CQ Transcriptions, March 2, 2007

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)
Conservative Political Action Conference
Washington, DC
March 2, 2007

INHOFE: Let me say one thing that is not in my notes here, but it's important. When we did this thing in 1994, we did it using the talk radio. When she talks about the talk radios, we had a war room with a pin all over America, all these talk shows.That's exactly how we're going to get the truth out. And we are getting the truth out on global warming because, well, (inaudible) media's not going to do it for us.

Now, let me share with you—some of you don't know who Miles O'Brien is. And I'm glad you don't. Miles O'Brien is the darling of the left. He's on C-SPAN—I'm sorry; he's on CNN. And a lot of you don't watch CNN.

But as far as the liberals, he is the... (Laughter)

... he is the darling of the left. I mean, he's the highest-ranking morning show. And, frankly, I like the guy.

So I'm going to pause right now, and I want you to look at this little video of a couple of shows that we did—very short—and then see if you can determine the inconsistencies that are there.

Let it roll.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Inhofe joins us from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Senator, good to have you with us.

INHOFE: Well, Miles, it's nice to be with you. I know you don't believe it, but it is nice to be with you.

O'BRIEN: It's a pleasure having you here.

INHOFE: You know why? You always smile. So many of these extremists out there—they're all mad all the time. (Laughter) But you're not. You smile. (Laughter) In fact, when you were cutting my guts out for two minutes last week, you smiled all the way through that. And I appreciate that. (Laughter)

O'BRIEN: Well...

INHOFE: And I wonder also, Miles, it wasn't long ago— and you've got to keep everyone hysterical all the time— you were the one that said another ice age is coming just 12 years ago.

O'BRIEN: I said that? I didn't say that. There weren't...

INHOFE: You didn't say that? Let me play it...

O'BRIEN: No, no, no— I'd be willing to tell you there are stories like that.

(Crosstalk)

INHOFE: ... I quote you so I'd be accurate. I don't want to be inaccurate.

O'BRIEN: All right. Go ahead.

(LAUGHTER)

INHOFE: You said, in talking about a shift that was coming, you said, "If the Gulf Stream were to shift again, the British Isles could be engulfed in polar ice and Europe's climate could become frigid."That's another scary story. A guy named Tom Wigley—you know who he is—he's the one that led the National Center for Science Research. Now, in the event that you're right and I'm wrong—let's say that it's due to manmade gases, anthropogenic gases, CO2 or methane— if that is true, if every developing nation signed up on the Kyoto Treaty and complied with it, it would only reduce the Earth's temperature by 6/100th of a degree in 50 years.

O'BRIEN: All right. Well, we're not talking about Kyoto. No, we're not talking about Kyoto. We're just talking about whether global warming is real.

(END VIDEO CLIP)(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: And now the White House is promising action on global warming. We wonder what one of the leading contrarians on the issue is thinking. And so we invited him on the program. He joins us now from Capitol Hill— Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

INHOFE: Hi.

O'BRIEN: He is the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Senator, good to have you back on the program.

INHOFE: Thank you, Miles. The last time I was on your program, I was the chairman; not anymore.

O'BRIEN: I know. It's changed. Things change in an instant.

INHOFE: Yes, but they change back, too. Remember that.

O'BRIEN: That's true, too. (Laughter) That's very true. And we'll be there to watch it every step of the war. Let's talk about the science first. James Hansen, one of the leading climate scientists, he says it's crystal clear. What do you say?

INHOFE: I say that that's James Hansen, who was paid $250,000 by the Heinz Foundation. And I think he'd say almost anything you'd ask him to say. (Laughter and Applause)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, CNN ANCHOR: To debate this issue, two outstanding members of the United States Senate: Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California— she's chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee; and James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee—former chairman of that committee. Senator Inhofe, why are you so skeptical on this?

