What is James Inhofe trying to keep secret?

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/10/23/inhofe_open_access/

What is James Inhofe trying to keep secret?

Fans of open access to government-funded research have been pinning their hopes on an appropriations bill currently under consideration by the Senate. The bill, already passed by the House, would require that any manuscripts by researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health must be made publicly available "no later than 12 months after the official date of publication."

Late last Friday, a Republican senator introduced two amendments aiming to sabotage the open access provision. One would eliminate it entirely, the other would simply gut it.

Who is this man who would deny Americans access to the research that their tax dollars fund? A man scientists everywhere already love to hate: Oklahoma's James Inhofe, better known across the world as the politician most dedicated to preventing the United States from addressing the challenges of climate change; a man famous for calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

The straightforward explanation for Inhofe's meddling is that he is doing the bidding of the publisher's lobby. But I think there's a more insidious strategy at play. Restricting access to peer-reviewed research makes it harder for the general public to get their hands on the state-of-the-art research documenting how human activity is causing global warming. Crafty, Sen. Inhofe, very crafty!

-- Andrew Leonard

[Taverner]

1. He was part of the Cheney Energy Comission, no?

[babylonsister]

2. I don't know, but he has poo-pooed global warming and had some

'words' with Boxer and maybe even Gore.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. spellcheck error: "famous" should be "infamous".

Offered as a public service. :)

[LunaSea]

4. That PCBs are not nutritious

and just how many such things are already in you and me.

[bdamomma]

5. he's a slimy little character.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Back before he came into the senate he ran for office and failed

The reason he failed. He ran an insurance business that failed and all the people were cheated out of their money. His big bucks republican cohorts pulled a heck of a lot of strings to keep him out of jail on security fraud. Maybe he is still associating with some of these type of people.

[niceypoo]

7. I work with two republicans with the same mindset

It shatters their worldview, it is that simple. Their positions continually shift. One coworker told me a month ago that, "95% of greenhouse gasses come from volcanoes (in reality, it is about 1%)." Yesterday he claimed that, "95% of greenhouse gasses come from, 'methane vents on the ocean floor'." I reminded him that, if 95% of greenhouse gasses come from volcanoes, and 95% come from methane vents, he has just accounted for 190% of all greenhouse gasses. Upon realizing the impossibility of his claims, he stated that the sun is heating up. Later that day he claimed that God was causing it.

I attempted to explain to him that we are releasing a couple billion years worth of stored carbon (fossil fuel) into the atmosphere in a geological instant. As usual when confronted with the obvious, he got emotional and stomped off. He is a very intelligent guy (he is a server admin at my work and was same at amazon.com...brilliant guy), but when it comes to anything politicized, he is dumb as a rock.

They have no rationale whatsoever. They merely try to find claims to fit someone elses pre drawn conclusion.