As already noted here on NewsBusters, the Senate held a hearing today examining the role of the media in promoting climate alarmism. With others covering the newsmaking part of the discussion, I decided to drop by to observe things from a blogger’s point of view.
I went into the hearing expecting it would be more interesting than your typical congressional hearing and wasn’t disappointed. Dr. David Deming, a geophysicist from the University of Oklahoma recount an experience he had with an NPR reporter who hung up on him after he declined to say that he thought global temperature increases were human-caused.
[…]
I also heard some interesting scientific debate as to whether ice core temperature readings can really be used as a reliable indicator of whether carbon dioxide is related to global climate changes. Don’t expect to hear much about this, though, since it the CO2 proponent, Dr. Daniel Schrag of Harvard, was less-than-articulate arguing the affirmative. As of the writing of this posting, I haven’t found a single news source that quoted from today’s hearing. I did see and converse with several reporters but so far have yet to read any coverage.
Don’t expect much in the way of first hand report from CNN anchor Miles O’Brien, either. He fell asleep during the hearing.
Update : Exerpts of the statement by David Deming;
“In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.
“I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” “The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. … The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be “gotten rid of.”
“In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the “hockey stick,” because of the shape of the temperature graph. “Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.
“There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed.”
Via Drudge.
Thats because there is a CLEAR SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS…..and anything counter to that is clearly not worth reporting…..the lack of reporting of any opposition reinforces the CLEAR SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS…..no please move on, the glacier meltings are in the hall down and to the left
Big media sellers can’t sell ‘The sky is not falling’.
ROTFLMAO….the MSM admit they are idiots? Great joke Kate.
As the guide said to a tourist in Alaska yelping “oh my gosh the glaciers are melting, we have to stop the economy” ..
“M’am , the ice always melts between ice ages”.
Well if the Ice Age caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs, does that mean when the globe heats up again the dinosaurs come back?
Hey, LIEBerals meet my friend T-Rex.
Jurassic Park meets the LIEberals.
Global warming, bring it on. I won’t have to buy too many clothes.
i fail to see the downside of this warming trend. with extra co2 in the air plants grow more rapidly and better utilize fertilizers. the sci fi crowd says that their models show the sask climate will be close to south dakota’s..it doesn’t get better than that. so really if your a sask farmer whats the problem????
The usual reason people fall asleep at things like this is because they don’t understand what’s going on, not a clue, it’s like nonesense droning, a foreign language, that lulls them to sleep. An intelligent thinking person can remain alert.
Have you ever noticed that any changes allegedly to be caused by “global warming” are always negative? Interesting, because you’d think even if “global warming” were true that there would be some positives….but you never hear of them. I would suspect that if you checked into David Suzuki’s chicken little episode a decade or two ago about global cooling that you would see the same pattern. Every change attributed to David’s hallucinations about global cooling would have also been negative….nothing positive. See the pattern? Can you say “propaganda” boys and girls? I knew you could.
Rob Breakenridge had as a guest last night Dr. Tim Ball, who knows all about the dishonest media when it comes to the climate debate. I highly recommend everyone to listen to the interview on 770 CHQR Audio Vault. (Tuesday evening at the 8:00 pm time slot)
Suzuki’s head would explode if he debated Dr. Ball, which I understand he refuses to do.
Matt Scheffield paints a pretty clear picture of where the problems lie!
Good reading..
“An intelligent thinking person can remain alert.”
Ah, that explains why the senators are always snoozly until it’s their turn to ask questions (i.e., be on the camera!).
BTW, did Sens Rockefeller & Snowe attend? And sit alertly through it all? Just wondering . . .
Doesn’t surprise me that Myles would fall asleep. He kind of has that effect on me when I watch him on CNN.
We all know how the liberal left-wing news media are always pushing all this junk science all the time i mean back in the 70s it was GLOBAL COOLING now its GLOBAL WARMING its anothing less then a conspracy against our nations by unscruploius persons in the UN and CFR
Doesn’t surprise me that Myles would fall asleep
He seems like the kind of guy who wears rubber underwear AND dyes his eyebrows.
