Fox News Distorts Climate Science
#1
Permanent Address: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obse...e-science/

Fox News Distorts Climate Science; In Other News, the Pope Is Catholic
By Philip Yam | September 22, 2012


For anyone with an interest in journalism, it’s no surprise that Fox News Channel and the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal lean well to the right. Editorially, these two jewels of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. have a long history of denying human-induced global warming, in keeping with certain ideological interests.

New data support the anecdotes and conventional wisdom. At a midday panel on September 21 in New York City’s Science, Industry and Business Library, the Union of Concerned Scientists released results of an analysis quantifying the media outlets’ distortions of climate science.

In the six months from February to July 2012, the UCS searched for the terms “climate change” and “global warming” during primetime Fox News Channel programs, which consist of political commentary shows such as The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity.

The UCS found that, in 37 of 40 instances, Fox News programs misled viewers about climate science—mainly, by broadly dismissing it. As an example, the UCS quotes an on-air statement from April 11, 2012: “I thought we were getting warmer. But in the ‘70s, it was, look out, we’re all going to freeze.” (The report didn’t reveal the name of the actual source.) Fox News hosts and guests also mocked and disparaged statements from scientists and drowned out genuine scientific assertions with cherry-picked data and false claims.

The WSJ opinion pages fared a bit better: only 81 percent of the 48 references to the climate key words were misleading, according to the UCS analysis. Such instances included a reference to climatologist James Hansen as an alarmist and an assertion that we are only in a global warming “bubble” that raises questions about the veracity of climate science and the “credibility of its advocates,” WSJ editors wrote. The few accurate statements came from readers’ letters to the editors, remarked Brenda Ekwurzel, a UCS climate scientist who presented the data at the panel. (The opinion pages are distinct from newsroom operations, which media researchers in 2010 actually found to lean left.)

You can quibble with the UCS analysis—it did not look at The New York Times or MSNBC programs such as The Rachel Maddow Show, for example. But the results stay true to past incidents, such as this doozy in which a meteorologist asserted that thermodynamics makes global warming impossible. Indeed, News Corp. goes quite far in toeing the right-wing line, so much so that it even tried to rewrite the history of the Internet to deny the U.S. government’s creation of it.

Rather than surprising, the results might be more of a disappointment—to Rupert Murdoch himself. Murdoch acknowledged in 2007 the reality of anthropogenic climate change and pledged that his company’s operations would become carbon-neutral—a goal achieved in 2011. Still, as the UCS data indicate, many of News Corp.’s most influential and powerful employees continue to perpetuate climate denialism.

Battles against antiscience are nothing new, of course. Groups that advocate scientific reasoning, such as CSICOP and the Skeptical Society, have long tried to combat paranormal and pseudoscience beliefs and claims. But the fight has been a slog. When I interviewed CSICOP founder Paul Kurtz in 1996, he said that “we thought that if you just provide information, people would reject” paranormal thinking. Clearly, that hasn’t worked. “The problem is more massive and complicated than we imagined,” he lamented.

Climate scientists face a similar challenge. As Angela Anderson, director of the UCS Climate and Energy program, stated at Friday’s panel, convincing people takes more than information. You must appeal to their values, too.

The shrill political programs on cable TV know that—I suspect that most of the 1.9 million viewers of Fox News primetime tune in to confirm their biases and bolster their belief that government and its regulations are forces for bad. The task ahead is to show that climate change is even worse—a tall order, for sure.



About the Author: Philip Yam is the managing editor of ScientificAmerican.com. Follow on Twitter @philipyam.
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#2
Fox News was denied a broadcasting license in Canada because in that country, news has to be truthful. Fox lies so much they don't qualify as a news-information source. It's right up there with "Hee-Haw".

What is surprising is that it is known they lie and manipulate, yet still have a large following. That is pathetic. Our soldiers are fighting and dying for our freedoms, including accessibility to and dissemination of information, and people choose to be lied to instead? They might as well burn the flag.
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#3
Climate Change: 'Hoax' Or Crime Of The Century?

Forbes OP/ED:

Here are some of the scientific questions at the core of this issue:

Is the climate changing? Of course. The climate always has changed and always will.

Is the earth getting warmer? We should hope so for at least two reasons: First, the world emerged from the Little Ice Age in the 19th century, so it would be worrisome if it weren’t getting warmer. Second, all the history indicates that humans thrive more during warmer periods than colder ones. It is likely, though, that earth has warmed less than many official temperature records indicate for a variety of reasons, including: few long-term records from either the southern hemisphere or the 71 percent of the planet that is covered by water; distortions from the urban heat-island effect and other faulty siting (e.g., temperature sensors next to asphalt parking lots, etc.; the decline in weather station reports from Siberia after the fall of the Soviet government; the arbitrarily ceasing to include measurements from northern latitudes and high elevations, etc.) The most accurate measures of temperature come from satellites. Since the start of these measurements in 1979, they show minor fluctuations and an insignificant net change in global temperature.

Is the earth getting dangerously warm? Probably not, since the earth was warmer than it is now in 7000 of the last 10,000 years. By the way, does anybody know what the “right” amount of global heat is?

Are we humans causing the warming by our carbon emissions? Actually, most of the “greenhouse effect” is due to water vapor, which makes one wonder why the EPA hasn’t designated H2O a harmful pollutant that they must regulate. Meteorologist Brian Sussman’s calculations in his book “Climategate” show humanity’s share of the greenhouse effect as .9 of 1 percent.

It’s even possible that CO2 may not affect global warming at all. During many stretches of planetary history, there has been no correlation between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperature. In other long stretches, the variations of the two factors followed a significant sequence: increases in CO2 followed increases in warmth by several centuries. You don’t need to have a degree in climate science to know that, in a temporal universe, cause does not follow its effect.

Even global warming alarmists have tacitly conceded that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change when they responded to the relative cooling in recent years by changing their story and telling us that the earth is likely to cool for a few decades in spite of still-increasing atmospheric CO2. Translation: other factors outweigh CO2 in their impact on global temperatures. Those other factors include variations in solar activity (accounting for 3/4 of the variability in earth’s temperature according to the Marshall Institute); changes in earth’s orbit and axis; albedo (reflectivity, meaning changes in cloud cover which are influenced by fluctuations in gamma ray activity); and volcanic and tectonic activity in the earth’s crust. For humans to presume that they are more than a gnat on an elephant’s rump in terms of impact on climate change is vain and delusive.

Shifting gears, let’s assume that the alarmists are right and that man-made CO2 emissions are making the world warmer. If so, what changes would they hope to accomplish and at what cost?

During the cap-and-trade debates in 2009 and 2010, proponents cited scientific studies predicting that curtailing American CO2 emission reductions would shave a few hundredths of a degree off future temperatures. And the costs? The United Nations published an estimate that the total planetary cost could reach $552 trillion (approximately a decade’s worth of global GDP) over the course of the 21st century.

One is tempted to say that proposing so colossal a cost for so minuscule an alleged benefit is insane; remember, for plants, animals, and people, warmer is better. When one begins to grasp the magnitude of the burden that people would bear as a result of spending so much to tilt at the carbon dioxide windmill, it’s worse than insane; it’s criminal.

Who would benefit from this catastrophically expensive agenda? Only the political and politically connected elite—the Goldman Sachs outfits that would reap billions from trading carbon permits; the Al Gores and corporate and political insiders that would amass fortunes from their ties to a government-rigged energy market and investments in politically correct technologies. And think of the power that governments would have if they controlled energy consumption. By controlling energy, you control people. No wonder governments have spent tens of billions of dollars promoting this scenario and supporting political panels like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to disseminate the desired “findings.”

