At what point do they give up? Marc Morano, communications director for Sen. James Inhofe is still tirelessly plugging away at global warming denialism a year after his boss was unseated as the head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and they're still using the EPW site to transmit blatantly false, misleading reports on climate change. The latest: "Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007." The 400 scientists they characterize as disputing man-made climate change include mostly folks no one has ever heard of, and the quotes they cherry pick aren't all expressing doubt about whether climate change is real and a problem -- many are simply expressing differing opinions about the degree of warming and the consequences of that warming. Others simply cited phenomena that might be causing warming in addition to that caused by greenhouse gases. And a good deal of them aren't even climatologists -- there are and abundance of geographers, physicists, and "philosophers of science" in the mix.
It's not too hard to dredge up 400 people in all the world who think the lunar landing was a farce or believe that Elvis is living in Albuquerque, much like it isn't too hard to dig up 400 people with a vague background in the field of science who find something to dispute in climate science. That doesn't mean their views should be lauded and held up as scientific proof that global warming isn't so bad. There haven't been any peer-reviewed scientific studies validating any claims that the planet is either not warming, or not warming because of humans, and the world's most-respected climatologists are all in agreement. And other than Inhofe, Morano and a few other stragglers, the Republican party has moved from claiming steadfastly that climate change isn't real, to claiming it's real but not caused by humans, to now just saying it would cost too much to deal with it. Even Bush has left the denial behind for mere obstruction. Inhofe and his minions are the last holdouts of a dying minority, and they're getting increasingly desperate in their attempts to dig up validation.
--Kate Sheppard
