Rick Perry Picks Up Endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe, Climate Change Skeptic

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2011 -- Gov. Rick Perry's most recent endorsement came today from Sen. Jim Inhofe, a fellow climate-change skeptic, who said the Texas Governor is the strongest Republican to challenge President Obama in 2012.

"I've known Gov. Rick Perry for a long time, and I am endorsing him because I know he is the strongest leader to run against and defeat President Obama. After three years of Obama's liberal agenda, Rick Perry is the right person to get America working again and turn our country in the right direction," Sen. Inhofe said in Tulsa, Okla., today. "We can't afford four more years of the Obama malaise. Look at what Rick Perry has done in his state. He is going to be a great president!"

Inhofe shares in Perry's skepticism regarding climate change, having repeatedly called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and has argued the globe is moving into a "cooling period," a theory Perry supported in his book "Fed Up!"

"He won't cave in to the extreme environmental activists or the Hollywood crowd and their liberal agenda," Inhofe said of Perry.

When Washington, D.C., was buried under snow in the winter of 2010, Inhofe and his family built an igloo with signs jokingly calling it Al Gore's new home.

"If, in fact, global warming is taking place, it's kind of hard on a day like today and the last few days to be talking about global warming," Inhofe said on the Senate floor in February 2010. "I often say, where is it when you need it?"

In the opening week of his campaign, Perry labeled global warming as being "politicized," arguing that scientists "have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their, to their projects." Perry's criticism of climate change theorists drew fire from fellow Republicans.