From Senator Inhofe’s office, more on the story about the melting street lamps in Oklahoma and follow up press release:
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Yesterday Inhofe revealed that a dumpster fire, not global warming, was the reason for streetlight lamps to melt in Oklahoma city, yet Yahoo has failed to correct the story. The headline remains: Oklahoma is so hot that street lamps are melting http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/oklahoma-hot-street-lamps-melting-203656312.html
Who wrote the story? Fox Van Allen – described on his Twitter account as: “LA-based freelance writer for Tecca and WoW Insider. Yahoo!, MSNBC, and USA Today syndicated. Editor and all-around creative. Egotistical monster. Gaymer.”
We have asked Fox Van Allen to correct the story on Twitter. His response? Via twitter:
“OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I PISSED SENATOR JIM INHOFE OFF this is turning out to be an amazing day”
Matt Dempsey
Communications Director
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Inhofe Staff
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Get a load of this, from Fox Van Allen‘s website. http://foxvanallen.com/
Writer. Editor. Perfectionist.
his FAQs section says a lot about him: http://foxvanallen.com/faq/
Could that duct tape gag be made permanent?
I have lots of single word descritions for people like this but they would all have to be snipped. All I can say is that I am glad I will never ever meet anyone like this in my line of work as I do a real job.
I’m afraid that the more the C in CAGW turns out to be bogus, the more story-telling and the less facts we’ll see 🙁
Well there you have the Warmist camp – a brain dead Gamer in a position (he hopes) to try and influence people’s minds.
Let me fix that for him…
Writer. Editor. Perfectionist. D-word.
That’s ok, have you been reading the comments on his “article”? I’m pretty sure that Yahoo is fine with the article, as it drives traffic to be controversial.
Oh, that guy. I know his shadow priest guide. It’s not really the best there is. If I want the best, I scour the WoW forums.
NO H8?
Gotta love the hypocrisy.
Then I gather he is not a reporter. A freelance writer would be like a Dave Barry (my apologies to you Dave). No one, I mean no one, takes his exploding toilet series seriously. Unless you are an ardent fan of Fox Van Allen. I would imagine his fan base actually considers Dave Barry’s works to be representative of CO2 warming. I once saw a dead skunk explode in the heat of the day. Must be CO2 doncha know. We are all gonna explode!
Another one of those “if you disagree with me you are a hater” folks. Stay classy, Fox!
Fox Van Allen – composite virtual personality of all in the sanatorium on medication.
I left a link on “tips and notes” about the north pole camera showing a funny black shape, like smoke from an distant icebreaker’s funnel. But don’t tell this fellow, or his headline will be, “North Pole On Fire!”
Just another LA loser.
Read the new story at Yahoo… contains gems like this:
It’s possible the heat itself isn’t responsible for the event — it’s being reported on Facebook that a nearby dumpster fire may have been the cause of the melting plastic light housings. Still, that dumpster fire was caused and aggravated by the record heat and dryness. And if dangerous, spontaneous fires aren’t reason enough to go green, we don’t know what is.
I guess the dumpster was suffering drought conditions…
He seems not to care that his headline is wrong. Yahoo might want to replace him if they valued their reputation. Controversial topics don’t help traffic in the long haul if they aren’t reported accurately. I don’t use Yahoo unless somebody links them because I already don’t trust them.
Another imbecile who discards any pretense of being a journalist for being a CAGW drone.
Just another sock-puppet disinformation vector in the war against civilization. Guess his Mommy never told him that if you win by cheating and lying, that makes you a BAD PERSON.
He fails at being a perfectionist, and a writer, and an editor, and I would reconsider the ‘NO H8’ face tattoo (judging from your twitter response). Hey, he might just want to consider re-writing the whole bio …. more of a ‘useful idiot’ persona or something. I think it’s a better fit.
I love this, what Foxy doesn’t realize is that he’s enlightening people to the fact that there is a debate going on about Global Warming. People who mostly thought the ‘science was settled’ are asking themselves what the fuss is about. A few ‘activists’ might well applaud his efforts but in reality he’s doing our work for us. Actually come to think of it he’s not so much Foxy…more Wiley E. Coyote!