INHOFE: Well, you know, I wasn't at one time, Larry. Four years ago, when I became chairman of this committee, I was a believer that it was manmade gases that were causing global warming, because that's all you saw in the media. Then, when the Wharton School came out with the Wharton econometrics survey and it talked about how much this would destroy—economically—this country if we were to sign onto the Kyoto Treaty, which was in consideration at that time, and what it would cost—and I'm talking about doubling the cost of energy; doubling the cost of gas—the average family, of the millions watching us right now, Larry, the average family of four, it would have been $2,750 a year. So I thought: Let's look to make sure the science is right. Now, Larry, it's important to understand: I agree that we're going through a warming period right now. We were going through a warming period during the turn of the century. That lasted to 1945; then cooling to 1975; now warming till now. And they are guessing it's going to go into another cooling period in about five years. So why get hysterical? The same people who are hysterical about this were the ones who were saying, just a few years ago: Another ice age is coming and we're all going to die.

KING: Senator Boxer?

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER, D-CALIF.: Well, I don't know who he's talking about saying that. And the 17,000...

INHOFE: Well, Time magazine.

KING: Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma. And, by the way, they are good friends.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INHOFE: All right. (Laughter)

Just to set the stage.

All right, let me suggest to you that— I've been here many times before. David Keene has been nice enough to invite me. And I've talked about a number of things. I'm on the Armed Services Committee. Normally, it's something of a military nature.

But the subject that we're covering today is the second most significant subject and the most misunderstood subject.

INHOFE: And I'd like to have you keep three things in mind as we go through this. I know you won't like the sound of this, but it's necessary to get this point across, that you use a PowerPoint—something I've never done before in this crowd.

And I'd like to have you keep three things in mind. The first thing is what the issue is. People don't understand what this issue is. You guys are activists, and I depend on you to understand this.

The issue is not: Is the globe warming? We know we're going through a warming period; that's fine— although, the other day, it was kind of interesting: They had to call off the global warming hearing in the House because of an ice storm. (Laughter and Applause)

But the extremists—they want to say the issue is: Is it manmade gases, anthropogenic gases, methane, CO2, that's causing it? And that's what we're addressing, and that's what we need to understand.

Now, the extremists—the extremists—they don't want to drill for oil. They don't want fossil fuels. They don't want coal generation. They don't want nuclear power. Right now, they don't even want wind anymore because it's killing the birds. (Laughter)

But they would really shut down this machine we call America. And I think it's very, very significant that we have a truth squad out there and people will understand what the real issues are.

A couple of terms we use: One is the United Nations IPCC. That was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And the other is: When we talk about those individuals who are trying to scare America, those are referred to as the climate alarmists, OK?

Those of us who want to look at science, we're the ones who are the climate skeptics.

Now, secondly, people are going to say, when they hear what I have to say: Oh, no, Inhofe, we're not talking about Kyoto; we're talking about something new that's coming on.

Ladies and gentlemen, one thing that they want to do is to cut down our CO2 emissions. Now, it doesn't matter if it's Kyoto or any other plan that's coming up. The results are going to be the same.

So, when you talk about the costs of this thing, keep that in mind.

And third, I was criticized, some four years ago, when I didn't say that the greatest hoax in the history of this country was global warming; I said, "The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people is that manmade gases are causing climate change."

Now, when people criticized me for saying that, you look up in your dictionary, and hoax is defined as, "The art of deception," OK?

Well, this is what I'd like to do, and I'm going to make everything work here. First of all—oh, one thing that's very important: at your place here today, you have notes; one legal-size piece of paper that has notes on both sides.

Don't take notes. You don't have to. I've got more stuff on there than you'd be able to write down. And you're going to miss something if you start writing, OK?

All right, then here we go. Now, listen very carefully. You can read along with me. The hysteria—the New York Times: "Is our climate changing?

INHOFE: "The older inhabitants tell us that winters are not cold now as they were when they were young. We have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold, even in the last decade."

