Longtime GOP Senator James Inhofe retiring before the end of his term
[Image via Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons licensed]

Longtime Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) announced his retirement on Friday.

The 87-year-old Inhofe said that he would be retiring at the end of the year after having served as a United States senator for nearly three decades.

"Thank you to everyone who has trusted me with your vote over these many years," Inhofe wrote in his announcement. "It has been an honor to serve you in the Senate."

Inhofe over the years has become known for making a number of controversial statements, such as his seeming dismissal of instances of torture enacted by American military servicemembers during the Iraq War.

"I'm more outraged at the outrage," Inhofe said after news of U.S. torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq broke in 2004.

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Inhofe has also been a frequent denier of climate change, and in 2015 brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to argue that the climate couldn't really be warming because it happened to be cold that particular day.

See Inhofe's full statement below.

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