89-year-old former Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe passed away on July 9, surrounded by his family. The cause of death was reportedly a stroke.
A powerful Republican voice in the Senate, Inhofe was a strong figure in Oklahoma politics for six decades. He won his Senate seat in 1994 after three terms as mayor of Tulsa, and was reelected five times before retiring in 2023 due to poor health.
He strongly backed former president Donald Trump (although he did vote to certify the election of Joe Biden in 2021). After John McCain’s death, he served as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Inhofe was a defense hawk and a strong supporter of the military. He was also a leading voice against budgetary waste in Washington, D.C.
He was a pilot, an aviation enthusiast, and a member of and advocate for the Experimental Aircraft Association.
Remembrances
“Jim was always a force to be reckoned with, to say the least. He had very strong opinions and was very passionate about our military, about infrastructure, about aviation, about environmental regulations, about Oklahoma energy,” said colleague Senator James Lankford, another Oklahoma Republican. He continued:
The passing of Jim Inhofe is a huge loss for the state. We grieve for the family, and we as a state will all pause and remember his great service to the state and be incredibly grateful, not only for his personal relationship with Jesus but for his love for the state and for his love for our nation.
Former Oklahoma House Speaker T.W. Shannon echoed Lankford’s sentiments:
This is not just the loss of the state; this is a loss for the nation. I mean, this guy, Senator Inhofe, who was a mentor to many of us, he was the real deal.
The Climate Realist
Of course, the mainstream media wants us to remember only that Inhofe was one of the most evil things you can be in 21st-century America — a skeptic of the theory that man-induced global warming is causing an existential crisis for the world.
Indeed, Inhofe did strongly oppose the fanciful notion that emissions from fossil fuels are somehow leading to out-of-control climate change. In February of 2015, he famously tossed a snowball on the floor of the Senate, making a point about the absurdity of the global-warming narrative.
And in 2012 he authored the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.
“Hoax is something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication,” he said, speaking with C-SPAN’s Susan Swain about his book in 2012. “That fits it pretty well, I think. What you have, Susan, with the whole idea of the hoax, is there are people lined up to do very well financially.”
Media Smears
According to the headlines in mainstream news coverage, Inhofe’s skepticism of climate change was his only personality trait. The New York Times’ headline read, “James M. Inhofe, Senator Who Denied Climate Change, Dies at 89.” The Washington Post’s headline read, “James Inhofe, Oklahoma senator and climate change denier, dies at 89.
Politico mentioned Inhofe’s climate skepticism in its headline, but held its true vitriol for the lede of the story:
Former Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, the longest-serving U.S. senator in Oklahoma history and a proud critic of the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, died Tuesday. He was 89 years old.
Regarding this, it should be noted that science is not established through consensus, no matter how “overwhelming” it may be. It is established through observation and testing, something that’s sorely lacking in today’s hysteria-driven climate science.
Climate Realism Defended
H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, defended Inhofe. Burnett said Inhofe “did what Senators were intended by the Constitution to do, be stalwart defenders and promoters of their home states, by consistently promoting the interests, the freedoms, and economic advancement of Oklahomans.”
Burnett added that Inhofe “was a hero to climate realists globally, a staunch defender of sound science on climate change in the face of fierce opposition by those who promote climate alarm.”
“Inhofe followed the real, demonstrable facts on climate change, and rightly concluded the world faces no crisis and that fossil fuels are a great benefit to humanity,” he said.