That was the New York Times, June 23rd, 1890. (Laughter)

Next, we have the Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Tribune says, "Scientists say Arctic ice will wipe out Canada. Large parts of Europe and Asia will be wiped out, and Switzerland will become entirely obliterated." That was the Chicago Times (sic), August 9th of 1923.

The New York Times: "America is in the longest warm spell since 1960 (sic)." Aha! We're all going to die of global warming. That was the New York Times, March 27th, 1933.

Time magazine: "Those who claim that winters were harder when they were boys and girls were quite right," and they predicted another global warming. That was Time magazine, January 2nd, 1939.

New York Times: "We have learned that the world has been getting warmer in the last half-century." That was August 10th, 1952.

And then we have the New York Times again, "The Arctic packed ice is thinning at ocean (sic) and the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two"— February 20th, 1969. And finally, the New York Times and Arctic packed ice is thinning and the North Pole may become an open sea, February 20th, 1969.

Time magazine, and this is the one that we have to remind people of all the time, this is when Time magazine—and you can read it for yourself—when they predicted another ice age coming, and surely we were all going to die. And that was June 24th, 1974.

Then the current Time magazine right now, I think you'll see, we've got that poor, pitiful polar bear that's standing on the last ice cube, and he's not going to be with us very much longer. (Laughter)

Now, I show you this for two reasons: It's important that you understand why I'm going through this. First of all, to let you know that science is always changing, climate is always changing. And while science tries to analyze it, they're never able to do it.

They seem to forget that God is still up there, and we're going through these climate changes.

The second thing is to let you know that, whenever climate changes, people capitalize on it. The media exaggerates what it is. And they all have this theme that we're either going to die of an ice age or of warming but, nonetheless, we're going to die.

And they all run for president thinking this is going to elect them.

But let me tell you a little bit about the polar bears, before you get too concerned, because they are fuzzy... (Laughter)

... and they're cute.

Barbara Boxer, the other day, said, "Oh, I went to the zoo and saw the cutest little polar bear cubs." And I said, "Yes, did you know they're overpopulated right now?" (Laughter)

Did you know—and I don't think you know this, but it's very important that you do, because people use these innocent little creatures all the time—that right now the population of polar bears is 25,000. Fifty years ago, it was 10,000. They are growing every year.

The only area where they're really dropping is in the western part of the Hudson Bay area, where they had hunting rules and laws that caused a lot of them to be killed.

But nonetheless, don't worry about it. The polar bear is fine. (Laughter)

Now, you might ask: Where did this all begin? Where did all the really bad things begin? It had to have had a beginning somewhere— the things that strip us of our sovereignty, the things that take us unfairly and tax us internationally, the things that talk bad about America on a day-to-day.

The thing where it all started was the United Nations in 1990.

Now, 1,000 years of—some of you remember this. I know this sounds a little bit dry, and that's why I'm using the PowerPoints, and that's why I'm giving you notes. Because if you walk out of here uninformed, then I have failed and failed miserably.

What we heard 10 years ago was a guy— one scientist, that's all. He went to the United Nations, and he said he has this graph. If you look across there, you see that they plotted for 1,000 years the temperatures of America. Then, at the far right side, it goes up. And that's the blade of the hockey stick. You see the hockey stick? The shaft, and the blade.

Well, this is then discredited because what they neglected to show was, around the 13th century in here, we had the medieval warm period, where temperatures—most scientists say—were warmer than they are today. Then they had the little ice age in there.

And so it has been discredited. I would have you read what was said by David Deming, a geologist from the University of Oklahoma: The hockey stick was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies.

And now, if you look—the United Nations has become so big, so out of control, that they now have this second chart that's showing the same 1,000-year period, and look at it. You see that? It shows the warming period. Now compare that to this. You see that?

And so even they are not together on this.

So you've got to watch them closely. Because when they pick and choose what the United Nations comes out with, like this fourth assessment, that had nothing to do with scientists; that was a summary for policymakers.

