“Those who are familiar with Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) know he is a straight shooter who speaks his mind,” says the liberal-media bashing NewsBusters.org blog. And the contents of his mind are, to some degree, evident in his 2003 claim on the floor of the U.S. Congress that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Inhofe has now clarified that view further in an interview with the Tulsa World, in which he says the the campaign, most recently led by the likes of Al Gore and Tom Brokaw (on Discovery Channel) is an outrage. “It kind of reminds … I could use the Third Reich, the big lie,” Inhofe said.

The Nazi reference is offensively over the top, of course, but we’re sympathetic to the Senator’s view that this debate features more than its fair share of unfounded propaganda. The question is whether those innacuracies and overstatements are being driven by an inexplicable international conspiracy of the most accomplished climate scientists in the world, or by the self-serving sorts in the energy industry and their client politicians, who have a direct financial interest in delaying any policies that will discourage the overuse of fossil fuels.