Fox follows story on stolen CRU climate change emails by noting snow in Texas
On America's Newsroom, Fox News co-host Patti Ann Browne followed up a report on stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) -- which she suggested indicated that climate scientists may have "fudged statistics on global warming and colluded to keep opposing views off the table" -- by saying, "Well, amidst all this talk of global warming, a winter weather warning in none other than Texas. Houston expected to break a record today with the earliest snowfall -- yes, snowfall -- ever recorded in that city's history." But climate scientists reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate, and several major climate data centers have said that thus far, 2009 is one of the warmest years on record.
Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.
Report on "what some call climate-gate" followed by video of "the earliest snowfall -- yes, snowfall" in Houston
Segue from CRU email story: "Well, amidst all this talk of global warming, a winter weather warning in none other than Texas." On the December 4 edition of America's Newsroom, Browne read a report on investigations into what she called "the climate change data debacle" -- that is, the stolen emails from the CRU, which numerous Fox News personalities have falsely claimed show that scientists doctored data and that global warming is not actually occurring -- followed by co-host Bill Hemmer noting a separate investigation into "what some call climate-gate." When Hemmer concluded, Browne said:
BROWNE: Well, amidst all this talk of global warming, a winter weather warning in none other than Texas. Houston expected to break a record today with the earliest snowfall -- yes, snowfall -- ever recorded in that city's history. What's happening right now? Let's take a look. We're looking at these pictures right now courtesy of our affiliate KRIV. It is sort of hard to tell from this picture, but we have been watching this live shot for a while. And it does look like something is coming down, and we are hearing that snow is coming down. Snow is very rare in Houston. On average, it snows here once every four years, but according to the National Weather Service, Bill, Houston could get up to an inch today.
Climate scientists: Individual storms have no relevance to global warming debate
NASA climatologist: "Weather isn't going to go away because of climate change." A March 2 New York Times article reported that climate scientists -- including at least one who has disputed aspects of the scientific consensus on global warming -- completely reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate:
Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.
"The current downturn is not very unusual,'' said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.
[...]
Michael E. Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction.
Discerning a human influence on climate, he said, ''involves finding a signal in a noisy background.'' He added, ''The only way to do this within our noisy climate system is to average over a sufficient number of years that the noise is greatly diminished, thereby revealing the signal. This means that one cannot look at any single year and know whether what one is seeing is the signal or the noise or both the signal and the noise.''
[...]
Some scientists who strongly disagree with each other on the extent of warming coming in this century, and on what to do about it, agreed that it was important not to be tempted to overinterpret short-term swings in climate, either hot or cold.
Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and commentator with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, has long chided environmentalists and the media for overstating connections between extreme weather and human-caused warming. (He is on the program at the skeptics' conference.)
But Dr. Michaels said that those now trumpeting global cooling should beware of doing the same thing, saying that the ''predictable distortion'' of extreme weather ''goes in both directions.''
Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan who has spoken out about the need to reduce greenhouse gases, disagrees with Dr. Michaels on many issues, but concurred on this point.
''When I get called by CNN to comment on a big summer storm or a drought or something, I give the same answer I give a guy who asks about a blizzard,'' Dr. Schmidt said. ''It's all in the long-term trends. Weather isn't going to go away because of climate change. There is this desire to explain everything that we see in terms of something you think you understand, whether that's the next ice age coming or global warming.''
Major climate data centers indicate that thus far, 2009 is among the warmest years on record
NOAA: 2009 "tied with 2007 as the fifth-warmest January-through-October period on record." NOAA's National Climatic Data Center stated in its October Global Analysis that "[f]or the year to date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 14.7 °C (58.4 °F) tied with 2007 as the fifth-warmest January-through-October period on record." Similarly, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies found that 2009 year-to-date global temperature ranks fifth warmest out of 130 years. The BBC also reported on November 24 that "[t]his year will be one of the top five warmest years globally since records began 150 years ago, according to figures compiled by the Met Office." The BBC further reported that "[o]ther sources say it could even be the third warmest."
Global warming upsets the natural weather patterns.
The theory of unemployment is being promoted by employment agency and welfare workers so that they can keep receiving their governmnet grants. If there wasn't any unemployment, these people might have to go out and get real jobs.
As for the rest of your ridiculous post . . . really dumb, bub, really, really dumb.
I am satisfied that you picked up on the "really dumb" part, though.
