Weather

Rolling Stone, a music magazine in the same sense that MTV is a music-video channel, was featured on this morning's edition of Morning Joe.  Their cover story is not about the latest escapades of Kanye West or Lady Gaga; instead, they have chosen to write about global warming.  Before anyone asks, none of the above recording artists (to my knowledge) have recorded a song which would have spawned this article.

"As the World Burns," is the eyes-bleeding hyperbolic title of the article.  Contents: The 17 people whom Rolling Stone calls "climate killers."  And the first target of the article: Billionaire investor and ardent Obama supporter, Warren Buffett:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You put Warren Buffett on that list, I thought he was an Obama supporter?

The news media constantly misuse extreme weather examples to generate fear of global warming, but when record cold or record snow sets in journalists don't mention the possibility of global cooling trends. While climatologists would say weather isn't necessarily an indication of climate, it has been in the media, but only when the weather could be spun as part of global warming.

In Iowa, temperatures are 30 degrees below normal according to the Des Moines Register. That's a near-record low. Beijing is facing the coldest temperatures in decades according to Australia's The Age.

And in Pichccahuasi, Peru, bitter cold may cause the extinction of communities of alpaca farmers suffering from pneumonia and other respiratory problems. Ironically, that Guardian (U.K.) report called the region an anomaly "in a world growing ever hotter."

Despite such extreme cold around the world, the three networks are not forecasting a period of global cooling. In fact, in the past three months there has been only one mention of "global cooling" on the networks. That was in an NBC "Today" about geo-engineering (manipulating) the global climate to create global cooling to combat global warming. 

Climate Progress's Joe Romm says this weekend's blizzard that rocked the Eastern seaboard was caused by global warming.

That's right, folks: you can add winter storms to the neverending list of things Nobel Laureate Al Gore's bogeyman is now responsible for.

Of course this isn't at all surprising, for Romm blamed the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse on global warming.  

Potentially just as interesting was how Romm initially tried to downplay the severity of this storm in his article published Sunday:

In September 2006 when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush the Devil at the United Nations, the Bush-hating press couldn't get enough of the comment.

On Friday, Chavez spoke to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen after President Obama made his keynote address, and much as he did three years ago, the Venezuelan despot said, "It still smells of sulfur here," referring to the lectern.

Given the attention Chavez's claim got three years ago when he made it about Bush, how will Obama-loving media report such a statement being made about their hero? (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Fausta):

A number of the media's talking heads have tried to use cold temperatures as evidence of global warming. As strange as that seems, some may have decided on an even more ridiculous "proof" of global warming: poor skiing conditions in Pennsylvania (h/t Ed Driscoll).

Apparently the new measure for global warming is how well one's skis slide across the snow. At least that's what the Times-Leader, a local paper in northern PA, suggested in an article on Saturday.

Reporting on a panel of outdoor recreation officials speaking at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barry, PA, the Times-Leader quoted one cross country skier who said, "my skis recognize that climate change is happening." His skis? Begin the draconian carbon cuts!

With the imminent release of the science fiction blockbuster "Avatar," some have characterized it as a multi-million dollar public service announcment for global warming.

Popular Science reported Tuesday:

Unlike [George] Lucas’ more playful science fiction epic ["Star Wars"], [James] Cameron reaches for a heavy environmental message. Avatar is every militant global warming supporter’s dream come true as the invading, technology-worshiping, environment-ravaging humans are set upon by an angry planet and its noble inhabitants.

In an interview with "The Hollywood Reporter," Cameron refuted this sentiment...or did he? (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

In an interview to be aired on the CBS "Early Show" Wednesday, Nobel Laureate Al Gore read his global warming poem to Harry Smith.

Even worse, the 23-year CBS veteran journalist, almost like a teenybopper swooning as she approaches a rock star for an autograph, actually asked the former Vice President to read it to him.

When the Global Warmingist-in-Chief was done, Smith said breathlessly, "Wow. I'm so glad you read that...I'm happy to hear it in your voice."

Readers are cautioned to stow liquids and flammables at a safe distance before proceeding (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

A group of journalists stood for many hours in near-freezing temperatures Monday waiting to get into the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Marvelously among them was Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein who regularly reports on the dire consequences of -- wait for it! -- global warming.

Ironically, his articles are so filled with inflammatory hyperbole concerning Nobel Laureate Al Gore's favorite bogeyman that scientists have denounced him.

But before we get there, the Climate Pool reported at Facebook Monday (h/t Tom Nelson):

The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal has taken down most of the information previously available at its website.

