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Climate change is certain to be a major issue for Congress in the next couple of years. Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic environmentalist, topped the list of campaign donors in the past election cycle; there’s still the Keystone XL pipeline to figure out; and a number of new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency are set to take effect this year. On all this, Inhofe aims to take center stage.

“Expect huge and enormous fireworks in the committee,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the committee. “[Inhofe’s] going to go after everything, and I’m going to stop him dead on the floor of the Senate. . . . The biggest denier of all is the chairman of the environment committee — that’s a cruel joke.”

In 2003, Inhofe became the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee for the first time, after nine years in the Senate. He put his mark on the post with a floor speech in which he said catastrophic global warming is a hoax.

In his speech and his subsequent writing, Inhofe argued that the debate over global warming was “predicated on fear rather than science.”……..as he writes in his book, “God is still up there, and He promised to maintain the seasons and that cold and heat would never cease as long as the earth remains.”…….

he’ll move on to rolling back new EPA regulations. He plans hearings on new limits on greenhouse-gas emissions by power plants and refiners, and new ozone standards. He also wants a crack at changing the Endangered Species Act.

It’s an ambitious agenda, but it’s not just the goal of a lone crusading climate-change denier. What is really worrisome to environmentalists is that while Inhofe’s rhetoric may be more extreme than that of his Republican colleagues, their objectives appear to be the same……… http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-senates-top-climate-change-denier-is-flying-high-with-a-committee-chairmanship/2015/01/07/bf625fe0-9365-11e4-ba53-a477d66580ed_story.html