UN Global Warming report is out

[thundercleetz]

You're totally right on the reasons and motivations... But the scary thing is education can't fix it when:

 

1. Parents teach students to ignore certain lessons they disagree with (silly but can't tell you how many times students say, "actually..." and then recite crap talking points from their favorite politicians.)

 

2. Education is getting lobbied to death too! Scary to see how many states are trying to require creationism be taught with evolution as competing theories or climate deniers being taught along side science. I even have to continue teaching disproven economic theory because of "balance" (there's more validity there as economic theory is far less secure than natural science, but still frustrating).

 

I know you certainly weren't talking just about education on these issues but also simply critical thinking, but even that is so hard to teach because of these other factors. It's really wild the preconceptions students bring into class and how stubbornly they hold them regardless of evidence. Most can't even effectively play devils advocate, which requires at least acknowledging other views... I could continue on a massive teaching rant about bad teaching, but I'll spare you all.

Don't you think at the core of this, however, is a separation of church and state issue? Proven scientific based facts are taught in public schools, and you don't even mention anything else. Parents who want their children to have a religious based education (which is perfectly fine) send their kids to private schools.

 

Make it out of the question for anything other than scientifically proven theories to be taught in schools, and there would he nothing to lobby. Now making this realistic is a completely different story.

[dc.]

I don't disagree with your take, but you have to get school board and state board of education and state legislatures to actually mandate and enforce that... And in many places they won't! Go look up the Texas school board text book debates... Unbelievable and scary. They not only legitimately edit science to include controversy, they change history texts to show balance. I think I even remember one example where they wanted the civil rights movement to have "more balance" ??

[thundercleetz]

I don't disagree with your take, but you have to get school board and state board of education and state legislatures to actually mandate and enforce that... And in many places they won't! Go look up the Texas school board text book debates... Unbelievable and scary. They not only legitimately edit science to include controversy, they change history texts to show balance. I think I even remember one example where they wanted the civil rights movement to have "more balance" ??

Yes, getting it to actually work it a completely different story. (I'm guessing it would take some sort of landmark ruling by the Supreme Court after years and years of lower court rulings and appeals?) But you'd think in a state like Maryland there wouldn't be the problems with the curriculum you mentioned you have to deal with yourself.

[dc.]

In MD probably not. Though I also yeah at one of those Christian schools you talk of! But we actually do a great job of teaching fact in secular courses and theology in theology courses.

 

But how you educate those who wish to stay in the bubble? That I don't know...

[dc.]

Add on... The whole issue is of course only worsened by the internet in some ways, allowing us to only engage with info and ideas we like. We can live in bubbles with less less less trouble everyday. Echo chambers.

 

This by the way is one reason I tune to cable news shows from time to time and read sites from commentators I don't care for... Because sometimes good ideas do show up and I don't want to get lost in my "sides" misinformation.

[cravnravn]

What are scientists saying about this past winter? You all battled the polar vortex twice. The first one effected south Florida. We set a record that stood for over 100 years, most consecutive days with the lows being in the 30's.

[papasmurfbell]

What are scientists saying about this past winter? You all battled the polar vortex twice. The first one effected south Florida. We set a record that stood for over 100 years, most consecutive days with the lows being in the 30's.

[cravnravn]

I'd like to see a current version of your graph

[papasmurfbell]

Which graph?

[papasmurfbell]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh3TeTxgNVo

[dc.]

Crav... that was current. Comparing March 2014 temps to average temps the last 30 years. Colder this year in parts of US? Yes. But warmer everywhere else.

 

As for what they'd say about this winter .... as Papa has said a few times: WEATHER is not the same as CLIMATE.

 

To quote someone (here or elsewhere, I can't remember...): If it rains in the Sahara, is it suddenly not a desert?

[cravnravn]

Crav... that was current. Comparing March 2014 temps to average temps the last 30 years. Colder this year in parts of US? Yes. But warmer everywhere else.

 

As for what they'd say about this winter .... as Papa has said a few times: WEATHER is not the same as CLIMATE.

 

To quote someone (here or elsewhere, I can't remember...): If it rains in the Sahara, is it suddenly not a desert?

Tell me if I'm reading that chart right. I m reading it as over the past 30 some odd years the ocean temps haven't changed that drastically

[deeshopper]

[papasmurfbell]

[Spen]

Tell me if I'm reading that chart right. I m reading it as over the past 30 some odd years the ocean temps haven't changed that drastically

 

 

I think its saying that 2014 temperatures are up over the average temperatures from 1981-2010. So really the rise is a few degrees from 4 years ago.