Prior to November's release of controversial e-mail messages and documents from Britain's University of East Anglea, there was a separate website for the institution's CRU that allowed readers to review articles and studies created by and for the Unit.

Now, no matter what link one tries to access via a Google search, it directs you to a page that reads: "Due to the present high volume of visitors to this page, you will shortly be directed to the latest news about CRU on the main University of East Anglia website, or you can go there immediately by clicking on this link."

Once there, readers are exclusively offered the follow:

Howard Kurtz must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed Sunday, for his "Reliable Sources" review of John Stossel's new Fox Business Network show was uncharacteristically way off base.

After presenting a cherry-picked video clip of Stossel talking about how he wished Nobel Laureate Al Gore would come on the program to debate man's role in global warming, Kurtz asked guest David Zurawik, "[D]oes this continue a trend of partisan people going to partisan networks and putting them on partisan shows?"

After Zurawik's answer, Kurtz carped, "My only problem with that first program is that he basically had one guest for three-quarters of the show, a guy from the Libertarian Cato Institute who is also very skeptical of global warming. And so, except from the studio audience, you didn't hear a lot of contrary voices."

Unfortunately, Kurtz edited out the segment when Stossel read an e-mail message from Gore's representative saying the former Vice President had to decline the invitation to appear on the program because he was too busy (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Nobel Laureate Al Gore should debate former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and all those who don't believe man is responsible for global warming.

So said MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe Friday in an appearance on "Countdown."

This was in response to substitute anchor Lawrence O'Donnell bringing up Palin's answer to conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham's question concerning the former Governor debating Gore about climate change. 

What followed was rather comical if you understand how many people from around the world have challenged the Global Warmingist-in-Chief to a head-to-head without him once accepting (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, relevant section at 3:50):

A Stanford professor with ties to Nobel Laureate Al Gore and the growing ClimateGate scandal used United Nations security officials at the climate conference in Copenhagen to halt questions about e-mail messages obtained from Britain's Climatic Research Unit.

Dr. Stephen Schneider was speaking at the Bella Centre Thursday when Irish journalist Phelim McAleer began asking about ClimateGate.

McAleer is known for his documentary "Not Evil, Just Wrong," which challenged the content of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," as well as for confronting the former Vice President during a lecture in October only to have his microphone turned off.

According to a video just posted at Big Government, UN security officials stepped in when McAleer tried to ask the Professor inconvenient questions (video embedded below the fold):

Al Gore may have been too busy to discuss the "climate crisis" with FBN's John Stossel Thursday, but he sure had enough time to read his global warming poem to a CNN reporter the day before.

I guess a Nobel Laureate has to understand his priorities.

Without further ado (video embedded below the fold with words to Gore's masterpiece, h/t NBer Blonde):

Despite appearing on CNN and MSNBC Wednesday, Nobel Laureate Al Gore was apparently too busy to discuss global warming on the premiere episode of John Stossel's new Fox Business Network program.

To kick off his new show Thursday, Stossel chose the controversial subject of climate change, and invited on a number of guests to address the issue in great detail.

According to an e-mail message sent to Stossel's producers on November 23, "the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore's time" made it impossible for the former Vice President to attend.

Of course, Gore's busy schedule didn't prevent him from being interviewed by CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday, nor did it stop him from appearing on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" just two days before he declined Stossel's invitation.

I guess even an esteemed Nobel Laureate has to understand his limitations (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):  

Our friends at Minnesotans for Global Warming have released a fabulous new video just in time for the holidays.

Entitled "It's a ClimateGate Christmas," Elmer and his team took your favorite Christmas carols and inserted lyrics involving Nobel Laureate Al Gore's favorite bogeyman.

As you would expect, Gore is the subject of many of the tunes (video embedded below the fold with partial song list):

Showing the sense of humor millions of Americans fell in love with last year, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said Thursday that critics of her previous day's op-ed in the Washington Post "kind of got all wee-weed up about it and wanted to call me and others deniers."

Palin, chatting with conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham, was obviously poking fun at something President Obama said over the summer: "There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up."

According to Palin, who might have been referring to derogatory comments from folks like MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, and Keith Olbermann, such was the reaction to her published views on global warming and the United Nations climate change conference currently taking place in Copenhagen (YouTube audio embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, partial transcript):

"Having given her sleight of hand stamp of approval to the birthers, Sarah Palin is now moving on to an almost equally popular far right mythology, climate change denial."

So began MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in his number one story on Wednesday's "Countdown."

