American Thinker has a piece today, on how a recent preposterous global warming report on the PBS NewsHour hints they’re overplaying their biased coverage of the issue. The addition of it to the tally of NewsHour discussion segments absent of skeptic climate assessments suggests a media malfeasance problem too big to ignore.
Excerpts:
My tally of the NewsHour mentioning global warming and other ‘climate change’ variations continues to grow. I’m probably short in the count, as the NewsHour has expanded its online-only material significantly in the last year or two, and I’ve probably missed some of their blog content. Of that 350+ count, it can only safely be said that one more skeptic can be included in the overall total, meteorologist Anthony Watts in his September 17, 2012 appearance alongside ‘former skeptic’ Richard Muller, which drew howls of “PBS Channels Fox News“
At what point will the public see such biased reporting as nothing more than a desperate partisan attempt to keep the issue alive? Did we witness it just recently at the NewsHour? Or will they cross that line by reporting how ‘the smell of the ocean is endangered by climate change’?
See:
Jumping the Shark on Global Warming: The PBS NewsHour paints itself into a corner.
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A bit off topic, but the claim about the ocean losing its smell makes me realize once again this stuff is beyond parody, though I tried….I do a little humor writing to go along with my poker playing. Thought some might get a laugh
News Item
AP-Hold’em Poker Found to be Contributing to Climate Change
Climate scientists have announced the publication of a paper in the science journal “Nature” which, the authors say, will prove that hold’em poker is contributing to higher temperatures, rising seas, and more extreme storms.
“We were as surprised as anyone,” says lead author Frederick Marmoosh, Chair of the Department of Atmospheric Science at Harvard University. “But you can take it to the bank-it’s now 95 percent certain that hold’em poker has been responsible for at least 30 percent of the increase in Co2 we’ve seen over the last few decades.”
When asked the precise mechanism, Marmoosh admits to some uncertainty. “We postulate that every time a poker player loses a hand his rate of respiration increases, thereby releasing substantial amounts of Co2 into the atmosphere.”
Says Dr. Marmoosh, “the effect is small for each player. But when you multiply it by the tens of thousands it becomes significant. The sighing and the panting, and the moaning and groaning by losing poker players are causing incalculable damage to our climate.”
Asked if he played poker himself, Dr. Marmoosh conceded that he does. “But I’m winning player, and I rarely get angry. If I find myself getting upset I take a break. We all have to learn to become better stewards of our planet. If that means playing a little less poker, or doing a little less breathing, it’s not too high a price to pay.”
As I understand it, PBS has some of its funding contingent on asserting the global warming side only. Was that John Kerry’s very rich wife?
http://johnkerry-08.com/about/teresa.php
“Teresa Heinz Kerry has financed the secretive Tides Foundation to the tune of more than $4 million over the years. The Tides Foundation, a “charity” established in 1976 by antiwar leftist activist Drummond Pike, distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations advocating far-Left causes. The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center, which was spun off from the Foundation in 1996 but run by Drummond Pike, distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. In all, Tides has distributed more than $300 million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extremist homosexual activists and open borders advocates. During the years 1995-2001, the Howard Heinz Endowment, which Heinz Kerry chairs, gave Tides more than $4.3 million. The combined Heinz Endowments (composed of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira I. Heinz Endowment) donated $1.6 million to establish the Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh office of the San Francisco-based Tides Center. Since that time, the local branch has tirelessly pushed an anti-business agenda in the name of “preserving the environment.” However, it is the Tides Foundation’s national organization whose connections are most disconcerting.
The Tides Foundation is a major source of revenue for some of the most extreme groups on the Left. Tides allows donors to anonymously contribute money to a host of causes; the donor simply makes the check out to Tides and instructs the Foundation where to forward the money. Tides does so, for a nominal fee. Drummond Pike told The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.” That becomes understandable when one views the list of Tides grant recipients. And who are the beneficiaries of this money? “
Also interesting today: the first page of “Gore’s D-word, &c.”
http://nationalreview.com/article/357168/gores-d-word-c-jay-nordlinger
mal·fea·sance (ml-fzns)
n.
Misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official.
The commission of an act that is unequivocally illegal or completely wrongful.
I really like the phrase “media malfeasance.” Who used it first? It really does turn the tables. Rather than the media putting the spotlight on others, it puts the spotlight on the guy at the controls of an old spotlight with an abruptly burned-out bulb, now smiling at the public with a —t eating grin.
The supreme irony is that I listen to PBS, and have for many years. I can’t comment on the quality of other areas of their reporting, but on the issue of climate, they have, by simply jumping on the Climageddon bandwagon let their listenership down immensely. It is both saddening and shocking to see.
@Pokerguy – LOL – But I think the next correlation is going to be losing team football fans. After all, we have a study that says they get fatter! And fat people do exhale more than skinny ones!
To my thinking, “PBS” stands for “Perverse Bull Shit.” Yecch!!
The hypocrisy of the alarmies in accusing skeptics of being influenced by fossil fuel instrests knows no bounds. Fact is, the alarmists get a lot of money from BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, for one simple reason: the global warming meme justifies cap-and-trade, and Big Oil expects to make googoogobs of $$$ from trading carbon credits – and to hell with the consumer, especially the low-income consumer, who has to pay energy prices inflated by the addition of the cost of the carbon allowances. Big Oil doesn’t give a rat’s kiester whether consumers have to pay more, or have to struggle to pay their energy bills – that’s A-OK so long as they make their nut.
@pokerguy –
Priceless. Loved it. How true.
They remind me of Muslim fanatics.
Bruce Cobb,
If you are shocked that PBS lies to you about politically sensitive issues, then you just haven’t been paying attention. Wake up.
Maybe they could determine where they were misled, albeit willingly, and say, we were deceived. The old standard, don’t shoot the messenger line.
The information about how and where they were misled was recorded in another PBS program called Frontline. They interviewed then Senator Tim Wirth, one of the leaders of the deception about global warming, about his role in orchestrating the appearance of James Hansen before Al Gore’s 1988 Senate Committee hearing. If you want to read malfeasance admitted with glee and truculence this is the interview. It is all documented at their web site, but to help them I list it here.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/wirth.html
Anton Eagle,
I think you misunderstand Bruce Cobb. But I agree with you that PBS routinely lies in order to advance its agenda.
======================
pokerguy: good one. ☺
At 9:56 AM on 30 August, Caleb had posted:
Actually, the term “malfeasance” carries with it not only the connotation of misconduct or wrongdoing on the part of a government thug but also willfully malicious and purposeful action violating the rights of said malevolent jobholder‘s victims.
“Malpractice” subsumes the unintended inadvertent adverse consequences of negligent actions on the part of someone with a duty to the public or a particular person. A physician who erroneously misses the diagnosis of a pathological process which established standard-of-care (provided by a practitioner of roughly equal training and experience in his specialty) would have distinguished can be argued to have been malpractitionate in his management of the case in question. The same doctor deliberately refusing to state such a diagnosis out of resentment of the patient is committing malfeasance.
Thus the use of the expression “media malfeasance” with regard to these chittering root weevils’ continuing perpetration of suppressio veri, suggestio falsi (not to mention their yammering of outright lies) with regard to the preposterous bogosity of anthropogenic global warming is particularly apt.
Their intentions are undisguisedly malicious, their purpose to foster the foisting of multiple criminal thefts of value by deceit, and to ruin the lives of millions of their listeners and other innocent parties.
I do not watch any public television any more. I gave up that bad habit long ago. What is “reported” on the PBS News Hour is meaningless and irrelevant to me.
Bruce Cobb,
Me too. I like NPR a great deal still, “this American life,” “car talk,” “on the media,” “fresh air,” are shows I still enjoy. I’m a lifelong liberal, and it’s shocking to me as well, how lazy these people are wrt to global warming. They simply don’t for a second entertain even the possibility they could be wrong.