So let's look really on recent discoveries. One of the things that I would like to devote some time on, but I won't do it because of the time constraints—but in February of this year some people discovered that the warmth is caused by— are you ready for this— the sun. (Laughter)

It's caused by the sun. And this is a report here of the Danish climate scientist was saying that, in his report: Last month, February of '07, it's the sun. (Laughter)

The sun's causing warming.

Now we have the science.

Now this is the reason, ladies and gentlemen, that all these politicians that are running for office and using this, why they are getting into panic— because the scientists have totally reversed themselves on this issue.

One case in point. A case in point would be the 60 scientists that advised the prime minister 10 years ago— of Canada— to sign onto and to ratify the Kyoto Treaty.

And they started looking at the science over the last 10 years, and they came out and jointly signed a letter just the other day petitioning Prime Minister Harper to withdraw from the Kyoto Convention.

And they said: If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist because we would have concluded it is not necessary.

So the scientists are changing their minds, and you're causing panic with the extremists.

The leaders of the four countries— the long version of this I go over all these scientists, but let me just take you back to the leaders 10 years and 15 years ago from these various countries. The countries are France, Israel, U.K. and the United States. And you can read what each one of them says.

By the way, Claude Allegre up there from France, he's the only one I know of who's on both the French and the United States Academy of Sciences. He was one of them who was walking down the street and was carrying the flag 15 years ago. He now says that the cause of climate change is unknown and accused the climate alarmists of being motivated by money.

Then along comes Nir Shaviv. And you know about him. He's this real sharp young astrophysicist in Israel. And he was one of the believers, and he's recanted his position.

The same with David Bellamy from the U.K., the United Kingdom. He was one of them who was actually the environmental campaigner for the U.K. And he's now recently converted into a skeptic after looking at the new science.

And we have Reid Bryson from the United States.

So, you know, all these people have now realized that the science never was really in place to start with.

Now, there are more scientists. I only mentioned a couple of them here because these are significant. Timothy Ball called fears of global warming the greatest deception in the history of science.

Remember I said at the beginning: If you define hoax, it's the art of deception. Now the scientists are using that.

The ABC TV meteorologist James Spann said in January that he does not know of a single TV meteorologist who really buys into the manmade global warming hype. And all the rest of them are there.

But enough of scientists. Are you ready folks? Here comes Al Gore. (Laughter)

All right. Al Gore. Al Gore is with us now.

Al Gore is lauded by the Academy Awards, by the Hollywood elitists, by the United Nation activists, but the far left, by the environmental extremes. Katie Couric calls him the secular saint. Oprah Winfrey calls him the Noah of our time. (Laughter)

And Al Gore honestly believed his ticket to the White House was this global warming thing. And now he sees what science is doing, and he is very much concerned.

And let me just, before dropping that, say what—Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at MIT, talks about Al Gore. Listen to this. He says, "A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the Earth and its climate are dynamic, they're always changing, even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough. But to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse," is what he's doing. (Applause)

And, you know, I'd have to say this, too, that Al Gore is not the only one running for president who thinks this is his ticket to the White House.

INHOFE: People running for the presidency, and a lot of the senators—you know, the other day I said I am among the most exclusive club in all of Washington, D.C. It's called "United States Senators Who Are Not Running for President." (Laughter)

But all these guys who are running for president all think this is the way to get there.

Now, Al Gore is one thing. There's another character that you don't know about. You all know about Al Gore. You don't know about the next one. His name is, and I want you to meet Richard Cizik, the man who tried to convert evangelicals to the left.

Now, I have to say this. It was a brilliant idea. "Divide and conquer" is a technique that can be used and used very effectively. If they can somehow drag the evangelicals away from their pro-life stance and all their conservative agenda, their core values, and put them into this environmental stuff, then they win and we lose.

So here's Richard Cizik. I wish you could see it a little better. Those over there and those on this side can probably see it. This was his portrait on the front of a very liberal magazine.

