"LATEST NEWS" item on FoxNews.com front page linked not to news story, but to Republican blog post
SUMMARY: The front page of FoxNews.com contained a headline under the "LATEST NEWS" tab that read "Report: Over 400 Scientists Dispute Man-Made Warming," the link to which led to a post on the blog of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) -- not a news report.
On December 21, the front page of FoxNews.com contained a headline under the "LATEST NEWS" tab that read "Report: Over 400 Scientists Dispute Man-Made Warming." However, the purported "LATEST NEWS" item did not link to a news report but, rather, to a post on "The Inhofe EPW Press Blog," the blog of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking minority member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The headline on the post to which the FoxNews.com headline linked states: "U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007: Senate Report Debunks 'Consensus.' " But as the post itself makes clear, the report was not put out by the U.S. Senate or by the full Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but by the "office of the GOP Ranking Member."
The headline also appeared in the "SCITECH" section of the FoxNews.com front page on December 21, and the link led to the same Inhofe post.
Media Matters for America noted that on the December 6, 2006, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, correspondent Molly Henneberg uncritically aired Inhofe's false claim that "[i]t was warmer in the '30s than it is today" and Inhofe's baseless assertion that "it was warmer in the 15th century than it is today." Also, during an interview on the November 28, 2006, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Inhofe asserted that there is no "relationship between manmade gases and global warming," and co-host Steve Doocy echoed this argument, declaring that Inhofe had made a "great point" because "there's been no scientific connection" established between climate change and human activity. In 2003, Inhofe called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
the fact is that inhofe is a front man for the huge oil and gas interests in his home state of oklahoma. and fox is a corporate republican shill. the problem is too many people believe this tripe. the deniers will talk about a snowstorm, as if anyone ever predicted no more snowstorms, but somehow they miss the massive melting that has gone on in the arctic and greenland. and a lot of the comments on inhofe's site are to the effect that we've had warming cycles in the past. no one denies that. the contention is that what is happening now is occurring because of the massive amounts of pollutants pumped into the air. what these geniuses are saying is that no matter how many millions of tons of pollutants you have in the air, it makes no difference. it's fifth grade science. add a variable in massive amounts and you have changed the situation.
here's an example. this is cartoonist wayne stayskal, distributed by the tribune media services [chicago tribune and l.a. times to name a couple of their papers]. he constantly is on the "it's snowing so there is no global warming" bandwagon.
http://www.cagle.com/news/GlobalWarming07/5.asp
here is an example of what they do not want to talk about, and how al gore was supposedly lying about melting ice affecting polar bears and other animals that depend on ice sheets for their ability to venture out into the sea and get food. this is a report from about a week ago, concerning walruses being forced onto land because of melting ice, and being killed in stampedes because of the overcrowding.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/071215-ap-walrus-warming.html
Mefirst, thanks for the cartoon, this simple-minded boiling down of the climate change issue is the essence of the pablum that the media likes to dole out to the laziest of our fellow Americans.
The fear of thinking and the threat to people that they may have to slightly change their habits is used very effectively to peddle this crap as sort of a rebellious, against-conventional-wisdom stance.
I tuned into Rush L's show just about 1/2 hour ago, and one of his zombies started her phone call by bragging that she had the TV blasting, the oven on, and was using as much toilet paper as she wanted, and she said it with the sort of defiance in her voice that you might expect from a serious political dissident.
Rush gave her a very earnest,breathy "You go, Girl!" or something close to that.
These are the 30%ers.
have a good holiday.
