A 70-foot-tall hot air balloon rose above South Carolina, on three days last week to “expose the ballooning costs of global warming hysteria” in the latest “grassroots” event organised by Americans for Prosperity, the rightwing group that inflamed the healthcare debate over the summer and is set to do the same on climate change.

AFP took its “hot air campaign” – against the Obama administration’s efforts to cut carbon emissions – to South Carolina in a direct attack on Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator.