After stating on the July 24 broadcast of Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Ride Home with The James Gang that Democratic presidential candidates were “all talking about global warming” during the recent debate sponsored by CNN and YouTube, guest co-host Jesse Herron asserted, “It's a proven fact global warming doesn't exist.” Herron did not offer any proof for the “proven fact” that “global warming doesn't exist”; in fact, he ignored the scientific consensus that not only does global warming exist, but also that human activity is primarily responsible for rising global temperatures, as Colorado Media Matters has noted repeatedly.
From the July 24 broadcast of Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Ride Home with The James Gang:
HERRON: Well, you know, I, I blame all the, the current political problems going back to JFK, when he took his hat off during his inauguration, because at that point it became how well we look on TV. I mean, I, I don't, I really don't like to sit there and call people names when it comes to stuff like politics. I, I, I think it's childish; but when we take a look back at the last Kerry-Edwards thing, we had Lurch, and then we had the pretty boy. OK, you saw what happened. They, they, they didn't obviously whistle -- it comes back down to how they do look on TV. You know what? Kerry could have had the best platform in the world, but if he doesn't look good on TV, if he doesn't look like his -- the, the, the, the guy from the Guiding Light -- anybody who's handsome -- he is not going to get the votes. And, a lot of people have -- I, I, I want to say words, and I don't want to get fined for it -- have their heads somewhere where it shouldn't be, where it's awful dark.
[guest co-host Linda Heuer laughs]
HERRON: Bingo. Exactly. Cranial-anal -- cranial-rectal inversion. You know, and, they don't care about -- like last night, they're all talking about global warming. It's a proven fact global warming doesn't exist.
HEUER: Or, or being green.
HERRON: Or being, you know -- that's all that they wanted to talk about. The talking snowman: “What are you going to do because snowmen are, you know, this is, we're worried about global warming, it's obviously affecting us?” And, and, what -- this will disturb you even more, because they -- that was one of the better questions. I admit it was sort of humorous.
HEUER: Well, the questions were predictable.
As Media Matters for America also repeatedly has documented, thousands of scientists as well as scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) share the consensus view that global warming does “exist” and that, as stated in a June 2006 NAS report, human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming of the Earth.
Furthermore, the most recent report released by the IPCC included a section titled “Human and Natural Drivers of Climate Change,” which described the increase in Earth's greenhouse gases:
Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years (see Figure SPM-1). The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
The report also stated, “Changes in the atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases and aerosols, in solar radiation and in land surface properties alter the energy balance of the climate system.”
As noted in an IPCC fact sheet, the panel was created to provide policymakers with “an objective source of information about the causes of climate change, its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts, and possible response options.” Its reports are issued by several hundred climate experts representing “universities, research centers, business and environmental associations and other organizations from more than 100 countries.”
