Global warming denier Jim Inhofe: 'Fewer and fewer' senators believe in climate change 'hoax'

The U.S. Senate’s leading global warming denier says “fewer and fewer” of his colleagues believe in climate change.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told WABC-AM that he was initially intrigued when former Vice President Al Gore began warning about human-induced climate change but became skeptical after discovering that environmental regulations might prove costly to business.

He complained to talk show host Aaron Klein that progressives are using science to enact their “green schemes” agenda.

“They don’t get away with it in the eyes of the American people,” Inhofe said. “I find fewer and fewer members of the United States Senate that are sympathetic to this whole cause.”

If that is indeed the case, U.S. senators would be breaking with the general trend on climate change.

Recent polls have found that Americans increasingly believe that evidence supports global warming caused by human activity, albeit with a sharp partisan divide.

Fewer Americans, however, cite global warming as a major threat than those in other countries.

Inhofe, who claims seemingly every winter that the continued existence of cold temperatures disproves global warming, said Democrats have used the threat of climate change to pass burdensome regulations that have strangled the economy.

“Those who have read my book, The Greatest Hoax, know that this goes way back a long period of time, started by the United Nations,” Inhofe said. “When they first started talking about the Kyoto Treaty [President Bill] Clinton and Gore, they were all excited about it, and they never submitted it for ratification because they didn’t have the votes. But anyway, that’s when the whole global warming thing started, and frankly, Aaron, I thought there might be something to it – until we found out the cost it would be to the United States of America of $300 billion to $400 billion a year.”

Inhofe claimed that emails between British scientists that were stolen by hackers in 2009 proved a conspiracy to misrepresent climate data, although those “Climategate” claims are themselves based on misrepresentations of the correspondence.

“Then we pursued some of these fine scientists who said that the U.N. had rigged the science; then of course in ’09 when ClimateGate came, people realized the United Nations committee, the IPCC, had rigged the science on this thing,” Inhofe said. “Now they’re trying to say this cold thing we’re going through now is just a bump in the climate. That isn’t true at all. It is a hoax.”

[Image via Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons licensed]