As the wingnuts descend further and further into self-parody, even something as wild as your "theory of unemployment" doesn't seem over the line.
Check out the Beck/Hitler thread to see a very nice illustration of this.
And, now the unemployment numbers are part of a conspiracy to keep employment agencies and welfare workers fat with government grants. (Before, they were used to tell us how ineffectual our president is - I guess it is a double edged sword. Since the numbers went down this month, they are already looking for some new story.
global warming does not upset natural weather patterns; weather patterns upset by global warming is natural...
Actually, global warming makes Dr. Evil angry, in turn causing Mr. Biggelsworth to get upset. And we all know what happens when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset.
I wanted to respond with a rant about the difference between climate and weather, but thought better of it. I'm not sure he (or any of his friends posting "That's what I was saying!" nonsense) got the joke, but this was my reply:
Morans.
Oh, forget the short term changes unless it happens to further the narrative that global warming enthusiasts want. Too funny. And of course these snowfalls in Houston irks them even more and why it's crucial to change the name from global warming to climate change. Again, too funny.
There is no controversy among the scientific community - it is only a handful of pseudo-scientists and people with an agenda who continue this ridiculous fight against the truth of climate change.
It wasn't his intent, but he actually gave the phenomenon a more accurate name than global warming. While the globe IS warming, it doesn't just mean that temperatures are going to be higher . . . it means that our climate patterns are going to . . . and already are . . . changing. Rapidly.
Global warming is a fact and it is creating climate change . . . very rapidly. The bizarre weather patterns are proof of it. Not sure why folks like you are so invested in denying that man's disgustingly destructive habits are accelerating it. If it's economic . . . what's the point of having money if the world's uninhabitable? Just a thought.
Not much, really. All we want is justice.
Otherwise it's pointless, now isn't it? Which means you're just wasting my time.
Cap and trade legislation is a fine start, because it incentivizes green technologies. The smart grid will be a big step toward using solar and wind energies to greater advantage. Tax credits are already in place in many regions for green energy production, and for purchasing cars that consume less or no fossil fuels. These are all things that the Right has fought against.
Every time green legislation comes up, the Right whines about how much it will cost, with no consideration for how much it will cost if we ignore the need to eliminate fossil fuels.
It is a selfish trade of temporary comfort - comfort now - in place of a world worth living in 100 years from now.
And, it is just stupid. The truth is that the conventional ways to produce energy are disappearing - and will completely disappear, if not today, then eventually.
You all p/ss and moan about the debt but can't even understand that the best way to eliminate the debt in the future is to invest now in a new engine for a new (green) economy. The best thing America could do is to become the world leaders in production of those things the rest of the globe will need in the next century.
The Right preaches risk aversive behavior - the most anti-American thing I can imagine. Our ancestors would weep to hear the things the Right says. It wasn't risk aversive to strike out across the ocean, or to settle an unknown continent. It wasn't risk aversive to build the railroads, the highway system, or capsules to the moon.
The Right wants to return us to those glory days, but doesn't want to face the truth: back in those "glory days" taxes were much higher, the governement wasn't held in general contempt, and civil projects were routine.
The Right is dominated by a bunch of luddites and in-bred idiots, as near as I can tell. And those who are exceptions are just a bunch of contemtible materialist pigs who are using the luddites and idiots for their own gain.
Ultimately, all electricity is generated by passing conductive metals over a magnetized surface - that is what a generator does.
The world is alive with movement that is organic and need not be produced in ways that cause waste. Sidewalks can be segmented and floating so that every step taken produces electricity - highways can be made using the same theory. magnets can be placed at intervals in highways so that every automobile moving past them generates electricity. Bridges can be ringed with magnets to do the same thing. Waves that strike the beaches with regularity are another form of movement, and the mineral-rich waters of the oceans will produce electricity through chemical reaction.
There are already farms across the country that have installed wind turbunes that produce enough electricity to power the farm and provide sell-back to the utilities - and these aren't even cutting-edge turbines, just run-of-the-mill windmills.
Nuclear energy would be a quick and easy solution, but our history has shown us that quick and easy is not usually the best way to do things.
If you get that touchy and defensive when you are asked for specifics on what you really want, then that tells me you don't want the specifics out there, because public support would fade when they realize the economic impact all these initiatives would cost and the control you want over people's lives.
So you have to package it by demonizing those who don't buy into every peer reviewed study, and lay on thick the vague generalities to hoodwink the public into thinking if they don't buy it lock, stock and barrel they are just clueless evil land-rapers.
