We couldn't end the week without calling your attention to an incident at Wednesday's Senate Environment and Public Works Committee meeting, where Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) made it known where he goes for his climate science research: The Farmer's Almanac.

Kudos to the good folks at DeSmogBlog for uncovering this hysterically disturbing nugget from the Senate's leading climate change skeptic. As he concluded his opening statement at this week's EPW business meeting, the committee's ranking member alluded to upcoming bills that address global warming:

I would like to point out that according to the new Farmers’ Almanac released this week and its time-honored, complex calculations that it uses to predict weather, they predict we will be in for a colder than normal winter. In addition, they suggest that based on a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate that we will be in for a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.

Ooooookaaaaay. We're not sure where this ranks on the Inhofe Backwards-Thinking Meter, but it's certainly on par with the senator's propensity to cite Michael Crichton's science fiction novels as evidence of the global warming hoax.

But who are we to judge the science credentials of The Farmer's Almanac, which is nearing it's 200th year of continuous publication? As explained by the Almanac's editors, they don't "use computers" to make their long-range weather projections. Instead, they use a "top-secret, but mathematical and astronomical formula."

The only person who knows all the details of that formula, according to the almanac, is Caleb Weatherbee. "While Caleb is a real person who lives somewhere in the United States, his true identity and name is kept top secret." Again, this is the source cited by a United States senator.

Stay tuned for next week's EPW meeting, where the esteemed senator will attempt to sell his colleagues some of the dozens of cure-all elixirs and tonics that he carries in his briefcase.