Either way, a few degree celcius is kind of a big deal.

[deeshopper]

Either way, a few degree celcius is kind of a big deal.

 

It is, as it would be with your body temperature. 98.6 is normal. Add five degrees, and your brain could fry.

[papasmurfbell]

This is not global warming but just shows how anything that comes from Fox News has to be looked at suspiciously.

 

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-04-18/entertainment/bal-fox-friends-mistreats-elijah-cummings-story-20140418_1_fox-friends-steve-doocy-team-cummings

 

'Fox & Friends' mistreats Elijah Cummings on IRS emails story

 

As I watched Tuesday while the anchors on “Fox & Friends” leveled unsubstantiated charges against Rep. Elijah Cummings as if they were facts, I couldn’t help thinking how much more dangerous Sen. Joe McCarthy might have been in the 1950s if there had been a show like this to amplify his reckless allegations.

 

The Fox News morning show was playing one of cable talk’s dirtier games, and the longtime Democratic congressman from Baltimore was its target for his role in the House IRS probe. The lightweight, smiley morning crew — Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Elisabeth Hasselbeck — were saying things no responsible anchors would. They were the kind of things that could seriously damage the reputation of an ideological foe.

Remember when Doocy in 2012 made up parts of a quote he attributed to President Barack Obama so that it sounded as if the president were attacking Mitt Romney’s privileged background? Under pressure from management, Doocy apologized.

Or how about the four-minute attack ad on Obama that same year, which Doocy and his cohorts introduced, aired and praised as great journalism? Fox management repudiated the ad as a mistake by a rogue associate producer after I and other critics tore into it. It disappeared from the channel’s website by noon.

Fox management’s deftness at distancing itself from the morning crew when blowback gets too harsh looks to be part of the game to some analysts. Salon termed Doocy “Roger Ailes’ attack poodle” in a 2011 piece chronicling “smears” by the show host.

And here we were again Tuesday, with another depressing reminder of how our media fail us and why we are such a misinformed, confused, angry and polarized people.

It was Tax Day, April 15, and “Fox & Friends” was playing straight into voter resentment with a report on emails between Cummings’ staff of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform and the IRS. The 2012 emails sought information on a Texas conservative group, True The Vote. A lawyer for the group was suggesting on air that Team Cummings’ emails “put it on the radar” for IRS scrutiny. And that was being offered as evidence of collusion between Cummings and the IRS in targeting Obama opponents.

“There’s explosive new evidence,” Hasselbeck said of the emails, “that [Cummings] was leading the charge against conservatives the entire time.”

Cummings is the ranking minority member on the panel, which is investigating the IRS for allegedly treating tea party and other conservative groups unfairly. He and the chairman, California Republican Darrell Issa, have been at each other’s throats throughout the hearings — most famously on March 5, when Issa had Cummings’ microphone cut off as Cummings tried to question retired IRS executive Lois Lerner.

“The House oversight committee chairman,” Hasselbeck continued, “actually produced emails from 2012 that show Lois Lerner accommodating the request from Elijah Cummings ... providing information about an organization called True The Vote, a conservative organization that was singled out and scrutinized [by the IRS].”

“So let me get this straight,” Doocy said, picking up the baton as the screen filled with video of Cummings and Lerner. “What you just said, that guy right there, the top Democrat on the House oversight [committee], was coordinating with that woman, Lois Lerner, targeting a Texas conservative group called True The Vote. They were coordinating to crack down on them. That is so wrong, isn’t it?”

 

It doesn’t take much fact-checking to show how fast and loose Doocy and Hasselbeck were playing with anything resembling facts.

Start with the “explosive new evidence,” which was neither explosive nor new. It came from a news release put out six days earlier by Issa’s staff on the House panel. It is headlined “New IRS E-mails: Lois Lerner funneled Elijah Cummings Info on targeted Conservative Group.”

It repeats the accusation that letters from Cummings’ staff “might have been involved in putting True The Vote on the radar screen” of the IRS.

But the news release proves none of that. In fact, what the full range of emails, which were made available by the IRS in response to requests from the committee, actually shows is Cummings staffers asking for “publicly available information” on True The Vote. That would be information available to anyone.

And the emails from the IRS show that executives there triple-checked to make sure only such information was included.