Typical liberal policies, never say what you really want because the public will reject it. So call it something else, label it something else, bob dodge and dance around it. Anything but the truth.
Notice that I said it is a fine start? Notice that I went on to say that we need to eliminate the use of fossil fuels? Many of the technologies that will be required don't exist, yet, wrong OFF. They need to be incentivized - as is happenning with tax credits that your buddies routinely oppose.
You have enough specifics, you just don't seem bright enough to understand them. That isn't my fault, nor is it MY character flaw to point it out.
Get off your lazy keister and start reading something besides the dreck published by the Rightwing lie machine. They are using you and you are allowing it - all the while fooling yourself into believing you are somehow privy to the Machievellian machinations of a non-existent leftwing cabal.
The changes should have started years ago, but your boys fought them at every turn so they could keep lifting money from your wallet. And if you were even half as intelligent as you pretend to be, no-one would have to be telling you any of this.
Now, go read a book.
You will just have to start coming clean eventually, because the days of hoodwinking the public into buying these huge government mandated nanny state policies are pretty much over. You've soaked us all enough over the years we are wise to it all now.
Try the truth for a change.
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php
Who do you think paid for the railroads? The interstate highways?
The truth is that our founding fathers envisioned a system that would allow people to trust their government and it has been subverted by conservatives to cause people to think that government is their enemy. Our founders set up a representative democracy that allows the people to elect the people they want to make the decisions in the best interest of the people. And, oh yeah, the people elected Democrats (among them, a boatload of progressives) to make those decisions.
You are on the wrong side of history, bubba.
I am not intentionally insulting you - it is just a natural by-product of my contempt for people who have not taken the time to think for themselves, armed with a knowledge of history and political science.
You behave as though it is my fault that you are a tool. Well, if you don't want to be a tool, push away from your computer, turn off the TV, and educate yourself. Stop blaming other people for your own powerlessness.
Have you lost your mind? The founding fathers mistrusted huge government controlling so much of people's lives, why do you think there is the 2nd amendment for starters? They envisioned small, efficient government, with as much state control as possible.
I suggest you read a book, a history book on the founding of this country. You need a lesson on that bad.
They were fighting the remote governance of the crown. They set up a system that would allow for taxation WITH representation.
The Republic was a political compromise, necessitated by the pre-existence of 13 distinct entities in the original congress.
They recognized the need for a central authority and set up a system that would allow each state an equal voice (the Senate) while also aquiescing to the people by allowing a voice based upon population (the House). They balanced the Executive branch by creating a legislative and a judicial branch. They balanced the legislative branch through the executive and the judicial, and they established a check upon the judicial through the legislature and the executive.
The system was designed to provide a balance that would allow the people to trust their government. It most assuredly was not designed to be mistrusted.
And if you think I need to read up on this, you are really badly informed. This is what I have one of my college degrees in. You are way out of your depth.
Sell your degree for scrap paper.
We show our individual skepticism on election day, but we then relinquish control to our governmental bodies - at every level.
Rather than telling me what your Rightwing heroes think, read the Federalist Papers, or refer to the many notes left by Madison as he wrote the Constitution.
Under Eisenhower, the top marginal tax rate was 91% against every 400,000 dollars earned - and there were precious few loopholes. Your BS about liberals wanting big, obtrusive government is entirely without merit. One of the few Republican presidents who was worth a damn in the last century had a larger government than any Democrat has ever attempted, so don't give me that BS. Even Reagan expanded the government while he talked about shrinking it.
Take a look at this graph and then try to tell me that Democrats/liberals equate to big government: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
You will note that the ratio of debt to GDP was lowest under Carter. You will note that Eisenhower was the only Republican that made any meaningful reduction in that ratio.
Again, if you are just going to parrot the garbage your Rightwing heroes are telling you, you are out of your depth.
Generalization Troll. Yet again.
Oh, but we won't mention how hot it was. That's "inconvenient" for the deniers.
BTW - The diurnal temperature variation is also decreasing over time. That's the difference between day temps and night-time temps. Why? The heat isn't radiating away at night like it use to, due to heat trapped by GH gases. Another "inconvenient truth" for the deniers.
SLRTX-
True...tempertaure has been on the rise over the years, you're stating the obvious. But, even though climate and global temperatures have fluctuated in 100,000 year cycles over the past 4.5 billion years a graph showing a temperature increase over the past 50 is proof that humans are the culprit? You're touting 50 years of data when the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Now that's funny!
