On his July 31 broadcast, Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Scott James misleadingly suggested that “even according to ... [The] New York Times” the “surge” of U.S. troops deployed in Iraq “is working.” James apparently was referring to a July 30 guest op-ed column, “A War We Just Might Win,” which was written not by members of the Times editorial board, as James implied, but by Iraq invasion supporters Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institution, as Colorado Media Matters has noted. In fact, in the weeks immediately preceding James' July 31 broadcast, the Times editorialized on at least two occasions that the U.S. military effort in Iraq should come to an end.

Earlier in his Ride Home with The James Gang broadcast, after saying, “I'm no scientist ... but I have read a couple of things,” James suggested that global warming on Earth might be the result of an increase in the “intensity” of the sun, which, he asserted, varies according to a 30-year cycle. However, as Media Matters for America noted, according to a July 10 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report, Britain's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory and Switzerland's World Radiation Center concluded that “changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change” because “for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined.”

James was discussing and reading from a July 30 ABC News article about a recently concluded trip to Greenland that 10 U.S. senators made to study the impact of global warming.

From the July 31 broadcast of Fox News Radio 600 KCOL's Ride Home with The James Gang:

CALLER: I wonder if, if the senators are on a, on an all-expenses-paid journey to Greenland to discover the, the terrible impact that humans and global warming are, are bringing to this globe, I wonder if we could take a collection up and maybe charter a rocket to send them all to Mars so that they could visit the effect of the receding polar ice caps on that planet as well.

JAMES: And then they can sit around and scratch their heads and say, “Well, how did we cause this too?” [laughs]

CALLER: That's right, and the fact that Triton, one of Saturn's moons, and Uranus, the planet, all of them are moving -- are getting hotter.

JAMES: Could it be, could it be, [caller] -- and again, I'm no scientist; I, I, I'm no astronomer, but I have read a couple of things about how the, the sun increases and decreases in intensity, and it does it on a cycle of about every 30 years. Could it be the sun is just going through one of those cycles where it's getting a little hotter and it's about ready to cool down a little? I'm just asking, you know.

CALLER: I think it could be. The sun certainly has a strong period [unintelligible] but it has other periods that are much longer. You know, there's been ice ages in the past, and the glaciers have melted in the past before, and that's before the day of SUVs.

Contrary to James' assertion, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has reported, “The intensity of the Sun varies along with the 11-year sunspot cycle.” The BBC reported that “longer-term trends” can also characterize the sun's intensity, but that since 1985 the trend has been toward declining solar output:

The Sun varies on a cycle of about 11 years between periods of high and low activity.

But that cycle comes on top of longer-term trends; and most of the 20th Century saw a slight but steady increase in solar output.

However, in about 1985, that trend appears to have reversed, with solar output declining.

Yet this period has seen temperatures rise as fast as -- if not faster than -- any time during the previous 100 years.

"This paper reinforces the fact that the warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of climate science. [emphasis added]

James went on to suggest that one of the senators who participated in the Greenland trip, Iraq war-opponent Bernie Sanders (I-VT), should travel to Iraq to “see how the surge ... is working”:

JAMES: [reading] “Sanders said he was shocked that 'something as huge as the Greenland ice sheet' ” -- sorry, that's oxymoronic almost to me. “Greenland ice sheet.” You know, them Vikings, they must have been on some sort of schnapps -- or whatever liquor it is that they chose -- namin' that place Greenland, because all we've seen is ice. Wonder what part of the solar cycle they were in when they were there. [reading]
" '[S]omething as huge as the Greenland ice sheet is at risk of being lost because of our actions. But this is a reality I witnessed firsthand this weekend.' " Hey, socialist Senator Bernie there, can we go ahead and take up that collection that [caller] was just talking about and maybe send you to the front lines of the war on terror so you can see how the surge, even according to your beloved New York Times, is working. Maybe that's a front ya oughta visit. Sorry you can't pander for votes from your base that way.

James did not elaborate on his assertion that Sanders' “beloved New York Times” believes the surge “is working,” but he likely was referring to the guest op-ed by Iraq invasion supporters O'Hanlon and Pollack, who wrote:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

In the weeks preceding O'Hanlon and Pollack's op-ed, however, the Times editorialized at least twice that the U.S. military effort could not succeed. For example, the Times concluded in a July 8 editorial titled “The Road Home”:

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans' demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened -- the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage -- with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

Similarly, in a July 25 editorial titled “No Exit Strategy,” the Times noted that the senior U.S. military leader in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, have proposed a war plan entailing U.S. military efforts in Iraq continuing a minimum of two more years. The Times rejected the plan, advocating instead that Congress vote for withdrawal from Iraq by a “veto-proof majority”:

The war plan drawn up by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker simply assumes that a large-scale United States military presence in Iraq will continue for at least two more years.

So much for Mr. Bush's soothing incantations about a relatively short-term “surge” of additional troops. The plan ignores the fact that the volunteer Army cannot sustain a prolonged escalation without grievous losses in quality, readiness and morale. Even more unrealistically, the plan assumes that with two more years of an American blank check, Iraqi politicians will somehow decide to take responsibility for their political future -- something they've refused to do for the last four years.

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker may feel they have little choice but to project the administration's flawed policies to their logical, or illogical, conclusions. Mr. Bush does have a choice and a clear obligation to re-evaluate strategy when everything, but his own illusions, tells him that it is failing. Instead, he spoke yesterday as if the latest National Intelligence Estimate had not found Al Qaeda's top leadership regrouped and resurgent in its old strongholds along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier. Or as if the latest bleak assessment of the Iraqi government's political and economic failures had never been issued.

Mr. Bush proposed no realistic new plan for more effectively fighting Al Qaeda in its heartland or for exiting from the tragic misadventure in Iraq. Instead he offered the familiar, simplistic and misleading arguments that he used to drag the country into this disastrous war to start.

Prolonging the war for another two years will not bring victory. It will mean more lives lost, more damage to America's international standing and fewer resources to fight the real fight against terrorists. If Mr. Bush's advisers can't tell him that, Congress will have to -- with a veto-proof majority. [emphasis added]