Even though Issa had the same emails Cummings did, he nevertheless wrote and made public a letter to Cummings signed by him and five other GOP panel members saying the emails “raise concerns that the IRS improperly shared protected taxpayer information with your staff.”

 

Issa also had the emails to show that the IRS was investigating True The Vote six months before Cummings’ staff contacted it. Six months! What a convenient fact to overlook amid the “explosive new evidence.”

In a statement to The Baltimore Sun last week, Cummings said, “You know it’s bad when you cut off the microphone of a Member of Congress, but it’s worse when you publicly attack staffers for inappropriate activity with cherry-picked emails, especially when you have in your own files documents that show the exact opposite. I hope we can return to a level of civility on this committee.”

 

Cummings was referring to Issa’s accusations against him, which Fox essentially took from the news release and presented as fact. Cummings has since written and posted letters online addressing the accusations of “coordinating” and being the recipient of “funneled” taxpayer information from Lerner.

“It's rich to hear a Member, who has ignored the historical record to demagogue as 'McCarthyite' an essential investigation into wrongdoing at the IRS, talk about a return to civility,” Frederick Hill, spokesman for Issa’s committee, wrote in an email response to the statement from Cummings. “Evidence has shown that the rhetoric and political pressure on the IRS by elected Democrats contributed to IRS targeting.”

A spokeswoman for Fox News said “Fox & Friends” is “an opinion show and is not part of the hard-news lineup” at the channel.

She pointed to interviews that Megyn Kelly did on April 10 and 14 with the founder of and a lawyer for True The Vote, respectively, in which the prime-time show host told viewers that Cummings denies the accusations True The Vote was making in those interviews.

“He says his communications were all appropriate,” Kelly said in the April 14 interview, “but he has not elaborated on that and won’t come give us a full statement, which we would be happy to hear him out on.”

After just four days of reporting and fact-checking the story, I don’t pretend to know all the facts. Overall, I am in no position to say whether Cummings behaved ethically.

But I do know there is no evidence that has been produced at this point for the accusations leveled against him as fact on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning. I also know there was evidence available to “Fox & Friends” that Cummings’ staff could not have flagged True The Vote for the IRS.

The IRS emails released by Issa himself further show Cummings’ staff asking only for “publicly available information,” and IRS officials double- and triple-checking to make sure only such information was released. Hardly “coordinating” to “crack down” on anyone. That’s what the emails not reported by “Fox & Friends” as part of its “explosive new evidence” show, anyway.

Maybe I don’t have as fine a moral compass as Steve Doocy. But given that evidence, leveling such a grave accusation against a member of Congress as conspiring with a federal agency to attack political opponents just seems wrong, doesn’t it?

 

I agree with him. Also I detest Cummings but you have to be truthful when informing the electorate.

 

[oldcrow]

that's not true DEE

 

if the earth is only 6,000 years old and mankind is the one producing the CO2 to destroy Earth. Venus was just like us so.......... You trying to tell me there was life on other planets?

 

like dinosaurs existed or something

pffft. no way jose . liar liar pants on fire wrap your butt in telephone wire.

[thundercleetz]

Canada is having their own fracking problems:

 

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/27/fracking-in-the-worldsgreenestcity.html

[papasmurfbell]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/30/scientific-american-editor-fox-censored-my-discussion-of-climate-change-as-future-trend/

 

 

‘Scientific American’ editor: Fox censored my discussion of climate change as ‘future trend’

Scientific American editor Michael Moyer went on Fox & Friends this morning to discuss “Tech trends for the next decade and beyond,” which producers told him did not, under any circumstances, involve certain issues:

 

 

Michael Moyer @mmoyr

Follow

Fox & Friends producer wanted to talk about future trends. I said #1 will be impacts of climate change. I was told to pick something else.

In an email, Moyer told Raw Story that “a day or two ago a producer for Fox & Friends contactedSciAm‘s media person about doing a segment along the lines of ‘what will science and technology bring over the next 50 years?’ They saw the recent Pew poll about whether people think teleportation and the like was going to exist and wanted someone to give some TRUE/FALSE verdicts. I said I would do the spot, but that it’s a fool’s game to guess at what technologies are going to exist in a half-century. I would do a ‘trends for the future’ in science.”

The Fox producer approved of that angle. Moyer told Raw Story that “[a] 50-year-timescale is pretty far out [and that about] the only interesting thing that the scientific community is sure will happen in the next 50 years is that climate change is going to get worse, and that we’re going to have to deal with the impacts. So I put that as one of my talking points.”

