Who cares that the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that global warming is both real and man-made. Smart people in the know (i.e., Republicans, Oil industry lobbyists and conservatives generally) know that global warming is either a “hoax” or a “mass delusion.” Take your pick. At least, those are the only options to which James Inhofe, outgoing chairman of the Senate’s Committee on the Environment, will subscribe (via the LA Times):
WASHINGTON — Sen. James M. Inhofe has been one of Capitol Hill’s leading skeptics on global warming, famously dismissing as a “hoax” the notion that human activity is the cause.
And so Wednesday, while most of official Washington was focused on the findings of the Iraq Study Group, the Oklahoma Republican used one of his final days as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to once again press his case. […]
Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), unwilling to concede any ground to Inhofe, asked the witnesses whether they agreed with the chairman’s assertion that man-made global warming is a hoax.
Deming said he preferred to use the expression “mass delusion.”
Inhofe, pleased to find support for his position, chimed in: “I kind of like ‘mass delusion.’ That’s a good one.”
Speaking of delusions, have you noticed that the earth is getting bluer lately? Well, maybe that’s just a hysterical over reaction by a few “alarmist” orbiting satellites who keep sending us photographic evidence that Senator Inhofe would have us believe is the result of media hype and hysteria:
New Data Show Global Warming Kills Marine Life
Satellite data revealed for the first time that global warming could devastate key marine life, scientists announced today.
The decade-long analysis showed that as the surface water of the oceans warmed up, phytoplankton biomass declined.
Tiny marine plants, called phytoplankton, impact the network of organisms that directly or indirectly depend on them for food. Changes in ocean color—a measure of phytoplankton mass—detected from space allowed researchers to calculate their photosynthetic rates and correlate these changes to the climate.
As rising air temperatures heat up the ocean’s surface, this water becomes less dense and separates from the cold dense layer below, which is full of nutrients. Since phytoplankton need light for photosynthesis, these floating plants are restricted to the surface layer—now separated from nutrients needed for growth.
When phytoplankton is abundant, the color of the water shifts from blue to green. These marine plants remove carbon dioxide and convert it to organic carbon, accounting for almost half of the Earth’s photosynthesis.
During periods of cooler temperatures, there is a flowering of these marine plants. Such was the case in late 1999 when the oceans were recovering from a strong El Nino and the globe was cooling.
But between 2000 and the present, researchers found that as the oceans warmed and became more stratified, phytoplankton productivity declined by 190 million tons of carbon each year.
“This clearly showed that overall ocean productivity decreases when the climate warms,” said lead author Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University.
I think we should send an urgent letter to Senator Inhofe today, demanding that he subpoena these alarmist satellites to appear before his committee (it’s still his until the end of this month, after all) and investigate their obvious bias in favor of environmentalist whackos like Michael Behrenfeld quoted above. I mean, who are you gonna believe? An upstanding senator from the good State of Oklahoma like James “Big Oil been berry, berry good to me” Inhofe, or a bunch of damn ecoterrorist satellites and their silly pictures?
Besides, who care if a bunch of microscopic organisms on which all life in the ocean depends die off? Not me. The bluer the ocean, the better, I say.
