My Take | United States Republicans take potshots at US-China climate deal

No sooner did Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama toast each other on their breakthrough pact on climate change than Republican crackpots in the US Congress started threatening to undermine the agreement.

Granted, the targets set may be less than meet the eye. The US-based group Climate Interactive has run computer simulations showing the new agreement will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 700 billion tons by 2100, equivalent to just 8 per cent of the projected cumulative carbon pollution. Still, the pact marks an important agreement between two superpowers which still have major differences on a range of issues on which the security and welfare of the world depend.

Republicans have been emboldened by their party's midterm election victories. It's instructive to consider where their climate sceptics stand. "I will do everything in my power to rein in ... the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]'s unchecked regulations," said Senator James Inhofe, one of Congress' most prominent climate change sceptics, in response to the pact.

The EPA, which he previously compared to the Gestapo, will be a key federal agency to monitor commitments made under the new pact. In 2012, Inhofe told a Christian radio programme that the Bible had refuted climate change. As "God is still up there", it's arrogant for humans to think they can "change what He is doing in the climate".

Other influential climate change deniers include Lamar Smith, Republican chairman of the House science, space and technology committee, and fellow Republicans Paul Broun and James Sensenbrenner. Smith admitted on Bloomberg TV last week he hadn't read the latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but still concluded that "most of the predictions have been wrong".

Under Smith, the committee has held more meetings discussing aliens than climate change. Fellow committee member Sensenbrenner has called climate science "scientific fascism" while Broun, a creationist, has claimed the earth was "created in six days as we know them".