You know what's so absurd about this? Republicans would rather that voters believe they're too stupid to see the obvious:
The US Senate resoundingly reaffirmed the existence of global warming during contentious debate on 21 January over legislation that would authorize construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. But lawmakers narrowly rejected the idea that human activities have played a role in climate change.
Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island offered an amendment that stated that climate change is “not a hoax”. The lawmaker criticized his Republican colleagues for either denying or neglecting to address the issue while pushing for an oil pipeline that would increase greenhouse-gas emissions. Keystone XL would carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the US Midwest, connecting to existing pipelines that run to the Gulf of Mexico.
“Let’s find out if there are people on the Republican side of the aisle who are willing to say climate change is real,” Whitehouse said.
At least on this particular vote, the answer was unequivocal: lawmakers voted 98-1 to adopt a 16-word, non-binding amendment that poked fun at the Senate’s leading climate sceptic, Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma. “It is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax,” reads the provision. Even Inhofe, who once called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", joined Whitehouse as a last-minute sponsor of the amendment.
Senators narrowly rejected an amendment from Senator Brian Schatz (Democrat, Hawaii) that went a step further, pinning some of the blame for climate change on human activities. The provision failed, 50-49.