As Grog and Thag finished their long day of mastadon hunting along the southern ice edge into nebraska they thought about walking home beause of all the recent hysteria about their new suv causing the ice age to melt but they didn’t listen to the moronic lieberals of their day either 12,000 years ago and damnit look what happened the f..king ice melted enough that we built houses and grew food for the moronic lieberals because short of hairdressing and taming cats they could do little else. So you see it all started with those damn cavemen. The bullshit just keeps coming from theives and liars like suzuki and his ilk
Suzuki has been challenged to debate Dr. Tim Ball a long time ago.
Do Cult leaders allow others into the compound ?
I remember in the late 70’s and 80’s these same eggheads were declaring a global cooling..we were all going to freeze to death in the new ice age..what happened to that?
..it is as if the moonbats have read 1984 too many times, where the ideology and direction of thought changed constantly…
Just like Liberals and their position on ..oh..anything..don’t like this position? stick around it will change!…
Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish scientist, published The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. He has withstood a savage barrage from activists. He was even threatened to be sued, along with Canadian Patrick Moore, greenspirit.com
In a recent interview, Lomborg said that the Media has taken the fanatism much further than the original UN’s IPCC “report”. Says a lot about the integrity of our Media, doesn’t it?
“integrity”, “our” and “Media” should never be seen together in the same sentence, no matter how used.
The MSM is out of control on this issue. I just donated $100 to http://www.nrsp.com (Natural Resources Stewardship Project) tonight. They are a group of Canadian scientists trying to get the real word out on Climate Change and the myths the lefty media is pushing. I also encourage people to listen to the Tim Ball interview last night on Rob Breakenridge’s show on http://www.QR77.com under Audio Vault 8pm Tuesday Dec 5th.
Here is a good article in the Sunday Telegraph.
The sun is warmer now than for the past 11,400 years
By Christopher Monckton, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:13am GMT 05/11/2006Page 1 of 7
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nwarm05.xml
Keep trying to get the message out folks. Dion is going to be pushing it front and center in the next election, mainstream Canadians should base their decisions on the science facts, not the fear mongering in the media….
later.
John said,
Remember this?
Imagine now the post-apocalyptic landscape, as the few polar bears lucky enough to make it to shore after the ice floes melt from under them claw their way onto land only to become hopelessly entangled in the toxic vines of the poison ivy forests.
Check out http://www.friends of science.org The above mentioned Dr Tim Ball has a lot to do with it. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Dr. Ball and he mentioned that neither the CBC nor CTV would have a thing to do with him. As for Dr. Suzuki, he should have stayed with fruit flies.
Len Pryor
The MWP is well documented in the history written at that time. It is even here in Canada – there were grapes grown in NFLD when the Vikings called their settlement in NFLD ‘Vinland! The koyta thingie is all about social engineering – mo Strong and Gorby wrote it – everyone knows the agenda of those two human haters. JUNK SCIECE to distroy the Freedom of people – thats all Kyota is folks…move along.
“Have you ever noticed that any changes allegedly to be caused by “global warming” are always negative?”
Not so, I’ve read a number of positive bits on http://www.realclimate.org. Among other things its boom time for the English winemakers.
Fool! Those English grapevines won’t have a chance with those poison ivy plants all over the place!
Grape-growing in Sweden? It’s because of gobal warmning; it’s not due to geography, micro-climate, human initiative, profit motive. Nah, gobnal warmning is the culprit.
Down with profit making grapes.
Also: Albert Gore, Jr., Mr. Warming Apocalypse Now, on Oprah; “Polar bears live on the ice”. See, the ice is melting (ice melts?), and the polar bears are dying off.
Nature is a home-wrecker, see. Those bears never did live on land; all polar bear females give birth on an ice floe, right. Not.
Polar bears love Churchill, Man.; great restaurants. Take a tundra buggy tour and view them bears waiting to go out on the ice to hunt for their food. …-
…-
It’s cold in the wintertime. Amazing! Is the fire burning?
“Oh, Sweden. According to Swedish food and wine writer, Michel Jamais, there are now 3 vineyards in his country.
Two of them are on an island called Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
“The climate is quite sunny,
thought it’s cold in wintertime;
but..(the sea’s moderating effect)…makes it possible to grow grapes”.
http://www.wineschool.com/ArticleOfTheMonth.htm
Here is a recent article from Canadian Geoscience
And for all those who say it isnt written by a climatologist I would say then that using geologic data by climatologists would be out of bounds as well. When there is credentialism involved it should tell you about the level of debate….
Anyway, sticking to the geologic evidence…..
http://www.friendsofscience.org/documents/veizer2.pdf
we don’t have to feel guilty about burning stuff to stay warm during winter here in Canada…as long as we spend billions on carbon credits from other countries. you see the rise in activity in swiss bank accounts will correspond to higher Co2 levels and the earth will be saved. how can you neo-cons not follow this logic?
Don’t the sheeple of Canada comprehend the BTU’s genereated by the friction of pen on cheque.
Writing in the payee name “China” alone could heat a tepid teaspoon of water to, above tepid.
Once we start writing cheques and handing them to earth god Gia worshipper Uncle Moe, we will have harnessed the greatest source of renewable power in Canada.
The problem is the Liberal/Left have reduced the debate to one word – Kyoto. It’s the sound bite that just keeps giving. They simply keep repeating it to the masses as the only true environmental solution – without explanation – and criticism is not allowed. If you’ve done your homework and know what Kyoto actually is and are against it, or even if you ask questions, you are attacked as an enemy of the environment and are therefore unCanadian.
Kyoto is the Allah of the fundamentalist hard religious left. As with Allah, the concept cannot withstand critical, rational thought. And as with Allah, the prostylization of it is based on inconsistancy, outright lies and omissions, to mask true intent.
The Sponsorship Scandal cost us Millions $$. IMO what scandal has cost us Billions $$$ ??. Environment Canada’s Kyoto policy, Rick Mercer and all.
Does anyone know how much The Weather Network “pays” for EC data ?? Just wondering as they usually have Suzuki types as guests. Tim Ball, what, once ??
Perhaps TWN is finally seeing the light. David Phillips, just the other day, says the Earth is warming slightly because of a combination of natural and man made causes. Well, that is certainly defferent from “..it is all man’s fault, repent, the debate is over, drink the nice kool-aide.” … ok, Jimmy Jones.
What he didn’t mention is that the Sun and cosmic rays are probably resposible for 99% and man a mere blip.
Do Al Gore and Suzuki think that man cause the ice ages too ?? Ice two kilometers thick over most of Canada. And then the MUCH-warmer-than-today-period that melted most of it ?? The melting is still going on as we speak.
Rick Mercer doesn’t realize Kyoto is the biggest joke he ever told !! A multi-billion $ hoax-of-a-joke
irwin daisy, it is the Media that have caused the kyoto-is-environment scam. The Loopy-Left like it also because it fits with govmit taxes-controls.
But mostly, the Media likes all hoaxes. How many years did they promote Y2K, Global Cooling, Martians, Alien Crop Circles, Bermuda Triangle, Lost City of Atlantus, DDT Ban, Malthius Food Shortage Scare, Mann’s Hockey Stick Graph, …. Had to cut down lots, and lots of trees to cover all those hoaxes. mmmmmm Perhaps the Siera Club and Pembina Institute have a lawsuit case here …
Media Destroying Forests To Promote Hoax.
While we are on this subject can someone explain how buying carbon credits reduces the amount of Co2 going in to the atmosphere.It had to be a politician who thought that up.”We have met our goals…and we only spent xxxx billion dollars on get out of jail cards”
If “Herve Le Treut, director of research at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)” says it is so, voila, c’est vrai.
Kyoto Dion, citizen of France, says, oui, it’s so.
The “message” is “unvarnished” (cliches); hate unvarnished messages.
More cliches: “icy shiver down spines followed by a clamour for action.”.
S’more?: “phone-book-sized report”; “massive”.
Outlook: “Bleak” and “terrifying”.
“newly-discovered mechanisms” by whom? where? when? how? what?
…-
Climate Change: Frisson*-laden year lies ahead (preview of 4th IPCC report)
Space Daily ^ | 12/07/2006 | AFP
Frisson means “a moment of intense excitement”. (I had to look it up.) I guess they’re predicting several of those next year on this topic.
Here’s the text:
Nothing beats a whiff of Apocalypse for focussing minds and, next year, climate change will be the big issue that will send an icy shiver down spines followed by a clamour for action.
On February 1, the world’s top scientists will issue their first instalment of a massive three-part update on global warming.
It will be the first knowledge review by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2001 — and the phone-book-sized report will convey an unvarnished message that will be bleak and quite possibly terrifying.
Those close to the IPCC say it will not only confirm the grim warnings of the past but also amplify them.
It will declare that climate change is already on the march — and newly-discovered mechanisms in the complex climate system could worsen the threat.
“The [temperature] trends that were expected will be unchanged,” says Herve Le Treut, director of research at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1749914/posts
I think that the great physicist Richard Feynman had something relevant to say about this sort of thing, in his speech “Cargo Cult Science”: “…there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in ‘cargo cult science’… It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards… For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it… Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.”
In the case of global warming/climate change/whatever it’s called this week, I believe that it’s the left side of the political spectrum that’s lacking this honesty, but the left certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on it.
sorry for this second post, but I have now found a link to the entire speech:
http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
And, just to clarify the final sentence from my previous post, the political left has no monopoly on the lack of honesty. I’ve found plenty of fellow conservatives who disregard evidence that conflicts with their views, and it’s just possible that I’ve done it once or twice myself.
A toronado hit London England. And you fools on this blog think global warming is not a fact of life. Not many thinkers here.
Here’s a fact of life:
“On average, 33 tornadoes are reported each year in the United Kingdom. This average is based on a 30 year period, though in reality the actual yearly figures may vary dramatically from year to year.”
http://www.torro.org.uk/TORRO/severeweather/tornadofaqs.php
“bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria”
And right on cue, ok4u starts shrieking and name calling because there’s been a tornado in England.
BTW, good work, Nathan.
How is it we continue to make ice wine here in Southern Ontario. Could it be that our climate gets rather chilly. If we could trade that crop for palm trees I’m all for it.
37% have faith in you. That’s scary. You should be shot and peed on.
You are in the minority. You better wise up that global warming is here and happening now. What is wrong with you? Are you so afraid to stop our wasteful ways here in North America that it has clouded your thinking??? WE are at least 10 years behind Europe when it comes to global warming and doing something about it. North American car makers didn’t plan for the future that’s their problem, Europeans did that’s their legacy. We have to change or our grand children will not have a very nice life. We have to stop listening to politicians who are bank rolled by Enron. You Tories are out of touch. Sorry there is more to my Canada than Alberta. Get with the program. Ruduce emissions take the one ton challenge even if the Tories cancelled it.
You are in the minority. You better wise up that global warming is here and happening now.
I’m also in the minority in that I believe that pi is an irrational number (I’m probably in the minority in actually knowing what an irrational number is), but I’m right. Being in the majority has absolutely nothing to do with being right.
As usual, ok4ua, didn’t read the post. He has a fully formed opinion already and will not allow facts and the truth to change it.
I’m just not sure why he posts comments, or for that matter, why he tolerates the inconvenience of possesing a brain.
Like I should believe you Tories? Not likely. Global warming is causing a lot of bad weather.
When Krakatoa exploaded it was a year without summer. Now we’re doing what volcanoes used to do.
C’mon…isn’t anybody going to find that old Kyoto godfather and drag him out of his digs in Costa Rica or Bejing or where ever he repaired to after somebody was crude enough to mention that Million plus Saddam sent him, and ask just who is making money out of this whole climate change panic? Ya..I mean Maurice Strong, friend of Kofi, chum of Chretien, late of Power Corp and Ontario Hydro and now isn’t he running some kind of carbon points exchange? Hmmmmm.
sarge here. sarge thinks you kanukistani might jest want to rethink the impact of the obvious change in climate. when it get s warm enough a whole lot of fat sweaty americans is gona start thinkin about moving north. north is canada. you has been warned, we is comming.