James Inhofe, former Republican senator who called climate change a ‘hoax’, dies aged 89

Inhofe resigned as senator for Oklahoma in January 2023, suffering long-term effects of Covid-19.

His widely ridiculed snowball stunt came in 2015, during a rambling speech in which he claimed climate conditions on Earth were the work of a supreme being, and attempted to discredit a Nasa report that found that 2014 was the hottest year recorded globally to date.

“My point is, God’s still up there,” Inhofe said during a 2012 interview during promotion for his book focusing on global warming as “a conspiracy”.

“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.”

Following the scandal over US service members photographed abusing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, Inhofe said he “was more outraged at the outrage” than the torture of the inmates.