Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) blocked a resolution last Thursday that would have only stated that climate change is real, ThinkProgress reported. After Inhofe went off about federal collusion to promote a “global warming agenda,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took the floor and completely obliterated Inhofe’s climate change denial.
Inhofe cited a petition allegedly signed by 9,000 scientists who agreed that climate change as we understand it was basically a hoax. The petition, however, was the actual hoax. Whitehouse outed the flimsy repute of the petition by indicating that some of the signatures were the names of celebrities and fictitious characters: the names of the Spice Girls and Major Frank Burns from the vintage TV show M*A*S*H.
Inhofe blamed the federal government for collusion, saying that the Department of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA got together to promote an agenda. This is what Whitehouse said in response:
Let me tell you some of the government agencies who are so-called colluding together. How about NASA? We trust them to send our astronauts into space. We trust them to deliver a rover the size of an S.U.V. to the surface of Mars safely and drive it around, sending data and pictures back from Mars to us. You think these people know what they’re talking about? …How about the United States Navy? The commander in chief of our Pacific Command? Is he colluding when he says that?…
But look at the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry. They’re the people with the biggest bet on this. They have billions of dollars riding on getting it right, and they say climate change is real, carbon pollution is causing it, we’ve got to do something about it.
For seven minutes, Whitehouse dismantled Inhofe’s every point in an eloquently devised tongue-lashing of logic and empirical scientific analysis.
Watch Whitehouse’s amazing rebuttal below:
