It’s Fox News! Here’s the report which wins them wanker status:
Scientists Call AP Report on Global Warming ‘Hysteria’
Scientists skeptical of the assertion that climate change is the result of man’s activites are criticizing a recent Associated Press report on global warming, calling it “irrational hysteria,” “horrifically bad” and “incredibly biased.”
They say the report, which was published on Monday, contained sweeping scientific errors and was a one-sided portrayal of a complicated issue.
By the way, here’s the link to the AP report which Fox news is denigrating as ” irrational hysterica.” You might want to read it to see why the response by Fox is so unfair and unbalanced.
You see, what the Fox article doesn’t tell you is that its reporters only interviewed three “scientists” all of whom either deny that global warming is occurring, or deny that it is a serious problem. Fox, in its editorial wisdom, chose not to interview any of the thousands of climate scientists and researchers who support the view that global warming is occurring, that it is generated largely by human activity, and that it a serious problem which requires our immediate attention. In short, what Fox did was what it always does regarding the issue of global climate change: a hit piece in which its own bias is shielded by contacting a few so-called “scientists” willing to deny the consensus opinion that human activity is driving potentially catastrophic climate change.
So which “scientists” did Fox News interview? And what did they say? Well, take a look:
Up first is David Deming, a geology professor at the University of Oklahoma who is known for writing letters to the editor claiming global warming is a fantasy, among other topics such as predicting the outcome of elections. He was also the witness at the infamous Senate hearing held by Senator James Inhofe in 2006 (when he was the chair of the Senate’s Committee Environment & Public Works) who testified that global warming if it was occurring at all was “likely to be beneficial to humanity.” Not surprisingly, Deming is an adjunct scholar for the National Center for Policy Analysis, a think tank which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Exxon Mobil.
Here’s how Deming is quoted in the Fox News hit piece on AP’s Science writer Seth Borenstein:
“If the issues weren’t so serious and the ramifications so profound, I would have to laugh at it,” said David Deming . . .
“The mean global temperature, at least as measured by satellite, is now the same as it was in the year 1980. In the last couple of years sea level has stopped rising. Hurricane and cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere is at a 24-year low and sea ice globally is also the same as it was in 1980.”
Is Deming accurate in his criticisms? Well, not exactly. Let’s start with his claim that mean global temperatures are no higher than in 1980. Turns out that’s a pure canard:
WASHINGTON — The year 2008 was the ninth warmest year since instrumental temperature measurements began in 1880, and all of the nine warmest years have occurred in the past 11 years, NASA reported on Tuesday.
NASA also reported that the January to November global temperature was 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit above the average for the 20th Century, and that the past year was cooler than any since 2000. Scientists note that global warming is a steady trend, but within it there are natural variations.
The NASA report noted that “Eurasia, the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm, while much of the Pacific Ocean was cooler than the long-term average.” It said the relatively cooler temperature in the tropical Pacific was due to a La Nina, the cool phase of a natural temperature variation.
Or as Gavin at Real Climate points out:
More robustly, the most recent 5-year averages are all significantly higher than any in the last century. The last decade is by far the warmest decade globally in the record.
In other words, Deming is lying. And Fox News is exploiting his lies to to try to convince its readers that global warming is all some liberal tree hugger’s myth or a conspiracy of greedy grant loving liberal elites.
The next expert chosen by Fox to attack Seth Borenstein is “Michael R. Fox, a retired nuclear scientist and chemistry professor from the University of Idaho” (yes, that’s really his name). I guess his background as described above qualifies him as a “scientist” if not necessarily one particularly conversant on climate research. Here’s what he had to say:
Fox said global warming is not accelerating. “These kinds of temperatures cycle up and down and have been doing so for millions of years,” he said.
He said there is little evidence to believe that man-made carbon dioxide is causing temperature fluctuation. “It’s silly to lay it all on man-made carbon dioxide,” Fox said. “It was El Nino in 1998 that caused the big spike in global warming and little to do with carbon dioxide.”
Other factors, including sun spots, solar winds, variations in the solar magnetic field and solar irradiation, could all be affecting temperature changes, he said.
The Sun could be the sole or primary reason for the rapid rise in global temperatures over the last 150 years? Human activity in the form of massive increases carbon emissions into the atmosphere could have little to do with it? Really? Well, I guess Dr. Fox hasn’t read about this little bit of research on that very question:
Direct satellite measurements of solar activity show it has been declining since the mid-1980s and cannot account for recent rises in global temperatures, according to new research.
The findings debunk an explanation for climate change that is often cited by people who are not convinced that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are causing the Earth’s climate to warm.
Looking at data from the past 40 years, the two researchers noticed that solar activity did what Lockwood describes as a “U-turn in every possible way” in the mid-1980s.
“The upshot is that somewhere between 1985 and 1987 all the solar factors that could have affected climate have been going in the wrong direction. If they were really a big factor we would have cooling by now,” Lockwood told New Scientist. He adds that he wishes he knew why the Sun’s activity had changed in this way.
So, solar activity has nothing to do with our current warming trend. Well, let’s not call Dr. Fox a liar just yet. Maybe he’s simply ignorant. Nonetheless, you’d think someone who’s passing themselves off as an expert on global warming would at a minimum have kept current with recent developments in the field. But then, if he had, he wouldn’t have made such ridiculous statements. And he wouldn’t have been of any use to Fox News, would he?
And the final expert Fox News cites? He’s James O’Brien, an emeritus professor (i.e., mostly retired) at Florida State. He doesn’t dispute that global warming might be occurring, or that it might be caused by people, it’s just that like our soon to be former President, he wants to study the problem to make super-duper absolutely certain that we really really know what’s causing it before we try to do anything to stop it.
O’Brien said he doesn’t discount the potential effects man is having on the environment, but he cautioned that government should not make hasty decisions.
“There is no question that the Obama administration is green and I’m green, and there’s no question that they’re going to really take a careful look at what we need to do and attack problems, and I applaud that,” O’Brien said.
“But I’m really concerned that they’re going to spend all the money on implementation of mitigation, rather than supporting the science.”
So there you have it. Fox News expert science panel. Not one person who is actively engage in research on climate change. Not one person who supported the scientific consensus as set forth in the most recent IPCC assessment that global warming and global climate change are very likely the result of human activity. And you wonder why so many Americans are so woefully misinformed about this issue. If this is fair and balanced reporting I’d like to see what Fox News considers to be biased. Oh wait, I already know the answer to that. Anything that doesn’t support the conservative view of the world is prima facie biased and unfair. How foolish of me.