Caught the item on an early morning perusal of the FOXnews website and wondered how long it would be before it was posted here. Interesting list of characters, will have to do some research this weekend before reaching any personal conclusions as to the authenticity of the information.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb&IsTextOnly=True
i noticed one of the guys was from the "natural resources stewardship project", which sounds all very earth friendly. except that group was formed last year with a lot of the same people from a group called the "friends of science", which was outed by the canadian paper "globe and mail" as taking money from alberta oil interests. see the link. and merry christmas, oscar, you are always willing to engage in a reasonable conversation.
http://www.desmogblog.com/discredited-friends-of-science-emerge-as-the-natural-resources-stewardship-project
and this link shows that the just passed bill to raise cafe standards and encourage energy conservation was largely along party lines. democrats for and republicans against.
http://www.platts.com/Natural%20Gas/News/7749488.xml?src=Natural%20Gasrssheadlines1
Thanks for your research on this, & Merry Christmas.
same to you. some of this stuff i actually read about in the newspaper and then find on the internet, the walrus story for one. some right winger was trying to claim that the republicans "delivered" on increasing mileage standards. if you look at the history going back thirty years, in general republicans have been against raising them and democrats for.
The headline also appeared in the "SCITECH" section of the FoxNews.com...
Shouldn't that be the "SCIFI" (Science Fiction) section?
Indeed! The basic problem with Scooter Inhofe is that he is dishonest.
Normally I wouldn't wish longevity for any of these fools at Faux News, but I wish I could be in their face 20 or 30 years from now to see even one of them crying and pleaing to Jesus as their beach home falls into the ocean.
Found a hard copy that was probably this, in a restroom at work this week. Made a few anotations to it.
400 scientists could probably start their own publication. Hope I get some time to check the sources out this weekend.
This is SOP for FOX. After all, they hired Steven Milloy as their science writer--this is the Steven Milloy that celebrated the death of an environmental activist, the Steven Milloy who was kicked out of the CATO institute for non-disclosure of a conflict of interest, the Steven Milloy who peddles misinformation on passive smoking, DDT and global warming, the Steven Milloy who said (three days after the attacks) that the twin towers would have stood longer if asbestos hadn't been banned, in short, as corrupt and biased a source as one could find if one's purpose were to find a shill.
And yet he works for FOX News. Speaks volumes.
Interesting how one half of the RWnuts say the earth isn't getting warmer and the other half admits there is warming but claims it's natural.
Can't you just smell the cognitive dissonance?
But you can't deny they've made progress.
Until recently many of them believed the earth to be flat.
Unfortunately, they still believe the earth to be 6,000 years old.
Well stated, Mefirst, but I'd like to add - about the snowstorms and other outrageous (cold) weather events - that they too are a 'positive-negative' or action-reaction' effect of global warming and as such are a predictable result to earth science. They in no way, change or shed doubt on the now-established-scientific-fact of human influenced, global warming.
Only the worst, uninformed, and slanted distortion of science could ever argue that they mitigate against our current knowledge!
that was my point. the presence of snowstorms proves nothing.
Your an optimist Blu. A light run through the senators press statement would change few opinions. The Misinformation of the year thread has some good coments. I'd call it a lot of somebodies work, but I wasn't impressed by the qualifications of many, and the small minded coments of some. The emphisis on other possible causes, the uselessness of any of our actions. I wonder how many were attracted by and recieved AEI's $10,000 bounty.
Still I expect it will be used in global warming arguments for longer than its actual merit would indicate.
I'm surprised Media Matters did not pick up on this story as well, which was spread throughout the right-wing media, including Drudge Report.
The article was linked directly from Drudge Report to Inhofe's anti-global warming blog. The skeptical "scientist" it highlighted is actually a former Margaret Thatcher advisor named Lord Christopher Monckton, who runs a business consulting firm that works for the coal and oil industries. The Inhofe article only listed Monckton as "UK climate researcher", but Monckton has no scientific backround (his degree is in JOURNALISM). They also did not note that he owns a business consulting/PR firm. Monckton is a quack who in the past wrote papers about AIDS only affecting gay people, and called heterosexual AIDS a "myth".
Here was the Inhofe article, which appeared all over the internet (including the front page on Drudge Report on December 11th).
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=c9554887-802a-23ad-4303-68f67ebd151c