What is the single most important factor in scientific testing? Sample size!
If humans are the cause of CC due to the use of fossil fuels and the resulting emissions of CO2 then one would expect a rise in CO2 causes a rise in temperature. But that's not the case at all, it's actually the inverse. It is a scientific fact - not theory, that as temperatures rise, CO2 also rises but lags temperature by 800-1000 years.
Here, check these facts kool-aide drinker:
"This graph of the Vostok ice core data shows that the Ice Age maximums and the warm interglacials occur within a regular cyclic pattern, the graph-line of which is similar to the rhythm of a heartbeat on an electrocardiogram tracing.
The Vostok data graph also shows that changes in global CO2 levels lag behind global temperature changes by about eight hundred years. What that indicates is that global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse. In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperature to rise; instead the natural cyclic increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise.
The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Because the release of CO2 by the warming oceans lags behind the changes in the earth’s temperature, we should expect to see global CO2 levels continue to rise for another eight hundred years after the end of the earth’s current Interglacial warm period. We should already be eight hundred years into the coming Ice Age before global CO2 levels begin to drop in response to the increased chilling of the world’s oceans.
The Vostok ice core data graph reveals that global CO2 levels regularly rose and fell in a direct response to the natural cycle of Ice Age minimums and maximums during the past four hundred and twenty thousand years. Within that natural cycle, about every 110,000 years global temperatures, followed by global CO2 levels, have peaked atapproximately the same levels which they are at today.
About 325,000 years ago, at the peak of a warm interglacial, global temperature and CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today we are again at the peak, and near to the end, of a warm interglacial, and the earth is now due to enter the next Ice Age. If we are lucky, we may have a few years to prepare for it. The Ice Age will return, as it always has, in its regular and natural cycle, with or without any influence from the effects of AGW."
What causes ice-ages? Brain freeze?
Just whatever they want to believe.
Deniers "fact-checking":
1. I heard it on Fox
2. I read it on someone's blog page
3. It meets my preconceived ideas
4. So it must be true
Aditionally, I thought you Righties were all for capitalism. Why is it a sin when it is someone making money WITHOUT raping the planet?
No. I don't believe Al Gore.
And your point is........
Glad to see you have recovered in part and rejoined the fray, still putting up the "good" fight despite the absolutely devastating blow AGW took two weeks ago. I've already said this in other threads, but there is no recovering from this. It may take a while for rigor mortisw to set in as can be seen by the huge number of "nothing to see here" stories MMfA has been circulating (me thinks thou doth protest too much perhaps), but it will come as I had predicted months ago.
I have to say I am glad to see you have continued your shunning of Gore. Your cohorts would be wise to follow suit. For that at least you are to be commended since he is, and has always been, a terrible spokesman for AGW. I have to run for tonight but hope to return tomorrow night for another round (so much AGW-misinformation to correct in the other threads, so little time). Until then, Cheers!
A hundred years is a better time frame than a year to study a pattern, and a year is better than one day when it's snowing.
I don't really feel like working much, and I've been having so much fun with it elsewhere that I'll now do another installment of;
ANALOGIES FOR THE RIGHT WING MIND
A veteran baseball player is being talked about as one of the all time great batters. He has a lifetime average of .350, and goes into the second half of the 2009 season with a .375 average.
At the end of September, he hits a little slump, going 0 for 10 over a few consecutive games.
One of his critics (Mr. Fox) decides that it's all over for him as far as the Hall of Fame, or any recognition of his lifetime average. He's washed up.
Somebody else ( Mr. Matters) points out that the 0 for 10 week is a ridiculously short period to use in judging his career performance.On top of that, they add, his 2009 average is still .360, increasing his career average.
Do you think mentioning his rising 2009 average contradicts Mr. Matters first point ?
You're welcome.
Wow, even Mr. Fox and Mr. Matters can figure that out. Perhaps you'd better go back to work on analogies that make your point, and not mine.
Don't mention it.
1) Short term changes in weather patterns neither prove nor disprove the global warming hypothesis.
2) Setting point 1) aside, FAUX still managed to mangle the facts regarding the weather for 2009.
3) You're welcome, please try to learn from this and improve your posting.
~
Where was your restaurant analogy? I once used a restaurant story to help a wingnut understand that spending money could actually make money, if the new management was more competent than the old manager who neglected the equipment, hired a high school kid at minimum wage as head chef, and bought the lowest quality discount meat to serve.