"Getting her facts wrong and misrepresenting her record as governor of Alaska, again, not enough for Palin`s latest foray into opinion piece, this one for 'The Washington Post,'" said Olbermann. "So she went into full-on denial, climate change is all political mode."

The "Countdown" host then brought on the Nation's Chris Hayes who claimed that people who don't believe in manmade global warming are like folks who "argue that 9/11 was an inside job" (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, partial transcript with commentary):

Did you know that if you don't believe man is responsible for global warming you're a prehistoric cavedweller completely unaware of what's going on in the world?

So said MSNBC's Chris Matthews during a discussion on Wednesday's "Hardball" when he referred to Sarah Palin and everybody else that doesn't agree with Nobel Laureate Al Gore's view of climate change as "troglodytes."

"She`s got to be smarter than this," argued Matthews despite complaining moments later about how the former governor gives autographs: "She doesn`t write the book, and then she scribbles some indecipherable sign on the book as a signature."

Sharing this lowly opinion of the former vice presidential candidate were the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson who called Palin's op-ed about climate change in his own paper Wednesday "a mess," and the Financial Times' Chrystia Freeland who said Palin's views on this subject were "radical" and "dangerous."

Add it all up and "Hardball" viewers were treated to quite a Palin hatefest (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend at Story Balloon, partial transcript):

Nobel Laureate Al Gore Wednesday called former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a "global warming denier."

Speaking with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, Gore also repeated his false claim about ClimateGate e-mail messages obtained from Britain's Climatic Research Unit: "the most recent one is like ten years ago."

As Andrew Bolt reported Wednesday at Australia's Herald Sun, the most recent e-mail message obtained from CRU was sent less than a month ago on November 12.

Unfortunately, much like his appearance on CNN earlier in the day, Gore was playing fast and loose with the facts.

Sadly, his MSNBC interviewer was similarly disinterested in challenging the former Vice President about his mistatements, and also never once asked him about his own financial interests in this matter (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Al Gore warned CNN viewers Wednesday about imminent planetary doom at the hands of his favorite bogeyman global warming just seconds before Kiran Chetry reported the "monster storm paralyzing travel in more than a dozen states" with "winter still two weeks away."

On "American Morning" to discuss issues surrounding the United Nations climate change conference taking place in Copenhagen, the former Vice President said, "All the mountain glaciers all over the world are melting, many of them at a greatly accelerated rate, threatening drinking water supplies."

Shortly after this ominous forecast, Chetry told viewers, "Winter still two weeks away, but snow plows are out from the plains to the Northeast. A monster storm paralyzing travel in more than a dozen states."

The Global Warmingist in Chief also downplayed the significance of the growing ClimateGate scandal as e-mail messages "from ten years ago out of context" that "the noise machine of the climate deniers" are blowing "out of proportion" to "fool some people into thinking they have substance" (videos in two parts embedded below the fold courtesy our friends at Story Balloon with full transcript):

CBS on Saturday finally covered the growing ClimateGate scandal, but did so when its "Evening News" program was going to be preempted by college football in most of the country.

With the SEC Championship game between the universities of Florida and Alabama starting at 4PM EST, few would see CBS's report on this controversy unless they read an article at the network's website.

There, the video of the segment was available with the surprising caption "Climate Change a Hoax?"

According to LexisNexis, anchor Jeff Glor teased the story before a commercial break, "Just ahead on tonight`s CBS EVENING NEWS -- did some scientists fudge the numbers to make climate change look worse than it is."

After the break, Glor introduced correspondent Kimberly Dozier who offered a surprisingly detailed report on the scandal (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

America's media might not think the growing ClimateGate scandal is important, but Britain's Met Office believes it's serious enough to re-examine 160 years of temperature data:

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012. 

For those unfamiliar, the Met Office is England's national weather service.

Maybe this revelation will convince our global warming-obsessed press that information in the e-mail messages obtained from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is actually newsworthy.

As reported by the London Times Saturday (h/t Ed Morrissey):

The Washington Post Saturday published a syndicated cartoon that addressed the seriousness of the growing ClimateGate scandal while marvelously bashing Nobel Laureate Al Gore.

This came a day after associate editor Eugene Robinson said the e-mail messages obtained from the British Climate Research Unit damage the "consensus" concerning man's role in global warming.

Is the Post trying to tell us this scandal is far more significant than most American media are letting on?

