There’s a big climate-science question that’s totally baffling the liberal press, especially the New York Times and Washington Post: Is Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Inhofe a real card-carrying climate-science “skeptic?” Or is he a hard-nosed “denier?” Warning, the question’s bogus, dumb and dangerous. Here’s why.

Skeptic or denier? Who cares? Not conservative capitalists and the GOP. But liberal journalists are fighting like uptight medieval scholars arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Damn it, focus on the big issues, substance not semantics.

Facts: In this year’s “Economic Assessment of Oil and Gas Tax Policy in Oklahoma,’ RegionTrack research firm says that “Oklahoma is second only to Texas in America’s oil and gas industry.” Big contributor to the state economy. Huge employer. Workers average over $100,000. And pay less taxes than national average.

Yes, Big Oil is big business in Big Jim’s Big Oklahoma. So no surprise Inhofe wrote the bible on the subject a couple years ago: “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

Yes, that’s effectively the GOP election platform. So why even question Inhofe’s motivation? Old news. A ClimateProgress reviewer of “The Greatest Hoax” noted that over the years Inhofe’s received “$1,352,523 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, including $90,950 from Koch Industries.” And in the 2012 elections, 90% of the entire industry’s donations went to GOP candidates.

So Inhofe’s record speaks for itself. He’s actually just a Big Oil lobbyist. He says he doesn’t believe “catastrophic climate change is real,” even claims global warming could be “beneficial to mankind.” More important, he relies heavily on divine guidance, or at least talks as if he does: “God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”

Yes, Inhofe’s got the liberal press playing his game, by his rules, the GOP’s favorite game: Play tough, confuse the opposition, rattle them with irrelevant distractions, like angels on a pin, get them shaking in their boots, then they’ll surrender, just walk off the battlefield.

Climate “skeptics?” “Deniers?” No, GOP is Big Oil’s biggest lobbyist

The GOP plays this game masterfully. Example: Obama played right into the GOP’s trap in the latest budget fight. Instead of standing on principle, he whimped out, bowed to the GOP’s strong-arm tactics orchestrated by Wall Street banks to eliminate all too-big-to-fail protections, to let the banking system go back to trading derivatives using the deposits of the American investors, and to recreate the exact same gambling casino mentality that ignited the 2008 bailout, forcing American taxpayers to pay over $10 trillion.

So, is Inhofe a “skeptic?” “Denier?” It’s a dumb’n’dumber question Not Inhofe, not any other member of the Republican Party is a true “skeptic.” Nor are they really “deniers.”

Inhofe’s a de facto Big Oil lobbyists. Period. So are all Republicans, all 54 Senators, all 246 Representatives, and over half the 30 GOP governors are on record as deniers. In fact. in a debate earlier this year all four candidates in the GOP primary for North Carolina governor publicly denied climate science is manmade, agreeing with the current governor, a former long-term Duke Power energy executive.

So what’s all the real fuss? Today, big journalism, like the Times and Post now prefer short-term trending trivia over broader wisdom. All this started when members of the elite Committee for Skeptical Inquiry recently issued this statement: “We are concerned that the words ‘skeptic’ and ‘denier’ have been conflated by the popular media. Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration.”

GOP-Inhofe PR machine is conquering UN climate science activists

The Skeptics Committee quoted Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” concluding that Inhofe’s “belief that global warming is ‘the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people’ is an extraordinary claim,” that he “has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him from using the title skeptic ... The most appropriate word ... is denial.”

Time to forget the silly “skeptic vs. denier” debate. Why? The Inhofe-GOP PR machine is winning anyway. Climate activists losing. Still the Committee argues that “by perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.” True skeptics “have devoted much of our careers to practicing and promoting scientific skepticism.” So, they want all journalists to “use more care when reporting on those who reject climate science, and ... stop using the word skeptic to describe deniers.”

OK, OK, we get it. Maybe even some journalists get it. But still, fighting over what to call the enemies of climate science is like fighting a war with muskets against nukes. Inhofe, the GOP, Exxon Mobil, the Koch Bros, every energy billionaire, fundamentalists and all the world’s climate-science-denying warriors got lots of cash, a huge arsenal and total commitment.

They not only don’t give a damn how climate scientists label them, they’re laughing all the way to the bank. Once again they have trapped their enemies in another distracting, meaningless side game. And that keeps open the real battlefield so all GOP capitalists can just keep getting more and more power over America’s so-called democracy, over our regulatory system, and lots more lobbying power over the government’s trillion budget.

Climate? GOP at war for total control of America ... and they’re winning

Remember, the GOP is the party of big business, big banks, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Ag in a today world where just 67 billionaires already control half the world’s wealth. And as Thomas Piketty says in his classic “Capital in the 21st Century,” capitalists will just keep getting stronger, the inequality gap will just keep getting wider, until eventually, as Credit Suisse predicts, 11 trillionaire capitalists will control the entire world.

So get real folks, admit it, Inhofe is just one of a massive capitalist army taking over America, just one more inside-the-Beltway de facto lobbyist that Big Oil money elects to the Senate through America’s so-called democracy that’s been rendered dysfunctional by what Jack Bogle calls “mutant capitalism,” superrich billionaire forces who can buy and sell Congress votes and elections easily because they’re bankrolled with billions in cash.

In the final analysis, the “skeptic-vs.-denier” joke is on liberal journalists: Because climate activists like the RiskyBusiness.org partnership of Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson and Tom Steyner get it ... Bill McKibben’s 350.org of activists get it ... The 2,500 scientists working on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1989 get it. Even 63% of American voters get it.

But their enemies don’t care, they’re chanting, sticks and stones can break their bones, but names will never hurt them ... and they are also winning the war.