Remember right after Obama was proposing the stimulus plan, and all of those fiscal whiz conservatives suddenly had no grasp of the word "investment"?
I do keep in mind the conservative tenet that employees are merely revenue disposals. Seems nobody ever contributes to success of a company except for the owner or CEO.
That's why I love making up the analogies for the right wingers. It's a longshot that one will sink in, but it's just as entertaining to see how impervious they are.
I know when you guys say that somebody else "proved your point", it's just sour grapes, but you didn't really show anything wrong with my analogy, except that you can pretend to not understand it as well as you can this MM item.
1. Do you think Mr. Matters is "advocating" for the batters career?
2, Is he the one working the data to fit his model ?
3. Is Mr. Fox being more fair in his analysis ?
4. Do you think other people don't see through you when you try pitiful stuff like this ?
Another red herring....AGW fear-mongers dismiss instances of out of the norm cooling as 'regional variances' but regional ice melt is a sign of global warming.
jeez, media matters jumps and the libs go into a fox feeding frenzy... just look at yourselves and get a grip on reality, people...
on a personal note, i live in houston and my dog iggy wanted no part of todays weather:
reporting from murderland ranch,
i'm mookie von zipper
massmurdermedia
i am a man-made global warming skeptic, but i must say, as i've said before: sean hannity is a maddening republican-parrot d**chetard who in my estimation has never uttered an original thought... he's an embarrassment to us thinking conservatives...
LOL!
That's Sean's job, to pound that stuff into the heads of those who find the rest of Fox's propaganda too subtle.
I didn't see any frenzy here until you finally clicked that Fox is doing this to you.
I don't wait around for someone spoon-feed information to me like many Fox-huggers do. AND, unlike deniers who like to troll this site, I actually know how to do an internet searches, knowing full well which sites are legit, and which are complete crap.
Thinking moderates and liberals DO exist.
And even though the evidence for it is a bit thin lately, I truly believe that there are still some thinking conservatives around. ;-)
LOL, wingnut.
~
LOL, wingnut.
~
Curious. Please define this.
Having a science background myself (Physics), I choose to follow the direction of the scientific consensus.
I know the difference between crappy "evidence" and volumes of independent, corroborated proxy data. I know how peer review works, having gone through it myself, and knowing others who go through it.
If I didn't know better, I'd say you're starting to sound less like a skeptic, and more like a denier.
That isn't paranoia, that is Communication Arts 101 - pretty basic part of every CA education.
what should fox have done, not report the houston snow blast?... i understand it's a fluff piece of air-time-filling video, and while it hasn't got the legs of "climategate", it's still newsworthy... should fox have rescheduled the video between non-climate stories so as not to brainwash us non-thinking fox-zombies?...
all drudge did was link to the houston chronicle, but i'm sure media matters feels matt's editorial was implicit:
Oh, and just as a little food for thought: perhaps the poster above misspelled "moron" intentionally. Sometimes irony is difficult to detect on the internet. "Moran" is the spelling that we saw ona few teaparty signs. Good for a chuckle at the time - and many of us are capable of remembering such things when they are referenced later on.
Eh, say what you want, but the pattern of denial is strong at Fox, so segue, or scroll, or commercial - it's all the same.
More lies from Fox. No conspiracy maybe, but there is a strong suggestion of an agenda.
Interesting how deniers lift just a few lines out of context from a few emails out of over a thousand, then claim it's evidence of a vast conspiracy of scientists to twist the facts on climate change. Not to mention the denial of all the independent proxy data from many, many sources not connected to the CRU issue.
But, let Fox get caught in outright lies, over and over and over, people still run to them as their "news source." They think Beck, the self-proclaimed "rodeo clown", is a real journalist.
Not sure how you'd define that type of behavior. Fanatical? Ignorant? Stupid?
I also agree that sometimes MMFA can post some things where I don't see the problem. And I've stated that when I come across it. I try to distinguish between mistakes, and distortions & lies. Sometimes MMFA posts what looks like sloppy mistakes that are pretty much benign.
I've also told a liberal site to stop sending me emails after they claimed Palin started the "death panel" claims. Anyone with a slight ability to do fact-checking would know that was started by Betsy McCaughey. But I guess that fact was inconvenient for that site.
I can't stand lies from either side.
Keep up the good posts! ;-)
buhuhuhuhahahahah!!! (diabolical laughter)...