Who would lose if governments gain the power to order a significant reduction in CO2 emissions? Around the world, millions of people at the margins of survival would die. It would be a dispersed holocaust. Millions of others would suffer unnecessary impoverishment and deprivation. Even in wealthier countries, people who are affluent enough to afford the monetary costs could find their lives heavily regimented by government bureaucrats monitoring and limiting how many miles they may travel and what activities they may undertake.
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#4
^^^ An OP/ED piece, written by " Mark Hendrickson, Contributor. I write about economics, politics, and human-interest stories."


From his bio:
I am Adjunct Professor of Economics at Grove City College and Fellow for Social and Economic Policy for the Center for Vision & Values, for whom I've written 200+ articles in the last five years. My interests are varied—graduate work in law at the University of Michigan, literature at Oxford, moral education at Harvard, and economics under the tutelage of Hans F. Sennholz, who earned his doctorate under Ludwig von Mises. My libertarian economics is fused with traditional American values. My most recent book is “Famous But Nameless: Lessons and Inspiration from the Bible’s Anonymous Characters (2011).


Yup. Perfectly qualified to talk about the science of climate change.
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#5
(09-30-2012, 01:37 PM)csrowan Wrote: ^^^ An OP/ED piece, written by " Mark Hendrickson, Contributor. I write about economics, politics, and human-interest stories."


From his bio:
I am Adjunct Professor of Economics at Grove City College and Fellow for Social and Economic Policy for the Center for Vision & Values, for whom I've written 200+ articles in the last five years. My interests are varied—graduate work in law at the University of Michigan, literature at Oxford, moral education at Harvard, and economics under the tutelage of Hans F. Sennholz, who earned his doctorate under Ludwig von Mises. My libertarian economics is fused with traditional American values. My most recent book is “Famous But Nameless: Lessons and Inspiration from the Bible’s Anonymous Characters (2011).


Yup. Perfectly qualified to talk about the science of climate change.

Thanks for taking time to check that out. Sadly, a typical ploy, now so often used one would think it would embarrass folks to put it up for view.

On another Topic you asked if we have a member who is a Troll. (And thanks for the definition--leaves no room for doubt).
Your only mistake may have been in the asking. Of course we have a couple here. And we, the great unwashed, continue to engage them and in doing so allow them to suck the positive energy from the place.
I have pledged about a million times (to not exaggerate) and to refuse to respond to those who are "one trick ponies" in tying up conversations in order (successfully) to drown out the reasonable dialog.

But, I continue to respond. Now you know more about my IQ than you did earlier.

I'd like to end with a quote proving and glorifying my view here. Don't know one. Now you know that not only is my IQ triple digits (65.5) but I read only the back of cold cereal boxes.

But I'm just bright enough to know that some billions of folks now live on the planet who were not here in the 10th Century. And we are making a mess of the place. I didn't figure it out on my own, but I've been advised to not buy any beach front property to pass on to the grandkids.
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#6
"Climate Change". Good one. Can anyone tell me when it didn't change? Welcome to Earth.
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#7
Maybe you'll like the term "Human-Caused Climate Change" better then.
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#8
(09-30-2012, 05:54 PM)PonderThis Wrote: Maybe you'll like the term "Human-Caused Climate Change" better then.

Human Caused is so minor as to be unquantifiable. Ageing and cyclical patterns are in their infancy with respect to any long term studies, so in my estimation it is a "leap of faith" to atttribute everything to man.
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#9
I think I'll wait and see what the worlds best scientists best consensus is, personally. I doubt any serious answers come from any of us laymen, actually. Smiling
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#10
(09-30-2012, 06:02 PM)Larry Wrote:
(09-30-2012, 05:54 PM)PonderThis Wrote: Maybe you'll like the term "Human-Caused Climate Change" better then.

Human Caused is so minor as to be unquantifiable. Ageing and cyclical patterns are in their infancy with respect to any long term studies, so in my estimation it is a "leap of faith" to atttribute everything to man.

