James Inhofe (R-OK) #fundie

James Inhofe (R-OK) #fundie thinkprogress.org

Sen. Inhofe Compares People Who Believe In Global Warming To ‘The Third Reich’
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is the nation’s most prominent global warming denier. He famously declared that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Now, he’s taken the argument a step further. In an interview with Tulsa World, Inhofe compared people who believed global warming was a problem to Nazis:

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old comment by Finkel

Go read A State of Fear by Michael Crichton-this is in response to everyone commenting and not hte actual quote.
He brings to light some interesting arguments that are against GW. Actually what the quote is saying is mentioned in the book, in the end as an author's message and how the media plays wiht our fears which in the past has lead to drastic events. His example was Eugenics, the idea that who we are is based on our genes and that certain ethnics/races/cultures is superior. This belief was supported by countless influential leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodro Wilson, and Winston Churchill. This theory gave people a reason to discrimanate again and much money ws put into the reaseach for it. Soon Germany was in the lead in this field of research and their answer to the problem.America became jealous and thus thought that Germany should be stopped by their inhumane practices of genocide. After WWII nobody was a eugenicist, nor had anybody ever been a eugenicist. During this fad of research,ironically, nobody evenr eally knew what a Gene was. How people were persuaded into believing this was with vague terms like degenerates, unfit, and "feeble minded". While GW is not causing individual harm to a person, our lack of understanding on our planet works and the use of computer models, instead of real in the field research, is not sufficient to say GW is happening.

old comment by Finkel

@yarps.
Just because I don't believe in GW doesn't mean I don't believe in creating environmental protection laws. It's like saying just because I don't believe in the death penalty doesn't mean I don't believe punishing criminals. Supposedly we are closer to the next ice age the book states. And what's the difference, should I listen to a professional writer with accredited bibliography and research, or should I listen to a professional polititician with accredited bibliography and research. Like one can twist words of the bible, so can one do so to scientific data, such as choosing years that one would represent on a graph so as to represent that their hypothisis was correct, or looking at certain parts of the world who have shown an increase in temperature compared to those that contradict such ideas.

old comment by Axver

Finkel wrote:
And what's the difference, should I listen to a professional writer with accredited bibliography and research, or should I listen to a professional polititician with accredited bibliography and research.

Uh, you should listen to professional scientists who spend their lives studying this stuff. And they've got pretty much a consensus. It's a shame the media gives so much time to fringe nutjobs (most of whom are funded by people with a direct economic interest in denying global warming) that it actually gives the impression that there is some significant doubt or division in the scientific community about the reality of global warming.

old comment by Finkel

My main point was that we are spending a lot of money on ways to protect something we don't understand intead of spending it on something more useful.
We are supposedly at our sixth extinction. How our planet was before the first compare to how it is now is totally different. Our first atmosphere was helium and hydrogen. Our tetonic plates have shifted, helping change our ocean currents. This helped create the first ice age two billion years ago. for the last seven hundred thousand years our planet has been in a geological ice age characterized by advancing and retreating glacial ice. Ice now covers the planet every hundred thousand years, with smaller advancesevery twenty thousand years or so. The last advance was twenty thousand years. Even today, after five billion years our planet has remained extremely active. Million and a half Earthquakes a year.a moderate Reichter 5 every six hours. WE have five hundred volcanoes, An eruption every two weeks. At any moment there are one thousand five hundred electical storms across the planet.Eleven lightning bolts strike the earth every second. A lot of info in that book. If you want to debate and give counter evidence I am willing to hear. I too thought GW was real before the book, and am still not certain, I just thought i would give some evidence opposed to it-really just statistics on how active our Earth is but hte book is intrigueing. Yes I am citing the book right now, if you want to see what it has to offer for an opposing view, maybe some ignored facts, I suggest you read it.

old comment by Øyvind

Go read A State of Fear [...] [on] how the media plays wiht our fears which in the past has lead to drastic events.

Nothing new there. We saw the same thing before New Year's Eve 2000 (the Y2K bug) and after 9/11 (exaggerated terrorist threat).
However, media hyperbole notwithstanding, the scientific case for global warming is still strong.

While GW is not causing individual harm to a person, our lack of understanding on our planet works and the use of computer models, instead of real in the field research, is not sufficient to say GW is happening.

Global warming is the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation (Wiki). We need nothing more than thermometers, journals to record observed temperatures with, and calculators to determine average temperatures to assert that global warming is in fact happening.

My main point was that we are spending a lot of money on ways to protect something we don't understand intead of spending it on something more useful.

On the contrary, we understand global warming quite well, and those of us who do find environmentalism it quite useful indeed. It's about minimizing the negative effects of a global change that's already led to the deaths of way too many people. It is a dire emergency, not some unsure problem that might hurt us in the upcoming centuries. I might just read State of Fear, although the opposing view points I've been presented with up until now have not been convincing. Oh, and on the subject of eugenics, go read up on Netherlands. They're already deep in it, and getting crazier by the minute. They're one scary bunch at the moment.

James Inhofe (R-OK) #fundie thinkprogress.org

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