From the Wonk Room...
Last night, Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) office responded to forecasts of a dangerous storm with mockery. A winter storm sweeping up the East Coast with rain, snow, and ice has caused 350 car crashes in New Jersey, a 15-mile-long traffic jam in North Carolina, and four deaths from car accidents in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Long Island. Hundreds of thousands of households lost power from Georgia to Maine. Marc Morano, Sen. Inhofe's environmental communications director, mocked the threat of the storm by pointing out it would take place at the same time as a protest of fossil-fueled global warming in Washington D.C., writing "HA! HA! HA!"
From Marc Morano @ epw.senate.gov:
BREAKING: Not again! Big DC Snowstorm to Greet 'Largest public protest of global warming ever in U.S.!' - Unseasonably Cold March Temps! [Note: All I (Marc Morano) can say is: HA! HA! HA! - The ‘Gore Effect’ Strikes again – this time it impacts NASA’s James Hansen! See also: GORE HEARING ON WARMING MAY BE PUT ON ICE – Jan. 26, 2009 ]
Spurred by his email blast and pumped by Drudge, the conservative blogosphere went into a tizzy that the East Coast has a snowstorm in the beginning of March:
Drudge Report: "'Largest public protest of global warming' ever in USA faces DC March snowstorm!"
Stop the ACLU: "As usual, great timing by the Climahysterics."
Gateway Pundit: "The global warming religionists have been planning this protest in Washington DC for months. They've billed it as the largest public protest of global warming in the United States ever. Today, Mother Nature greeted the junk science enthusiasts with a record storm and a foot of snow."
Watts Up With That reprinted part of Morano's email and writes: "It seems like the Climate Crew has had some trouble getting their messages across."
In addition, The Politico's Glenn Thrush blogged:
John Bresnahan correctly points out that it seems that a disproportionate number of GW events coincide with winter storms (and no, we're not going to provide other examples).
The Politico has run with this line of argument before -- in print. The Wonk Room checked with Bresnahan, a veteran reporter, and he explained in an e-mail that it was "a joke" that "was never meant to be posted." He continues:
As someone who wrote his first story on global warming and climate change while a reporter for the newsletter "Clean Air Report" back in 1993, I have no doubt that global climate change is occurring, it is anthropogenic in source, and the US gov't, as well as other industrialized nations and India/China, need to take action to reduce/combat it asap.
Bresnahan followed up in a phone call with another joke (we hope!): "Glenn Thrush's days are numbered."
Marc Morano's full email is at the Wonk Room.