And if you see, he's dressed like Jesus. He is actually walking on water. He's barefooted, but you can see the little ripples, if you look down close.

Now, this is what Richard Cizik—how he describes himself. Listen carefully. This is February of '06—in an attempt to bring the evangelicals over to the left.

He said, "In a town where access is everything, the Reverend Richard Cizik's calendar would be the envy of even the hardest-hitting Washington player. One day last week"—one day last week—"his schedule included breakfast with President George W. Bush, lunch with King Abdullah II of Jordan, and a cozy evening reception at the home of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist."

Well, in a way, he's kind of right I guess, because his breakfast with the president was held in a hotel not far from here with 4,000 other people, at the National Prayer Breakfast. His lunch with King Abdullah II—they had 3,000 people there. That was on the same day.

And so I talked to Bill Frist, and I said, "Bill, did you have a party at your last night?"

And he said, "Well, I wasn't there, but we did. It was a party."

And I said, "Was a guy named Richard Cizik there?" And he went back and checked, and he couldn't find him. Anyway... (Laughter)

And if you're concerned about, "Is he really in our camp philosophically," fortunately, we were able to get some sentences out of a speech that he made to a liberal group. It was on May 1st, 2006.

In that— and it's worth reading, even though you're reading with me—he said, "We need to confront population control."

Now, what does that mean? Planned Parenthood—you know what I mean. It's abortion and all that.

" We need to confront population control and we can. We're not Roman Catholics, after all, but it's too hot to handle right now."

In other words, like all liberals, that's down the road. We want to ultimately get to that.

Well, anyway, praise the Lord; it didn't work. And I have a quote here from Cardinal George Pell, who was very much involved in helping us on this.

Then another group that came along was the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance.

INHOFE: This group was forced to tell the truth about what they were trying to do. And people such as Chuck Colson, the Southern Baptists, James Dobson, myself, and others were all a part of this.

And I think that that is one that we have actually won, and that's behind us now.

But I only warn you because that'll come back. They don't give up. There will be somebody else trying to do it.

So we have been warned.

And I only want to mention a couple of things. Because interestingly enough, we were warned that this would happen. It's actually in the Scriptures. If we look at the Scriptures we see—and I picked out three here—I'm sorry, Romans 1:22, 23: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the corruptible man and the birds and the four-footed beasts and the creeping things."

And then Acts 1:25—think about this now; isn't this exactly what's going on: "They gave up the truth about God for a lie, and they worship God's creation instead of"— that's the environment—"instead of God, who will be praised forever."

So I only bring this up to let you know that this is something that shouldn't have surprised us.

Well, anyway, the environmental extremists, they have other issues. I'm certainly not— I don't want anyone who listens to this presentation to think that I'm saying that all the people who are buying onto this idea of global warming caused by man are extremists. But there are extremists out there.

You may not be aware of this, but the extremist environmental groups that bomb construction sites, they want to stop everything. The FBI said back in May that the eco-terror radicals are number one on the FBI domestic terrorist list.

And it goes far beyond that. I had a hearing when I was chairman of this committee on some of the animal rights groups. And you won't believe what we heard. And I want you to listen very carefully. There was a lady there that was from the San Francisco Chronicle who has a radio show. Listen to what she says.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAUNDERS: Good morning. I'm Debra J. Saunders, and I write a very opinionated column for the San Francisco Chronicle. I want you to listen to something that is a real mirror to what's going on in this world. Senator James Inhofe is questioning Dr. Jerry Vlasak, who's a doctor but also a spokesperson for the animal rights fanatics. He asked Vlasak if it's OK to kill medical researchers, and Vlasak says yes.

Listen for yourself:

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

INHOFE: Do you think animals' life is as precious as human life?

Dr. Jerry Vlasak: They are morally equal.

INHOFE: They are morally equal?

VLASAK: They are.

