Attacking the media and scientists for reporting to Americans that their CO2 emmissions are changing the climate, the Republicans on the James Inhofe lead US Senate Committee on Environment and Public works issued a press release today citing the usual handful of climate skeptics/deniers.

Below, I quote then refute each claim made in the press release.  The blockquoted portions are from the "Majority Press Release" linked above. 

The AP also chose to ignore Gore's reliance on the now-discredited "hockey stick" by Dr. Michael Mann, which claims that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th century, and that the 1990's were the warmest decade in at least 1000 years. Last week's National Academy of Sciences report dispelled Mann's often cited claims by reaffirming the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. See Senator Inhofe's statement on the broken "Hockey Stick."

Some time ago, David Letterman joked that one of the Top Ten George W. Bush Solutions for Global Warming would be to "Convene a blue-ribbon committee to explore innovative ways of ignoring the problem." It drew some well-deserved laughs, but in the end, the joke was on us, because, in effect, it was true.