US climate change denier James Inhofe joins Al Gore in fight against soot

In a surprise U-turn, the Republican senator has put forward a bill to review the dangers of black carbon to health and the environment

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 May 2009 13.23 BST

He has called global warming a hoax, compared the Environmental Protection Agency with the Gestapo, and over the years dismissed Al Gore as desperate and "full of crap". So it was startling when America's arch climate change denier came out ahead of the green curve in the fight to save the Arctic and other icy regions.
Could James Inhofe, a conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, be the newest recruit to Barack Obama's green revolution?
Inhofe, in a surprise move, joined Democratic senators in putting forward a bill for an official review of the dangers of soot or "black carbon" to public health and the environment late last month.
"Black carbon ... is thought to be the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide," the bill said. It gave experts from the Environmental Protection Agency a year to make suggestions to Congress on reducing the pollutant, caused by old diesel engines and burning wood.
Inhofe has been fighting for years against the growing body of science that claims human activity causes climate change. Obama's determination to move America off fossil fuels – and a series of new green measures – initially appeared to have no effect on the Oklahoman.
In Senate hearings, the Republican continued in his self-appointed mission of heckling Gore and experts on climate change and squabbling with the chair of the environment and public works committee, Barbara Boxer.
His support for the black carbon bill met with astonishment from left and right.
A former aide to Inhofe went so far as to suggest that his staff had been duped into allowing him to support the review. A blogger on the liberal website Daily Kos suggested he had been afflicted with "sudden onset dementia".
Inhofe, in an interview with the Guardian, insisted that there was nothing out-of-step between his concern about soot and his broader views on climate change.
"It's not a pollutant, it's a particulate matter. So we are talking about two different things and I am surprised that anyone would be at all surprised that I would be trying to find out about black carbon while I don't buy the idea that anthropogenic gases are causing global warming."
He said his concern about the health effects of soot grew from his interest in Africa, where poor families who cook on wood stoves can suffer lung diseases from the soot.
As for the oddness of his alliance with the climate evangelist Gore, Inhofe said: "Al Gore probably would be against automobile accidents and I am too. This has nothing to do with the CO2 issue."
But the convergence of interests has raised hopes among environmentalists that it might be easier to reach consensus on the need to act on soot – which is familiar and can be felt and touched – than it has been on greenhouse gases.
"This is a very significant breakthrough from his past positions so we are very pleased," said Erika Rosenthal of EarthJustice.
In a further twist, Inhofe came out a few days ahead of Gore in drawing the public's attention to what scientists have recently identified as the main cause of global warming after carbon dioxide.
Soot was not even mentioned as a cause of global warming in the United Nations' report on climate science in 2007. But scientists now see the pollutant as the main cause of global warming after carbon dioxide – and say it may require even more urgent action because of the speed of which ice in the Arctic is disappearing.
Gore told a conference in Norway last week that soot, from diesel and wood burning stoves, was creating a dangerous haze of pollution in the Arctic that absorbed sunlight and warmed the air.
"A new understanding is emerging of soot," said Gore. "Black carbon is settling in the Himalayas. The air pollution levels in the upper Himalayas are now similar to those in Los Angeles."
Inhofe for now says he does not support the idea of limiting black carbon emissions, saying he is concerned about the cost to poor families in Africa. In Washington, there is little expectation that Inhofe will be an enthusiastic joiner of Obama's green revolution, but some are hoping this might be a tiny first step.
If it is, Inhofe is not telling. "I want to know more about it – nothing sinister about this at all," he said. "Should I apologise that Al Gore and Barbara Boxer agree that we need to know more about black carbon. I don't think so."