What fun would the Conservative Political Asshole Committee meeting in Washington this week be without the antics of James Inhofe, the Senate’s most completely deranged member. Not surprisingly, Inhofe trotted out his famous “Al Gore is a Big Fat Liar” PowerPoint presentation for the CPACKers. (Oops. Did I just make a fat joke?)

However, Inhofe has a new addition to his global warming schlump speech. Mars. Uh-huh. MARS. As in M.A.R.S.

Inhofe’s trained monkeys staff passed out flyers claiming “MARS HAS GLOBAL WARMING DESPITE ABSENCE OF SUVs.” I would call this simply batshit crazy, but I’m afraid that Feministe would be after me for making fun of bats and crazy people, or crazy bats, or something.

Inhofe was gracious enough to release his notes for his CPAC speech, and these notes reveal how Inhofe got the idea that global warming on Mars will force the Martians to colonize earth:

“Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says,” according to a February 2007 article in National Geographic. The article explained: “Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars warming data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. ‘The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,’ Abdussamatov said.’”

You mean the National Geographic says that warming on Mars proves that warming on Earth is caused by a hotter sun? Of course not. In fact, slap yourself if you even thought for half-a-second that’s what the article said. Let’s do something Inhofe didn’t do. Let’s read the whole article:

Abdussamatov’s work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.

“His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion,” said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England’s Oxford University.

“And they contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report.”

Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that “the idea just isn’t supported by the theory or by the observations.”

The conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet’s orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun.

“Wobbles in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era,” Oxford’s Wilson explained.

Take a bow, Senator Inhofe. Which he did:

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) got the [CPAC] crowd cheering early in the day. “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,” he announced. “And I can just tell you that I wear some of those titles proudly.”

My money is on “Neanderthal.” Oh, wait, can I make jokes about Neanderthals?

(Via The Carpetbagger Report)

(Cross-posted at Outside the Tent.)