You act as if there were 5 or six people who came up with the notion that humans burning fossil fuels is causing a greenhouse affect.
Your explanation that what is happening with our climate since the industrial age is the same old same old thing (cyclical patterns) WAS several years ago something logical to think.
It's not now.There is WAY too much research and consensus between leading scientists all over the planet to cling on to such a simple explanation.
The steady rise in our temperature in ONE century and the VERY significant correlation with the rise in Co2 levels is not at all indicative of global patterns of the past.
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#11
(09-30-2012, 06:53 PM)tvguy Wrote:
(09-30-2012, 06:02 PM)Larry Wrote:
(09-30-2012, 05:54 PM)PonderThis Wrote: Maybe you'll like the term "Human-Caused Climate Change" better then.

Human Caused is so minor as to be unquantifiable. Ageing and cyclical patterns are in their infancy with respect to any long term studies, so in my estimation it is a "leap of faith" to atttribute everything to man.

You act as if there were 5 or six people who came up with the notion that humans burning fossil fuels is causing a greenhouse affect.
Your explanation that what is happening with our climate since the industrial age is the same old same old thing (cyclical patterns) WAS several years ago something logical to think.
It's not now.There is WAY too much research and consensus between leading scientists all over the planet to cling on to such a simple explanation.
The steady rise in our temperature in ONE century and the VERY significant correlation with the rise in Co2 levels is not at all indicative of global patterns of the past.

Research and consensus that reflects the viewpoint of those who PAID for the research, in my opinion.

And how can you begin to believe that a few hundred years of ability to measure these patterns can mean anything in comparison to the previous millions of years the planet has existed and evolved? How arrogant to assume we (the scientists you are fond of) know enough to make any kind of intelligent hypothosis?

This planet has created and destroyed itself more than once, without MAN being at fault. It is a RELIGIOUS pursuit to cling to the idea that we are that powerful to destroy the planet.

That being said, of course we should be prudent with the resources. Of course we should do what we can to protect the air and water. But in the end, the planet, and the cosmos, will have it's way with us.
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#12
http://www.theclimategatebook.com/ Author Brian Sussman
Climategate Book Author Brian Sussman

Brian Sussman, Author
From Journalist to Meteorologist

Melding his passion for science with his expertise in journalism, in 2010 Brian wrote, Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam. Published by WND Books, the title was released nationally during a televised interview on the Sean Hannity show and immediately became a bestseller. His current book, Eco-Tyranny, was released April 17, and immediately became a bestseller.
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#13
Quote:Research and consensus that reflects the viewpoint of those who PAID for the research, in my opinion.

That's actually even more of a tired and IMO silly way to try and disprove the science.


Quote:And how can you begin to believe that a few hundred years of ability to measure these patterns can mean anything in comparison to the previous millions of years the planet has existed and evolved?

How? Because scientists can see back a HELL of a lot more than a few hundred years using todays technology.

Quote: How arrogant to assume we (the scientists you are fond of) know enough to make any kind of intelligent hypothosis?

HUH? would I have been arrogant to believe we could construct a rocket and send men to the moon ? And that was with technology we had 40 years agoLaughing Or that today we have NASA's Mars rover Curiosity 50 million miles away and it's sending info about an ancient stream bed as we speak?
Or that we could split atoms produce and harness nuclear power?
Quote:This planet has created and destroyed itself more than once, without MAN being at fault. It is a RELIGIOUS pursuit to cling to the idea that we are that powerful to destroy the planet.

OK Charlie HestonRazz who said anything about destroying the planet? It only takes a slight change in the earths temperature to reek havoc on earths plants and animals, ocean currents and weather patterns.
The earth is an ecosystem. If there's anything that has become clear over my lifetime it is that humans being destroy ecosystems like no other animal that has ever lived.
Do you seriously not see the environmental destruction all over the world cause by humans?
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