Senate to hold hearings on MSM's coverage of global "warming"

From the Washington Times:

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, will hold a full committee hearing tomorrow on "Climate Change and the Media."

The hearing will look at how the media has presented scientific evidence regarding predictions of human-caused catastrophic global warming, the senator's office said.

"Senator Inhofe believes that poorly conceived policy decisions will result from the media's nonstop hyping of 'extreme scenarios' and dire climate predictions," said committee Communications Director Marc Morano. "This hearing will serve to advance the interests of sound science and encourage rational policy decisions."

Among those who are scheduled to testify at the hearing are geologist David Deming of the University of Oklahoma; paleoclimate researcher Bob Carter of Australia's James Cook University; Dan Gainor of the Business & Media Institute; Naomi Oreskes of the University of California at San Diego and professor Daniel Schrag of Harvard University.

I sure hope the committee asks for explanations from fellow Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (RINO-ME) as to why they're demanding that the debate over global "warming" must stop immediately and that people stop exercising their First Amendment rights when it comes to global "warming":

"Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the senators' line on climate change, or else," the Wall Street Journal says in an editorial.

The letter's essential point, the newspaper said, "is that the two senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should 'end its dangerous support of the [global warming] "deniers." ' Not only that, the company 'should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history.' And in extra penance for being 'one of the world's largest carbon emitters,' Exxon should spend that money on 'global remediation efforts.'

"The senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that 'ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too-reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years.' (Our emphasis.) The senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.

"This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations."

How can the Senators claim that there is "consensus" about global "warming" (also known as "climate change" during the cold months of the year) when they see several of their own colleagues (among millions of other people) who are skeptics? And if they are confident of such "consensus", why are they afraid to let dissenters get their message out?

In my view, the only "consensus" we need to know about on the issue of global "warming" was the 95-0 vote that the Senate recorded in 1997 when it rejected the Kyoto Treaty (you know, the one Bush gets blamed for ignoring?).