Although “he understood that there was little chance the topic would make it into the show,” he was determined not “to self-censor [himself] from the get-go.” However, “[t]he Fox producer came back and very politely and matter-of-factly said that we would have to replace the climate change item. So I included the thing about finding distant [and potentially habitable] planets.”

About which Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked, “Do they have football?” As David Mann noted on Twitter, Kilmeade also expressed his opinion about the true value of science:

David Mann @D_MannSoJo

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@mmoyr I'm glad they pointed out the only reason to make scientific discoveries is to get really rich.

As for his experience on the program, Moyer tweeted about how he felt while he waited to film the segment:

Michael Moyer @mmoyr

Follow

I couldn’t sit in the Fox & Friends greenroom beforehand b/c watching the show made me crazy. Every single segment was anti-Obama agitprop.

And how felt as he was in makeup:

Michael Moyer @mmoyr

Follow

Everyone’s in a bubble. Makeup girl: Where u think the plane is? Me, puzzled: Bottom of the ocean? Her: No it’s on a military base somewhere

As well as his general feeling about appearing on Fox & Friends:

Michael Moyer @mmoyr

Follow

Went on Fox & Friends this morning. Kinda feel like I should take a shower. http://video.foxnews.com/v/3522822628001/future-shock-tech-trends-for-the-next-decade-and-beyond/?playlist_id=930909787001#sp=show-clips …

After appearing on the show, Moyer tweeted a link to the Union of Concerned Scientists study“Science or Spin?: Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science.” The study concluded that “Fox News was the least accurate [as] 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained misleading statements.”

Watch video of the segment — which Fox has already pulled from the Fox & Friends online archive — below.

http://videos.rawstory.com/video/Michael-Moyer-talks-to-Fox-Frien/player?

[Spen]

You all need to stop with this crap, until someone develops a solar panel that's not an eye sore you won't see one on Cravs home. And as far as the ice melt, after this winter how can you all speak about ice melt? Florida set a record that stood for 80 years, 7 straight days below 30 degrees for the overnight low.

Kind of like when you have great stroke you get the chills.

[cravnravn]

Kind of like when you have great stroke you get the chills.

 

I dont know about all that, but I do know I had to go and buy socks.

[Spen]

Kind of like when you have great stroke you get the chills.

I love auto correct when I don't notice it. It should have said: "Kind of like when you have heat stroke you get the chills."

 

So you don't believe in global warming because you had to buy socks?

Edited May 3, 2014 by Spen

[dc.]

Tell me if I'm reading that chart right. I m reading it as over the past 30 some odd years the ocean temps haven't changed that drastically

Do you mean are you reading the map right? The answer is no.

 

The map compares this winter to average winter temps since 1981. If the map is great, it means the average temp this winter was the same as for the last 30 years. If red, this winter was hotter. If blue, colder.

 

The point of the map is that even though the northeast USA had a slightly cooler winter than normal (blue), almost the entire rest of the planet was having a warmer season (red).

 

But you still ignore the obvious and I'd love a response on this (if you understand it): If it reasons in the Sahara, does that mean it's not a desert?

 

Being cold for one day or week or month or even year does not change climate. Climate is a long term trend.

 

Here's another fun item, ever see that movie The Day After Tomorrow? The one where a sudden freeze up literally destroys the entire northern US? That's based on global warming ideas. Suddenly warm temps lead to arctic thawing which actually could cool the oceans enough to create "polar vortex" situation all over the world.

 

But sure, sock purchases.

[papasmurfbell]

Do you mean are you reading the map right? The answer is no.

 

The map compares this winter to average winter temps since 1981. If the map is great, it means the average temp this winter was the same as for the last 30 years. If red, this winter was hotter. If blue, colder.

 

The point of the map is that even though the northeast USA had a slightly cooler winter than normal (blue), almost the entire rest of the planet was having a warmer season (red).

 

But you still ignore the obvious and I'd love a response on this (if you understand it): If it reasons in the Sahara, does that mean it's not a desert?

 

Being cold for one day or week or month or even year does not change climate. Climate is a long term trend.

 

Here's another fun item, ever see that movie The Day After Tomorrow? The one where a sudden freeze up literally destroys the entire northern US? That's based on global warming ideas. Suddenly warm temps lead to arctic thawing which actually could cool the oceans enough to create "polar vortex" situation all over the world.

 

But sure, sock purchases.

It is amazing that hand holding to understand an obvious visual aid is needed.