While all of the attention today in Washington is on the looming fiscal cliff, President Obama’s administration is quietly handing over billions of dollars to the United Nations in the name of global warming.

Hello, I am Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and chief critic of President Obama’s far left green agenda

Over the past decade, I have been leading the charge in Washington to make sure the global warming hoax is exposed. A big part of that effort has been putting the spotlight on what takes place at the UN’s annual global warming conferences. While I have been unable to travel to the last few conferences, I have counted on groups like CFACT to provide “on the ground” reports. This year’s UN conference is in Doha, Qatar and I’m pleased that Lord Christopher Monckton is there working with his partners, including CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker and Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com. I’m certainly looking forward to the release of Climate Depot’s new report that debunks the alarmists’ extreme weather claims.

One of the Senate's top proponents of action on climate change said today that several of her colleagues intend to introduce climate change bills in the next Congress, spurred on by the recent experience with Superstorm Sandy.

"I think we'll have many," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), adding that the storm that menaced the East Coast last month had raised the profile of climate change both on and off Capitol Hill. "So I have a lot of people working on legislation."

She predicted that several senators would release legislation in the first five months of the new Congress.

Inhofe spoke as U.N. climate talks are under way in Doha, Qatar. No U.S. lawmakers are currently scheduled to attend the talks, which Inhofe dismissed as "an annual party" for bureaucrats.

Inhofe's office has not ruled out the possibility of his attending the talks via video message, as he did last year. But a trip to Qatar would be wasted, he told reporters yesterday, because there is no possibility that the United States will pass comprehensive climate change legislation in the coming years.

"That is a promise," he said. "It's not going to happen. So why go down there and waste a lot of time?"

The Heartland Institute has collected more than 15,000 signatures on a petition demanding Congress rein in a “rogue” Environmental Protection Agency. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and The Heartland Institute will present the petitions to Congress at a public event in the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington, DC on Tuesday, November 27 at 11 a.m.



WHAT: “Rein in the EPA” Petition Presentation and Press Conference

WHEN: Tuesday, November 27, 11 a.m. EST

WHERE: Capitol Visitors Center, SVC 215, Washington, DC

WHO: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and The Heartland Institute

MEDIA: Open to the public and all press

President Obama's hyperactive regulators went on hiatus in 2011 to get through Election Day. Now with his second term secure, they're about to make up for lost time and then some.

The government defines "economically significant" rules as those that impose annual costs of $100 million or more, and the Bush, Clinton and Bush Administrations each ended up finalizing about 45 major rules per year. The average over Mr. Obama's first two years was 63 but then plunged to 44 for 2011 and 2012 so far. The bureaucracies didn't slow down. They merely postponed and built up a backlog that is about to hit the Federal Register.

We'd report the costs of the major-rule pipeline if we had current data. But the White House budget office document known as the unified agenda that reveals the regulations under development hasn't been published since fall 2011. The delay violates multiple federal laws and executive orders that require an agenda every six months, so we thought readers might like a rough guide to the regulatory flood that is about to roll through the economy.

Sen. James Inhofe said last night in a Web-based interview that he would still be "in charge" of climate skepticism on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, despite ceding his ranking membership to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.).

"Senator Vitter has said publicly that I will still be in charge on this issue," the Oklahoma Republican said in an interview hosted by climate skeptic Anthony Watts. Inhofe noted that he has spent 10 years as the most vocal man-made climate change disbeliever in the Senate and said he would remain so as a senior member of the EPW Committee.

Inhofe has reached his term limit as the top Republican on the panel.

Earlier in the day, Inhofe told E&E; Daily that he was better prepared than any of his colleagues to push back against the science of man-made climate change, which he has famously called "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

"Right now, you can't ignore the highest tax increase in history because of the outcome of the election, and I'm probably a little better-equipped to talk about it than any of the rest of them are," he said.

That largest tax increase in history, he said, would come as President Obama's U.S. EPA rolls out its regulatory regime for carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. A rule has already been proposed for new power plants and is expected to be finalized by the end of this year. Rules for existing power plants and refineries are expected to follow, and greens have begun to push for restrictions for other sectors, including hydraulic fracturing.

One of the mores striking aspects of this presidential campaign is how little President Obama is saying on the stump about his plans for a second-term agenda. So keen is the president to keep his ideas from leaking to the public, that his administration is now trying to hide its regulatory agenda.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe has spent the past week noting that the Obama administration as of today will be missing a statutory deadline on regulatory transparency. The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires federal agencies to publish in the Federal Register descriptions of economically significant regulations they expect to propose. These agendas are required to be published on a semi-annual basis, in both April and October. The Obama administration has now failed to meet this legal requirement since the fall of 2011.