The Last Frost

On January 2nd, Fox News recently aired a bit on the abnormally warm weather the East Coast has been experiencing and how the media is hyping it all up to global warming. The funny thing is that both of their correspondents agree with each other… so where’s the counter argument? 

There was none, which isn’t really a surprise for the Fair and Balanced News organization. They made some funny comments during the bit though. Patrick Michaels is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute which is a libertarian think tank based out of D.C. He’s got himself a nice reputation as a global warming skeptic. What’s funny is that he makes a statement that goes like this, "if you believe that warming causes cooling, you’re like my neighbors down in Virginia who think that if you put hot water in the ice cube tray it freezes faster". 

This statement pisses me off because when I was in High School I asked my Chemistry teacher if this very thing was true. He said, "no of course not" and I went back to sleep at my desk, unsatisfied. Years later I heard about this thing called the Mpemba effect. Hot water can freeze faster than cold water, and Patrick Michaels is a jackass. If a wikipedia article doesn’t convince you, check this out.

So what though, he got a simple scientific fact which happens to defy common sense wrong. What’s bad is that warming can in fact cause cooling contrary to what this guy thinks. It’s a simple case of feedback loops and science.

Here’s a completely hypothetical example: 

1) The globe warms

2) Polar ice melts (ice is fresh water)

3) Oceans are saltwater and they get diluted by the deluge of fresh water. 

4) Fresh water holds less heat than salt water, so the Earth’s oceans are less able to hold onto their heat.

5) Earth loses heat through the "freshened" ocean’s triggering an ice age.

Warming caused cooling… and Patrick Michaels is still an idiot even though he’s a "contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". 

FOX News lacks balance on environmental discussion - [You Tube]

A quickie little gem from our old pal Senator Inhofe a republican from Oklahoma. "God is still up there" so don't worry about global warming, oh and by the way, the warming is caused by the sun. Sweet diversions…. check out the video clip after the jump.

UPDATE: The sun is pissed about being wrongfully accused of causing global warming and I think it's trying to knock out a few Fox News Satellites. Check it out here.

Inhofe: Don’t Worry About Global Warming Because ‘God’s Still Up There’ - [Think Progress]

Well, maybe that's a bit harsh. Maybe he's not a twit, maybe he's just doing his duty as one of the Bush Administration's foot soldiers. So I'll rephrase that… perhaps he's just a totally unscrupulous, greedy, devil of a man who will do nothing to stand in the way of total environmental destruction. Or maybe he is just a twit. 

In his latest bout of diarrhea of the mouth, he praises Fox News as being the exception with regards to 'inaccurate' reporting on the issue of global warming. He goes on to say that CNN (which in all fairness isn't that much better than Fox) has got it all wrong. 

So here's my take on what he said, and while you read, keep in mind that this hairball is also chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, yikes.

He starts off by saying "the earth's temperature is warming right now but, I believe, from natural causes", this is the favorite argument of global warming critics because it shifts the blame and thus the responsibility from people to the planet itself. From now on I think I'm going to call this one the 'Blame The Planet, Not Us' argument. Let's entertain for a second that he was right (he isn't), and the only cause of global warming was natural climate cycles. What difference does it make who is causing the warming? We know that C02 emmisions lead to an increase in global temperatures. That's real, it's a fact, so what's wrong with us trying to reduce the impact of natural warming by removing anthropogenic warming from the equation? 

(more…)

Guess who? Yup, it's Fox news again. Their latest expert analyst Jonathan Hoenig states that global warming is a bunch of huey. That it was dreamed up by a bunch of hippies who hate technology and economic advancement.

This guy might be onto something. I know there are a bunch of hippies that would love to do away with technology so they can sit in a field and smoke weed all day. Hell, I would like to sit in a field and smoke weed all day with them. Actually no, I take that back, I'd rather sit at home on my shiny MacBook Pro blogging about them. Unfortunately for all of us, the existence of a few hippie socialists does not mean global warming is just an acid induced hallucination, that's just silly.

Read More »  [Think Progress]

I'm really getting sick of writing about these guys, but damnit they have their own category under bullshit, so I guess I have to. The folks at Media Matters have a short little video clip of a 'Fox correspondent' (see note below) spouting another gem of fair and balanced reporting. Someone needs to give these guys a lesson in analogies. According to them Gore is to global warming what Nazi propoganda is to the Holocaust. Congratulations Fox, you're an expert at comparing apples with apples!

Note: This guy isn't really a Fox correspondent, but he might as well be since he's part of the same corporate funded machine of untruth and confusion.

This is rich… Fox news is at it again with their always creative and usually disturbing methods to advance their far right agenda. God help us if environmental conservation and sustainability take hold among the American public. In the words of the CEI.org people, 'What would our lives be like then?" Unless you're an oil executive or the leader of a country in the Middle East, I think your life would be much better.

Read the full transcript of the exchange courtesy of ThinkProgress.org after the jump. 

Read More » [Think Progress]