The thing is, liberals are so used to thinking they’re right no matter what the issue. And I’m in sympathy with some of that. The Vietnam War was surely as misguided as the Iraq War under G.W.B. I remain passionately aligned with the left on things like gay marriage, women’s reproductive rights, the right to physician assisted suicide, legalized marijuana (and other drugs as well), the list goes on and on. I’ve also long been an environmentalist. Little wonder that they don’t even consider they could be wrong and the conservatives right. It’s unimaginable to them. I’m not sure how I began to realize what was going on. Certainly none of my liberal friends have.
At 11:06 AM on 30 August, pokerguy had commented:
Consider that there is much else about which modern American “Liberals” are also obdurately wrong, much of it pertaining to their desire for normative government interference in the peaceable affairs of private persons to force upon hoi polloi (whom they hold in scalding contempt) those outcomes which suit these arrogant milk-and-water socialists’ conceptions of “justice” and “fairness” and “equality.”
Whether you like it or not, pokerguy, you may be so much less in concert with the “Liberal” faction that you cannot in good conscience support any of their invidious agendas, while at the same time having little or no common cause with the godstruck imperialistic autarky-pushing schmucks who style themselves “conservative” in our political bearpit nowadays.
You’re probably a libertarian. Most decent human beings are.
pokerguy says:
August 30, 2013 at 9:47 am
A bit off topic, but the claim about the ocean losing its smell makes me realize once again this stuff is beyond parody, though I tried….I do a little humor writing to go along with my poker playing. Thought some might get a laugh
News Item
AP-Hold’em Poker Found to be Contributing to Climate Change
______________________
You are so close, so close… all you need is a graph. Since widespread popularity of the game is a fairly recent phenomenon, then it could easily be shown that the rise of Texas Hold ’em correlates with the rise in global CO² and temperature. As interest in the game has leveled off, so has temperature.
pokerguy says:
August 30, 2013 at 11:06 am
Bruce Cobb,
Me too. I like NPR a great deal still, “this American life,” “car talk,” “on the media,” “fresh air,” are shows I still enjoy. I’m a lifelong liberal, and it’s shocking to me as well, how lazy these people are wrt to global warming. They simply don’t for a second entertain even the possibility they could be wrong.
___________________________
You haven’t yet reached the point where you realize that NPR (gov’t radio) is a propaganda tool in support of political agenda. It isn’t laziness that keeps them from telling the truth- it’s a concerted effort to deceive you. Some people are ok with that, as long as their agenda is being advanced. Are you ok with that?
“Are you ok with that?”
Luther, I respect your opinion. I just don’t believe that the bulk of it is intentional. They simply think they’re right, and for the most part would no more consider themselves beholden to represent the skeptical viewpoint re climate change than they would feel obligated to give air time to those who espouse I.D. in a discussion of evolution.
I live and work among them. I know how they think. They believe global warming is as certain as the above mentioned theory of evolution. As a corollary, they believe anyone who doesn’t believe it is a moron to be blunt, and that indeed, “big oil” pays to spread disinformation. They sincerely and passionately believe all the Al Gorian hype, and have no doubt that the planet is in peril.
@pokerguy –
I’d say you were brought around by the sheer volume and force of the evidence against the global warming meme. That is impossible for any rational, open-minded person to resist, irrespective of whether they call themselves “liberal” or “conservative” or whatever. (I personally am in both camps, so to speak – an early 1960s liberal, but my political views unchanged from that time now make me a “conservative,” and until I began looking into it I also accepted the party line.)
It is regrettable that science should ever be defined in political terms. If it is, it ceases to be science and becomes merely advocacy, and that is what has happened. And for NPR or PBS to become partisan shills is a total betrayal and sabotage of their mission.
” suggests a media malfeasance problem too big to ignore.”
Understatement of the year. They are state media and therefore a 100% statist propaganda distribution organisation.
They should really be experienced enough to do it right. What you do is you build up some faux skeptics, and let them appear as crackpots who lose every argument; make them wear too short jackets, too big trousers; make them ugly and let them appear as fools; short-fused, losing their temper, arguing illogical. Sheesh. Do I have to explain Hegel to them, or Freisler. What kind of bureaucracy is that.