Before you answer, consider the following hysterical question asked by cartoonist Lisa Benson in Saturday's opinion section -- "Sooo...Did Al Gore invent climate change?" (larger version below the fold, h/t Tim Graham):

Washington Post associate editor Eugene Robinson Friday called the growing ClimateGate scandal a "major embarrassment for the scientists involved" that undermines the "consensus" concerning man's role in global warming.

Even more concerning to Robinson was that these scientists "seem to be trying to squelch dissent" from anyone that disagrees with them.

"The fact is that climate science is fiendishly hard because of the enormous number of variables that interact in ways no one fully understands," he wrote. "Scientists should welcome contrarian views from respected colleagues, not try to squelch them. They should admit what they don't know."

As you can see, Robinson was by no means trying to downplay the significance of this scandal:

Scientists involved in the growing ClimateGate scandal were cited in an October climate change report prepared for the White House and Congress.

Titled "Our Changing Planet," the 172-page document was created by The U.S. Global Change Research Program along with the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, and was submitted as a supplement to President Obama's fiscal 2010 budget.

As such, its contents not only impact future and current legislation involving global warming, but also how tax dollars are spent to research and address it.

The report began with an introduction by White House science czar John Holdren, a man directly involved in ClimateGate (h/t Right Pundits via NB reader George):

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, the international television news network Russia Today has been doing an outstanding job of reporting the growing ClimateGate scandal.

On Wednesday, RT featured an absolute must-see debate between Piers Corbyn, a British weather forecaster and consultant who believes anthropogenic global warming is a dangerous scam, and Aleksey Korkorin, a Russian climatologist and contributor to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

As you watch the following segment, try to imagine an American television news outlet besides Fox giving so much air time not only to a debate about this scandal, but also to a discussion about the very existence of global warming (video embedded below the fold with transcribed highlights of Corbyn's comments, h/t Marc Morano):

It only took CNN six days to notice the growing international scandal known as Climategate, and when it finally reported on the matter, it predictably did so by downplaying the significance.

Maybe even more embarrassing for the supposedly "Most Trusted Name In News," Russia Today did a far better job of detailing what happened at Britain's Climate Research Unit and how the global warming debate is impacted by it.

Throughout her report on Wednesday's "The Situation Room," CNN correspondent Brooke Baldwin regularly referred to the "global warming consensus."

Even worse, she complained about there being "very little context" in the e-mail messages hacked from a "climate research institute," but never actually read ONE complete message or named ONE of the scientists involved.

Baldwin also withheld from viewers the connection these scientists have to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as their ties to the White House and Congressional Democrats (videos embedded below the fold with CNN transcript):

As NewsBusters has been reporting since the ClimateGate scandal first broke last Friday, America's media have either been shamefully ignoring the sensitive information hacked from a British university's computer system or dishonestly telling the public there's nothing to it.

If these revelations furthered the global warming myth by implicating skeptical scientists in a conspiracy to adjust temperature data while shutting out opinions contrary to their own, press outlets would likely have their science divisions poring over every e-mail and document available to find the proverbial smoking gun.

Because in this instance any such research could uncover information contrary to the agenda of most news outlets, scientific editors and reporters have abdicated their investigative responsibilities in an obvious attempt to protect policies they support and advocate.

With that in mind, the American Thinker's Marc Sheppard, clearly doing the media's job, examined the computer program source code available in what was hacked from this British Climate Research Unit (CRU), and discovered that this scandal is everything the global warming-obsessed media fear:

The release of internal emails from Britain's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit shows scientists plotting to ostracize and marginalize other researchers who question their assumptions on anthropogenic global warming. Yet the Washington Post finds that such a strategy is but a natural reaction to attacks on these scientists by climate skeptics.

The Post characterizes the CRU, and the larger circle of scientists pushing the global warming theory, as "an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack." Readers must be forgiven for their confusion about who exactly is being attacked, as the Post goes on to detail CRU communications calling for a boycott of academic journals that publish articles critical of the supposed "consensus" on global warming. (Noel Sheppard reported on these and other incendiary statements in a Friday post.)

"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," CRU director Phil Jones wrote of two skeptical academic works. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

For several years as uneducated sycophants in the media gushed and fawned over every utterance from former Vice President Al Gore, NewsBusters has informed readers of just how absurd the junk science he's peddling really is.

Last Thursday, NBC "Tonight Show" viewers got a perfect example of how the Nobel Laureate basically makes things up, and that his poor grades in college were quite an indicator of just how little he understands about science.

So egregious was his departure from reality that the following clip should be mandatory viewing for all his fans in the media who seem to be just as scientifically-challenged (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Hot Air):