INHOFE: One of the statements you made at the Animal Rights Convention when you were defending assassinating people, murdering people— you said, and let me put it up here to make sure I'm not misquoting you: "I don't think you'd have to kill, assassinate too many. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, or 10 million nonhuman lives."

You're advocating the murder of individuals, isn't that correct?

VLASAK: I made that statement, and I stand by that statement.

INHOFE: So you call for the murder of researchers and human lives?

VLASAK: I said that would be a morally justifiable solution to the problem.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SAUNDERS: You heard it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

You heard it.

Well, all right. Now I'd like to get to something that I think you're going to be approached with, and that is: All right—and they have told me: "Inhofe, what if you're wrong? What if you're wrong? What if there really is something to all this and it's actually going on?"

And you might have noticed, in the opening thing—I said this on "The Larry King Show"; I'm not going to repeat it because of time constraints—but the question that Al Gore asked Tom Wigley with the National Center for Science Research was, "What if all developed nations would comply with the emission requirements?"

He said, in 50 years, after the exhaustive study took place, they said if all that happened, it would lower the temperatures by 7/100th of a degree Celsius.

So I think it's worth repeating, and we have documentation for that in the information you have.

And so, now I'd like to say: Even the United Nations is backing down. They're rebuking a lot of the things they have said before. They even came out the other day and said that livestock emissions were more damaging to the planet than the CO2 from cars. The sea level rise they've cut in half in the last six years.

You don't hear this, but this actually comes from the United Nations.

And the question that would come up right now is: You know, if we know how flawed the IPCC-United Nations process is— it is flawed; we understand that— and we know also that the cost would be devastating to our nation and the science is wrong, then who is for Kyoto besides the United Nations, Hollywood elitists and the environmental extremists?

There are others who are. And I will share that with you and their statements.

Are you ready for this? Your favorite Frenchman—who is it? Jacques Chirac. (Laughter)

Jacques Chirac said that Kyoto represents the first component of an authentic global governance.

And then the other one—you may not know who Margot Wahlstrom was; she was the minister of environment for the European Union. And she said Kyoto is not about climate change; it's about, quote, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big business worldwide."

So what's it really about? It's about money.

You know, Heidi Cullen with The Weather Channel, you saw what she did the other day. Well, you can't blame her for taking a hard line because she has a weekly show on The Weather Channel. If people realized the truth about it, she's lost her show; her ratings plummet.

Same thing with Time magazine and the rest of the media.

So I think the important thing is, if you've forgotten everything else I've said up to this time, the important thing is: What are the real economic ramifications of global warming?

First, let's look at the effects that Kyoto would have on America. Again, it doesn't matter whether it's Kyoto or any other scheme to reduce CO2 emissions. If that happened, according to the Wharton econometric survey—that's the Wharton School; I was talking to someone here who actually was there—they said that the Kyoto protocol would cost the United States of America at least $300 billion annually. Each family of four would be punished to the extent of $2,750 a year.

And so, you look at this and try to put it in a perspective—something we all understand. These numbers are so big, we don't understand.

So I have a little chart here.

INHOFE: And these are the four largest tax increases in the last four decades. Are you ready?

First was the Revenue Expenditures Control Act, 1968, $35 billion; the crude oil windfall profit tax, $23 billion; the Budget Act of 1990, $29 billion; and then Bill Clinton's tax increase of $32.3 billion.

Now, these are the largest tax increases in the recent history of America.

If you put this next to what the tax increase would be if we were to pass something like Kyoto, it would be a $300 billion tax increase. It would be 10 times greater than the Bill Clinton tax increase of 1993.

So I think one of the things we need to be talking about is that we know that things are happening right now; we know that they're trying to pass the largest tax increase in the history of America. And we're in a position where we can do something about it.

By the way, a few of the politicians have joined in. It takes a lot of courage for a politician to do it. We had the Canadian prime minister, and we have some statements by him.

But my favorite is the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. He called the fears of catastrophic manmade global warming a myth.