Regarding PBS as “a 100% statist propaganda distribution organisation”, at 11:45 AM on 30 August, DirkH had posted:
The word for which you’re reaching is “incompetent,” as in “not capable even of putting political prisoners in Polish uniforms and shooting them to death at border crossings.”
And there goes Godwin’s Law again. Well, when discussing government propaganda, it’s gotta happen, right?
(The “no further rational discourse is possible” contention was never intended, and has been used exclusively by “Liberals” in order to foreclose further discussion of their own infamies. See Godwin in the original.)
Just over a year ago, my count had then topped a bit beyond 300 segments where AGW was mentioned. The NewsHour wuvs AGW……..
PBS NewsHour global warming coverage: IPCC/NOAA Scientists – 18; Skeptic Scientists – 0 http://junkscience.com/2012/07/13/pbs-newshour-global-warming-coverage-ipccnoaa-scientists-18-skeptic-scientists-0/
The “Thinker” is a good site, even for us non-Americans out here.
Anthony/mods, this post is coming out in a smaller font than usual for me, both here and on the front page. Could be my Firefox, but it doesn’t generally misbehave like that. FYI.
@stevec try holding down CTRL and turning the scroll wheel on your mouse to increase/decrease font size. – Anthony
Tucci78,
Yes, you’re right. At this point I describe my politics as essentially libertarian. I think big government is by its nature corrupt and corrupting. It took me many years to understand this, I’m sorry to say.
@tucci78 –
I pretty well fit your definition of libertarian, but I would advise you that the “conservatives” I know personally do also – they are supportive of civil liberties for everyone, object to excessive government intrusion (which certainly counts as “force,” methinks) in their lives, and believe in honest science and economics. It is natural that they will be opposed to the global warming meme, because of its coercive and irrational basis. Their main difference from pokerguy’s viewpoint would have to do with foreign policy (I, for example, saw the Vietnam War as a badly managed but entirely just struggle against a tyrannical, brutal, amoral, genocidal enemy that most certainly was NOT libertarian). The foreign policy aspect is significant because much of the impetus for global warming alarmism comes from the UN and, hence, from decidedly non-libertarian forces in the world. I believe that “conservative” hawkishness on foreign affairs serves the cause of rational science and of defeating the CAGW meme. Fighting off global warming differs little, in my view, from resisting other forms of tyranny.
At 12:12 PM on 30 August, Chad Wozniak had commented:
Then in the same wise, they’re also libertarians, whether they know it or not. Many such conservatives of my own acquaintance resist the notion manfully because – being conservative in modes of thought as well as political moral philosophy – they’re reluctant to move out of the “conservative” house in spite of how the neocons and religious whackjobs and drug warriors have made of that edifice the proverbial whited sepulchre.
I’m mindful of F.A. von Hayek’s final chapter in The Constitution of Liberty (1960), titled “Why I am Not a Conservative,” in which can be found:
In this last, Hayek was speaking of what we know today as political libertarianism.
With regard to “conservative hawkishness” on the matter of the anthropogenic global warming fraud, I confess to having been made quite uncomfortable by their general opposition to this preposterous bogosity not because of honestly reasoned skepticism but merely out of a truculent “If them gol-durn lib’ruls are for it, I’m agin it!”
This is compounded by the prevalence among these critters of heartfelt belief in painfully egregious horsepuckey like “intelligent design” and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
To pokerguy:
Your post@1132 in answer to Luther Wu, is excellent. Partially quoting:
You have very finely expressed the phenomenon of groupthink
among political liberals in the USA. There is no conspiracy, there is just a …
consensus. Believing themselves to be correct, they close their ears to all other
opinions. Believing again that they are the “most intelligent people in the room”,
they conclude that they must exert themselves to save the rest of the country–
and the world!–from those who do not think like they do.
Coercive utopianism is one of the less charming features of U.S. politics
which always emerges when a large enough segment of the population
convinces itself that the country has gotten a holiday from history.
Unfortunately, that’s been the case for around 50 years now.