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I SAW a hilarious little collage of grabs from the USA’s Fox News recently, which shows Fox News presenters and guests being rather ribald about climate change.
About two-thirds of the way in, you see Rupert Murdoch (who owns Fox, of course) talking about how it makes business sense to take the issue seriously.
This must be genuine, as Murdoch has developed strong views on climate change – he asked Al Gore to present at one of his annual shindigs, and apparently aims for a carbon neutral News Corp. But his staff merrily went on rubbishing the idea.
The anti-science eejits keep on peddling their preferred myths, despite the sobering words of people like investment strategist Jeremy Grantham (one of Bloomberg Market’s 2011 ‘50 Most Influential’), who recently wrote: “The world’s blind spot […] is seen also in the shocking lack of awareness on the part of governments and the public of the increasing damage to agriculture by climate change; for example, runs of extreme weather that have slashed grain harvests in the past few years.
"Recognition of the facts is delayed by the frankly brilliant propaganda and obfuscation delivered by energy interests that virtually own the US Congress.”
Yup. And that may also explain why Harrison H Schmitt and William Happer were given room to write a shockingly inaccurate column in the Wall Street Journal this month, ‘In Defense of Carbon Dioxide’, using that good ol’ line we’ve heard before, “…increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity”.
Baaarp! Sorry, guys, wrong on the science! Yes, it’s been done, showing that extra CO2 pumped into commercial greenhouses, as is common practice, does not have the same effect as CO2 in the atmosphere.
“In FACE [Free Air Carbon-dioxide Enrichment] experiments, protein concentrations in grains of wheat, rice and barley, and in potato tubers, are decreased by 5–14% under elevated CO2 (Taub et al 2008).”
Yes, that’s right, folks, CO2 does make plants grow – it makes them shoot up, outstripping the other available nutrients and resulting in decreased food quality.
By the way, Schmitt is an adjunct professor of engineering, a one-time astronaut and a former senator from New Mexico; Happer is a professor of physics.
Neither are engaged in the field of plant biology, but their work could be vaguely relevant. The same can surely not be said about the 31 487 American scientists who are signatories to the famous petition against action on climate change.
I recently spent a happy couple of hours randomly Googling their names. When I finally found a consulting geologist (a field with some remote relevance to climate science) I couldn’t help whooping and pumping my fist in the air.
My random sample turned up:
- Robert Leonard Straube, who wrote a book about tumours in 1955
- Jerome Samuel Danburg, retired oil industry executive
- Everett R Southam (deceased), PhD in Animal Science
- Timothy B McIlwain, Xto Energy Inc VP Operations.
- Kenneth M Eldred of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering
- Masood Mohiuddin, doctor of psychiatry
- Fred W Brackebusch, one-time CEO of New Jersey Mining Co
- Mary Feltner Futrell, nutritional scientist
- Dorothea Zucker Franklin, MD internal medicine
On Mother’s Day, one of SA’s ageing hacks wrote a column for the business section of a Sunday paper. Really, you’d think someone who in his day edited a national newspaper would know the basics of journalism – like you don’t just cherry-pick your info and you do check the credibility of your sources.
When a writer uses emotional and ad hominem language, you can expect bias, and in this column, within the first paragraph, scientists behind the climate consensus were labelled ‘crazies’– and one in particular was called a ‘Fuhrer’. (Gimme strength!)
The claim that ‘global warming is mythical nonsense’ was made on five bases, all factually inaccurate, but I can’t address them all here. Two were that:
• Al Gore has changed his mind. (Izzit? Then why is he sending me offers to join a course on becoming a ‘climate leader’?)
• A Russian ‘centre of academic excellence, the Pulkovo Observatory’ is predicting 200 years of global cooling. Uh, nyet so fast: what scientist Yuri Nagovitsyn actually said in Russian media was that a period of low solar activity could start in 2030–2040.
‘Low solar activity' does, of course, affect the earth’s temperature – but solar activity is not the cause of climate change, which results from greenhouse gases keeping heat inside our atmosphere. Less sun heat coming in is dandy, but only helps a bit.
By 2030, we should be at 450 CO2 parts per million (ppm), about a third higher than we should be for safety. And who’s to say that either the prediction or the date is right?
Dear old Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, who heads the Observatory, has been making the same prediction for years – last I heard, the new Little Ice Age was due to start in 2016. And I say Bring it on, baby – at least it would give us more time to mitigate the damage already done.
Last year, nearly 32 million people were forced from their homes by climate catastrophes like floods and storms – that’s climate change in action, with much more to come. With CO2 nudging 400 ppm, we don’t have time to waste.
