Desperate times for global warmists call for desperate measures by the Senate’s only admitted socialist. I’ve heard more than one righty say that climate change is the left’s version of the war on terror (same global threat but minus any “oppressed” enemy to have to grapple with), but to Bernie I guess it’s the left’s version of World War II. I’m almost disappointed that he didn’t go the whole nine yards and compare skeptics to Holocaust deniers, but given his politics, it’s nice to know that there’s at least one war in American history he thinks was worth fighting.

“It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s,” said Sanders, perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate, during a Senate hearing Tuesday. “During that period of Nazism and fascism’s growth-a real danger to the United States and democratic countries around the world- there were people in this country and in the British parliament who said ‘don’t worry! Hitler’s not real! It’ll disappear!”

Sanders’ reference to the Nazi threat is sure to enrage Republicans who are already skeptical of the science behind climate change. But Sanders wasn’t the only one throwing bombs at a hearing that was ostensibly about the EPA’s fiscal 2011 budget. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called global warming a “hoax,” is asking for an investigation into the science used in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the governing body on climate science.

Earlier in the hearing, Inhofe had chided Sanders: “I know the senator from Vermont wants so badly to believe that the science on climate change is settled but it’s not.”

Click the image and skip ahead to around 1:25:00 for the money part, but don’t quit on the video until you hear him tout China’s conscientiousness in pursuing alternative forms of energy. Hey, Bernie? I don’t know if you’ve heard yet about that epic fail at Copenhagen, but it wasn’t, say, Jim Inhofe who wrecked the deal.

One tantalizing footnote to today’s hearing: The IPCC suddenly seems out of favor with Senator Ma’am. I wonder why.

Update: Via C-SPAN, here’s the YouTube clip.