I. On Climate Change
There is "compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax. That conclusion is supported by the painstaking work of the nation's top climate scientists." So said Mountain "Jim" Inhofe, the senior senator from Oklahoma when he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Earlier he had compared the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Gestapo] and EPA Administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose.
Later he corrected himself slightly and called global warming "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state.” In a 2006 speech in the Senate, he accused "the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture" of exaggerating the scientific evidence for climate change.
The 75-year old Inhofe, an insurance executive, rejects the satellite temperature record that corroborates the warming trend found in surface temperature measurements. He also doubts scientific findings of ozone depletion over the Arctic.
In 2005 he voted to reject an amendment to an energy bill that would have forced reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and created a mandatory emissions trading scheme. He favors drilling for oil off shore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and he opposes funding for low-income energy assistance.
Inhofe questions the finding of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850. He chooses to ignore the rapid melting of glaciers worldwide, the endangering of the polar bears due to sea-ice loss, and the dying of coral reefs due rising water temperatures. Most importantly, he denies that industrialization, deforestation, and pollution could have increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that trap heat near the earth's surface.
II. On Israel
Inhofe is just as adamant in his unqualified support of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank as he is in his denial of climate change. In 2002 he gave the Senate seven reasons why “Israel has the right to their [sic] land":
(1) Archeological evidence shows Israelis in the Middle East “for 3,000 years."
(2) They were there before the Roman Empire and were promised the land by the British in 1917.
(3) Israel has been "able to bring more food out of a desert environment than any other country in the world."
(4) Jews are entitled to their homeland after their suffering at the hands of the Nazis and others.
(5) In the United Nations, Israel votes with the U.S. more than any other country.
(6) Israel acts as an effective roadblock to terrorism.
(7) God told Abraham: "Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever.”
For Senator Inhofe, the destiny of Israelis and their neighbors is “not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.” He bluntly asserted that any accommodation for Palestinians in the West Bank violates God's will that only his chosen people inhabit that land.
Inhofe warned that since God gave the West Bank to Abraham and his descendants, we Americans are violating God's law with any policy other than the elimination of the Palestinians from “any territory Abraham could have seen from Hebron 4,000 years ago.” Inhofe is certain that any belief other than Judaism or Christianity is not a "real" religion and therefore would not be constitutionally protected. To Inhofe, "religion" means "Christianity."
Shortly after September 11, 2001, Inhofe told the Senate that the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon were God’s punishment because we Americans failed to understand that the Almighty gave the West Bank to Israel, and did not want us to stop Sharon from killing Palestinians.