Inhofe’s 650

The Senate’s proudest global-warming skeptic, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, recently released a list of “MORE THAN 650 INTERNATIONAL SCIENTISTS” who “DISSENT OVER MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING CLAIMS.” Exciting! Let’s take a look

First, a bit of background: In January, Inhofe posted his initial list of more than 400 “prominent scientists” who, he claimed, disputed that man-made greenhouse gases were responsible for rising global temperatures. Trouble is, when people started sifting through the names, they found that many experts on the list were actually weathermen, economists, and people with no real background in climate science. Worse still, when Andrew Dessler started contacting some of the actual climate scientists listed, many of them expressed first shock, then horror, and then e-mailed Inhofe’s staff and demanded to be taken off, since they didn’t disagree with the scientific consensus on climate change at all.

Well, fine, every list has its warts (and, in fairness, Inhofe’s list still looks more reasonable than Rolling Stone’s best-of-2008 album list), and we’ll grant Inhofe a do-over. So here’s the latest release. Many of the names are the same as before. But now, among other things, Inhofe’s website cites a study allegedly proving that half of recent warming is due to the sun. Well, Joe Romm e-mailed the paper’s author, Anja Eichler, who replied that she was “misinterpreted” on this point, and that her study actually shows something perfectly compatible with the IPCC consensus: Variations in solar activity have been correlated with temperature change in the past, but over the last 150 years, that hasn’t been the case. “In this time,” Eichler notes, “the increase in the CO2 concentrations is significantly correlated with our temperature.” That’s