The longer we allow ourselves to be distracted by unscientific obfuscation, the harder, more expensive and less effective mitigation and adaption will be.
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
About two-thirds of the way in, you see Rupert Murdoch (who owns Fox, of course) talking about how it makes business sense to take the issue seriously.
This must be genuine, as Murdoch has developed strong views on climate change – he asked Al Gore to present at one of his annual shindigs, and apparently aims for a carbon neutral News Corp. But his staff merrily went on rubbishing the idea.
The anti-science eejits keep on peddling their preferred myths, despite the sobering words of people like investment strategist Jeremy Grantham (one of Bloomberg Market’s 2011 ‘50 Most Influential’), who recently wrote: “The world’s blind spot […] is seen also in the shocking lack of awareness on the part of governments and the public of the increasing damage to agriculture by climate change; for example, runs of extreme weather that have slashed grain harvests in the past few years.
"Recognition of the facts is delayed by the frankly brilliant propaganda and obfuscation delivered by energy interests that virtually own the US Congress.”
Yup. And that may also explain why Harrison H Schmitt and William Happer were given room to write a shockingly inaccurate column in the Wall Street Journal this month, ‘In Defense of Carbon Dioxide’, using that good ol’ line we’ve heard before, “…increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity”.
Baaarp! Sorry, guys, wrong on the science! Yes, it’s been done, showing that extra CO2 pumped into commercial greenhouses, as is common practice, does not have the same effect as CO2 in the atmosphere.
“In FACE [Free Air Carbon-dioxide Enrichment] experiments, protein concentrations in grains of wheat, rice and barley, and in potato tubers, are decreased by 5–14% under elevated CO2 (Taub et al 2008).”
Yes, that’s right, folks, CO2 does make plants grow – it makes them shoot up, outstripping the other available nutrients and resulting in decreased food quality.
By the way, Schmitt is an adjunct professor of engineering, a one-time astronaut and a former senator from New Mexico; Happer is a professor of physics.
Neither are engaged in the field of plant biology, but their work could be vaguely relevant. The same can surely not be said about the 31 487 American scientists who are signatories to the famous petition against action on climate change.
I recently spent a happy couple of hours randomly Googling their names. When I finally found a consulting geologist (a field with some remote relevance to climate science) I couldn’t help whooping and pumping my fist in the air.
My random sample turned up:
- Robert Leonard Straube, who wrote a book about tumours in 1955
- Jerome Samuel Danburg, retired oil industry executive
- Everett R Southam (deceased), PhD in Animal Science
- Timothy B McIlwain, Xto Energy Inc VP Operations.
- Kenneth M Eldred of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering
- Masood Mohiuddin, doctor of psychiatry
- Fred W Brackebusch, one-time CEO of New Jersey Mining Co
- Mary Feltner Futrell, nutritional scientist
- Dorothea Zucker Franklin, MD internal medicine
On Mother’s Day, one of SA’s ageing hacks wrote a column for the business section of a Sunday paper. Really, you’d think someone who in his day edited a national newspaper would know the basics of journalism – like you don’t just cherry-pick your info and you do check the credibility of your sources.
When a writer uses emotional and ad hominem language, you can expect bias, and in this column, within the first paragraph, scientists behind the climate consensus were labelled ‘crazies’– and one in particular was called a ‘Fuhrer’. (Gimme strength!)
The claim that ‘global warming is mythical nonsense’ was made on five bases, all factually inaccurate, but I can’t address them all here. Two were that:
• Al Gore has changed his mind. (Izzit? Then why is he sending me offers to join a course on becoming a ‘climate leader’?)
• A Russian ‘centre of academic excellence, the Pulkovo Observatory’ is predicting 200 years of global cooling. Uh, nyet so fast: what scientist Yuri Nagovitsyn actually said in Russian media was that a period of low solar activity could start in 2030–2040.
‘Low solar activity' does, of course, affect the earth’s temperature – but solar activity is not the cause of climate change, which results from greenhouse gases keeping heat inside our atmosphere. Less sun heat coming in is dandy, but only helps a bit.
By 2030, we should be at 450 CO2 parts per million (ppm), about a third higher than we should be for safety. And who’s to say that either the prediction or the date is right?
Dear old Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, who heads the Observatory, has been making the same prediction for years – last I heard, the new Little Ice Age was due to start in 2016. And I say Bring it on, baby – at least it would give us more time to mitigate the damage already done.
Last year, nearly 32 million people were forced from their homes by climate catastrophes like floods and storms – that’s climate change in action, with much more to come. With CO2 nudging 400 ppm, we don’t have time to waste.
The longer we allow ourselves to be distracted by unscientific obfuscation, the harder, more expensive and less effective mitigation and adaption will be.
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
