show Support For His Global Warming Denial

THINK PROGRESS

Appearing on CNN’s American Morning today to discuss the Copenhagen climate change conference, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attempted to defend his theory that the illegally-hacked emails of climate researchers prove that global warming is a “hoax.” Inhofe, who will lead a “truth squad” of global warming deniers to the conference, told host Kiran Chetry that people “all over the world” agree with him about the “climategate” emails.

Inhofe cited two newspapers and a group of meteorologists who are “changing their position” on the science of global warming:

INHOFE: Hey, Kiran, if it was just me saying it’d be one thing, but all over the world they’re talking about this. And just this morning the meteorologists — one of the groups — has said that they’re changing their position. Listen, the UK Telegraph — this is worst scientific scandal of our generation. The Guardian, this is an activist paper, saying pretending this isn’t a real scandal isn’t going to make it go away.

Watch it:

The group to which Inhofe is referring — the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) — did indeed come out with a position this morning. It just happens to be a position which does nothing to validate Inhofe’s skepticism:

The year 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for 2009 (January–October) is currently estimated at 0.44°C ± 0.11°C (0.79°F ± 0.20°F) above the 1961–1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.2°F. The current nominal ranking of 2009, which does not account for uncertainties in the annual averages, places it as the fifth-warmest year. The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989).

Inhofe apparently either hadn’t read the WMO report or was intentionally vague in his wording so as not to state the organization’s conclusion.

But Inhofe also was wrong about The Guardian. The UK newspaper joined with 56 other newspapers in 45 countries to run the same front-page editorial yesterday, urging action on climate change.

Two of the three citations Inhofe used to validate his global warming denialism actually argued for the opposite conclusion. Bottom line: Inhofe is inventing facts to justify his fictitious theory of climate change.