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The climate change denial circus created by Senator James "global warming is a hoax" Inhofe, outgoing chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has finally come to an end, but not, of course, without some final choice quotes. As reported earlier this week on DeSmog, Inhofe took one last stab at sowing doubt about the realities of global warming and chose again to make the US media the target.

For a while now, Inhofe has been incorrectly claiming that there is a long history of "one-sided" reporting on the issue of climate change, despite media studies (see attached) that show that in fact the climate change "skeptics" have enjoyed a large amount of press over the years. Inhofe continued this unsubstantiated claim at yesterday's hearing: "Much of the mainstream media has subverted its role as an objective source of information on climate change, into a role of an advocate."

Coming to the defence of the media, Democrat committee member Senator Frank Lautenberg asked the "expert" witnesses whether they agree with Inhofe's oft quoted claim that "global warming is the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people." In response, David Deming, an "adjunct scholar" for the ExxonMobil sweetheart, the National Centre for Policy Analysis, offered his psychological opinion on the subject,: "We are dealing with a psychological phenonmenon which is a mass delusion." It should be noted that Deming has no actual background in the area of psychology that DeSmog can find

Keeping the cirucs act alive, Deming and Bob Carter, another "expert" witness, made the outrageous claim that people should be emitting as much greenhouse gas as possible to avoid another ice age.

But the last word goes to Harvard Geophysicist Daniel Schrag who is very happy to see Inhofe finally giving up his gavel: "He [Inhofe] dredges up people that have no real standing in the scientific community and they spout off on their views. I think it's good for climate policy around the world that this was Senator Inhofe's last hearing."

Bye, bye Inhofe.