--- title: Sen. James Inhofe Throws Snowball, Proves Climate Change a Hoax description: The chair of the Senate's environment committee demonstrates that he's not up to the job canonical: https://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-27T18:18:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:49.151Z article:section: Ideas og:title: James Inhofe's Snowball: A Senator's Melting Credibility og:description: The chair of the Senate's environment committee demonstrates that he's not up to the job og:url: https://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: James Inhofe's Snowball: A Senator's Melting Credibility twitter:description: The chair of the Senate's environment committee demonstrates that he's not up to the job twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Senator Throws Snowball! Climate Change Disproven! > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=04625de1-a8ff-48cf-a1ab-55d2932d918e&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Science Cop Takes on Climate Change Denying Senator Jim Inhofe [Watch (HLS stream): Science Cop Takes on Climate Change Denying Senator Jim Inhofe](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UbAmQMaL.m3u8) (3:52)  _Published 2014-12-04. When the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate, Oklahoma's James Inhofe— a global warming denier—becomes chair of the Environment Committee_  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Feb 27, 2015 6:18 PM UTC  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Feb 27, 2015 6:18 PM UTC What’s all this talk about global hunger? I don’t know about you, but I just tucked into a burrito and there are plenty more where that one came from. But that doesn’t mean the nation’s soaring obesity rates are anything more than a rumor. Most of the people I work with look pretty darn good, so QED right? Something similar is true of climate change—at least if you’re Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and a man tasked with knowing a thing or two about, um, the environment and public works. The Senator, who has made something of a cottage industry out of arguing that climate change is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” at last has drop-dead, case-closed proof that he’s been right all along. The evidence: a snowball. And not just any snowball, one _right there in Washington, DC!_ Inhofe brought his snowball onto the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday and declared that “we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record.” Yet in a plastic bag, right on his desk, he had the evidence to demolish that claim. “I ask the chair, you know what this is?” he said. “It’s a snowball, and that’s just from outside here, so it’s very, very cold out, very unseasonable.” Then he tossed the unexpected snowball to the unsuspecting chair and returned to his prepared text with self-satisfied, “Mm-hmm.” Inhofe is completely correct, of course: It was very, very cold on Thursday—unseasonably so. And it was also very, very hot in Opa Loca Florida, where the temperature was 87º F (30º C)—awfully sweltering even for that part of the country, at least at this time of year. Presumably, Opa Loca’s unseasonable steam bath is equally compelling proof that climate change is real. Look, it’s easy to take shots at Inhofe, which is why everyone is doing it today—[here](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/26/jim-inhofes-snowball-has-disproven-climate-change-once-and-for-all/) and [here](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/jim-inhofe-climate-snow%5Fn%5F6763868.html) and [here](http://www.newser.com/story/203292/senator-hurls-snowball-to-disprove-climate-change.html) and [here](http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/399426/lawmaker-throws-snowball-senate-floor-disprove-climate-change) just for starters. But the implications are real. Either he really doesn’t understand that weather isn’t climate, that long-term trends are different from short-term bumps, that what happens at your house or in your town really, truly isn’t what’s happening everywhere else on the planet, or he does know and he’s pretending he doesn’t. Either way, it’s hard to argue that he’s the man you’d want as the Senate’s leading voice on climate policy. Here’s hoping, if nothing else, that Inhofe has an easy commute home tonight. It’ll be long-awaited proof that the U.S. highway system has at last solved the problem of traffic. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] They say elections have consequences. Well, we're about to experience a doozy. And it's because when voters elected Republicans to a majority of both Chambers of Congress, they effectively put Oklahoma Senator and long- time climate change denier, James Inhofe. In charge of the Senate's climate policy. This is the same James Inhofe who has called climate change quote, the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. So let's see what science thinks of what the senator has to say. [ MUSIC ] The claim that global warming is caused by man- made emissions is simply untrue, and not based on sound science. Decades of research by international climatologists, none of them Senators from fossil fuel states, say otherwise. Indeed, there is a 97 % consensus among scientists that climate change has been proven, and that humans play a big role. The United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change says decisively, quote, " we have overwhelming evidence that it is happening and that it is real .". CO2 does not actually cause catastrophic disasters. Actually it would be good for our environment and our economy. That one may be true. Provided you're willing to overlook a few things. Global sea levels have risen by 6. 7 inches in the past century. Autumn ice cover in the Arctic is 23 % below average. From 1980 to 2010 there were 99 weather related disasters in the US costing at least a billion dollars. Apiece. Stubborn droughts are punishing vast swaths of the American West and the 20 hottest years in the last century have occurred since 1980, which is part of the famous hockey stick graph. The hockey stick was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. Wrong again, just last year the National Science Foundation studied ice core samples from 73 locations around the world and found that the Earth is currently warmer than it's been for 70 to 80 % of the last 11, 300 years. In the last 5, 000 years Earth actually slowly cooled by 1. 3 degrees. But it made up all the heat it lost in just the last 100 years. And then there's the religious argument. God's still up there. And this is the arrogance of people to think that we, human beings would be able to change what he is doing in the climate, is to me outrageous. It's a favorite trope of people like Inhofe to frame faith and science as binary choices. But you can believe that God created the earth and still accept the fact that we have the power to mess it up. The same God would've created rivers and tigers too. That doesn't mean we're not capable of polluting the rivers until almost nothing can live in them or hunting the tigers nearly to extinction. Finally, in [ UNKNOWN ], Michael Crichton's anti- climate science novel State of Fear. I think I've read most of his books. I enjoyed most State of Fear, and made it required reading for the environment committee. Just to be clear, the book was a novel. Which is to say, fiction. Which is to say, it was all made up. When it comes to Inhofe and science, that pretty much explains everything. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/"},"headline":"Senator Throws Snowball! Climate Change Disproven!","datePublished":"2015-02-27T18:18:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:59:49.151Z","description":"Is Sen. 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