Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a leading skeptic of man-made global warming, has asked the Justice Department to investigate what he called “the greatest scientific scandal of our generation.” Inhofe believes climate scientists and honorary weatherman Al Gore have deliberately misled Congress and the public regarding the case for anthropogenic climate change. “In [Gore’s] science fiction movie, every assertion has been rebutted,” Inhofe said. Now, he wants them held accountable.

Specifically, Inhofe is requesting that the Justice Department determine whether there has been research misconduct or even criminal actions by scientists including Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science, and Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University. The latter was a key figure in the e-mail scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit in Great Britain. At minimum, says Inhofe, Mann and Hansen should be “let go” from their jobs “for the good of the institutions involved.”

A minority staff report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reads, “[We] believe the scientists involved may have violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, federal laws. In addition to these findings, we believe the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC -backed ‘consensus’ and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.” Inhofe is the ranking minority member of the committee.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based its recent ruling that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” on Assessment Reports from the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), especially the fourth report, known as AR4. The EPA can now regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

Since the Climategate revelations, however, the IPCC has been forced to retract various findings in its Nobel Peace Prize-winning reports. For example, the assertion that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035 was taken from a non-scientific magazine article in India. Dr. Murari Lal, an editor of the AR4 report, admitted that he knew the 2035 date was false, but let it slide because its inclusion was “purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”

Economist Walter E. Williams further notes, “The IPCC also had to retract its claim that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests were at risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by ‘tropical savannas’ if temperatures continued to rise. The IPCC claim was based on a paper co-authored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), two environmental activist groups.”

Inhofe’s request will include asking the EPA to reconsider its stance on carbon dioxide and the regulations that ruling spawns.

However, it’s unlikely that the EPA will even humor Sen. Inhofe. When asked if she agreed with Dr. Phil Jones, the former head of East Anglia’s CRU, who admitted last week that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson deflected, “I believe all the new information we have doesn’t lead to any different conclusion than what we reached in the Endangerment Finding. And that is that climate is changing and that mankind is responsible in part for that change, and that we need to move aggressively.”

Tell a lie often enough…

On the contrary, as Williams concludes, “Given all the false claims and evidence pointing to scientific fraud, I don’t think it wise to continue spending billions of dollars and enacting economically crippling regulations in the name of fighting global warming.”

But that would require giving up power, and liberals have an extremely tough time with that.