Now, listen to this. He called the United Nations IPCC process a political body and said other governmental leaders do not speak out because political correctness strangles their voice.

That didn't come from America, that came from the Czech Republic.

And so we have others, we have more and more people, and the alarmists coming along, and they have been refuted.

But just for a minute I do have to go back to Heidi— there it is right there. Heidi Cullen is a delightful lady on The Weather Channel.

She made a little mistake the other day. She came out in her desperation, seeing some of the new science, and she called for the decertification of broadcast meteorologists who do not toe the line on global warming.

There are many others out there, too—the intolerant left. If they don't have logic on their side, they don't have the truth, then they start name-calling. And I've been called every name in the book.

But as far as Heidi is concerned, this is very significant, because when Heidi came out and calls for the decertification of meteorologists on TV who don't agree with her— I wrote an op-ed piece. An op-ed piece that was picked up the Drudge Report, and there are so many hits that came back to our site that it closed down the Senate Web site. (Laughter)

There it is, the headlines in the paper. We had over 50,000 hits an hour coming back on this.

So, lastly, what can you do? And, you know, you guys are here. and one thing you can do is learn the truth. There's something that I—I'm not sure that David Keene remembers this or not—but I've used this before, and it's so important that you guys understand how important you are.

There's a book by Dan Nimmo called "American Political Patterns." You read this book and you come to the decision that the decisions in this country are made by less than one half of 1 percent of the people.

And that's why I say that each of you they define as an activist someone who will come to a meeting like this. And I look upon you—I understand there are 5,000 people here today.

INHOFE: I don't see 5,000 people. I see each one of you as an army of 200. That's a million people that can carry the truth out.

And that's why I'm here today, and that's why I've been missing a vote, right now.

So I would say: What you can do is to get the facts. We have a Web site. And the Web site is. And our—we have 68—well, anyway, you can get this on the Web site. There's one that I wrote.

But even better than the one that we wrote that is debunking the arguments that they have is what the Competitive Enterprise Institute has.

I am so proud of them for having the courage to come up. Did you know they've lost a lot of their corporate sponsors because they're willing to tell the truth?

And there are so many people out there who can make a fortune off this thing, just by going along with the environmental extremists.

So I applaud them in what they're doing. And I want to tell you that I have one last slide, the most important slide of any of them. (Laughter)

For those of you who don't know, is that an attractive family? (Applause)

As she mentioned, Kay and I just celebrated our 48th wedding anniversary. We have 20 kids and grandkids. And you have to ask the question—and that's why I put this slide up, not just because I'm proud of them—but because the question is: Why are politicians so afraid to tell the truth about manmade global warming?

It's because the families are subjected to every conceivable insult and attack. I have been called— my kids are all aware of this—"dumb," "crazy man," "science abuser," "Holocaust denier," "villain of the month," "hate-filled," "warmonger," "Neanderthal," "Genghis Khan," and "Attila the Hun." (Laughter)

And I could just tell you that I wear some of those titles proudly, considering where they're coming from. (Applause)

But finally, you folks in this room can make the difference, and that's why I'm here today. And I say in all sincerity.

In the last 30 minutes, you have heard the truth.

In the last 30 minutes you have learned that, together, we can stop the largest tax increase in the history of America.

In the last 30 minutes, you've learned that, if you have the courage to stand up to the United Nations and to the Hollywood elitists and to the extremist environmentalists, you can join this burgeoning truth squad to save America.

In the last 30 minutes, you've learned that people are changing. The science has changed. The politicians have changed. Even the United Nations is backing down.

In the last 30 minutes, you've learned that the left has failed—tried but failed to manipulate the evangelicals and get them on their side.

In the last 30 minutes, you have learned the truth. The truth is not easy. The truth is not popular. It's not politically correct.

But Winston Churchill said, "Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may destroy it, but there it is."

And Jesus said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

Amen. (Applause)

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