That’s the hairy backside to citizen journalism, but I’d rather have the odd moron pee in the pond than hand the power of publishing back to the gatekeepers of big media. I assume you feel the same.
Journalist? Are you sure?
Heh. His photo make it look like he just realized he was being photographed while he was digging for a booger :).
About Fox, from his website: “When future historians unearth the mysteries of our modern civilization, what will they use to define our culture?
The collective works of Dean Koontz? “Party in the U.S.A.?” Taylor Lautner’s shirtless form?
Possible, but unlikely. The true defining cultural artifact of our time is syndicated technology blogger Fox Van Allen.
Sometimes narcissistic, usually tolerable, but always entertaining, Fox Van Allen (né Albers) is best known for his work at general technology website Tecca (syndicated to Yahoo!, USA Today, and MSNBC, among others). There, he produces delicious consumable news content to make your day slightly less mundane.”
Says it all.
“Doug in Seattle says:
August 3, 2012 at 9:27 am
NO H8?”
I prefer V8. Both types.
Blogagog, I am wiping the coffee off my iPad I spewed when I read ur comment. Really funny and slightly above the level of discourse this guy deserves.
And, yes, I enjoyed the movie, Dumb and Dumber, as well…..
What a [snip]!!! Where the hell do you yanks get such trash!!
Pity the dude. All he’s got is glibness and a tenuous grasp on the current vibe. Tough to earn a living when you got no other skilz.
My favorite comment on the Yahoo article:
w.
Writer. Editor. Perfectionist.
Fidelity to the truth: Fail.
.
Man, getting tired of this garbage on the news. Anyone with a lick of sense would see that only two of those covers melted, by being exposed to a heat source, re; dumpster fire. The story is sensationalistic at best and has no basis on fact.
(I wonder can we suggest that Fox van Allen get the Thurber Prize?)
So the guy with “No H8” written on his face has an “amazing day” when he pisses somebody he doesn’t like off. Go figure.
Brian BAKER: Unfortunately here in California, we have our unproportional share of fruits and nuts. Fox Van Allen is just one such example.
seems like a bit of a prat!
Always welcome….fact free….unicorn and rainbow opposition to the scientific method…..we don’t have to prove ‘they’ are absurd….they do that themselves….and, thankfully ‘they’ are not ‘haters’ with duct taped orifices.
Who cares about Oklahoma? I was in Hawaii a couple of years ago and it was so hot they actually had melted rock blocking the road!
Writes for YAHOO. Never have used those idjits.The name says it all.
Willis @ 10:31 AM……noticed that also.Bad enought they stuck anthropogenic onto nature,now inanimate objects like dumpsters. Gawd. Walt Disney would be so proud.
I can’t follow the previous posters. Stop knocking Mr Van Allen. He’s one of the best things to happen to the anti-global warming side in a long time.
We NEED idiots on the other side. They really build up our case. Now we can say that the Warmists make up stories about melting lights which are really caused by dumpster fires, and WHEN TOLD THE TRUTH, REFUSE TO CORRECT THEM!!
That sort of thing is really good PR for us. We should encourage anyone on the other side who is that stupid to keep shooting his mouth off….
Follow the money,,,,,,,again!
He is so amazing. So proud to play the Eco Greenie Fool.
He’ll be a legend, his name spoken in reverence when they gather around the Greenpeace camp fire and in the board rooms of the Sierra Club and the Tides Foundation.
A foolish legend for a very foolish man.
Did he run for office in New Hampshire in 2008?
Why is it that people who write things like NOH8, always seem to be consumed with hatred towards those who don’t agree with them.
I also love the way he includes perfectionist in the words that he uses to describe himself, but he doesn’t care that he got this article completely wrong.
Ugh….. Fire melted street lights, puported to be evidence of AGW, by a snarky, lying, and unapologetic blogger.
Sadly, this is more representative of opinions expressed by many of my acquaintances on the left side of the political spectrum. After showing one such the evidence of natural climate variability, the fraud behind the Al Gore/ Mike Mann ‘hockey sticks’, and similar, the lady replied “I don’t care if it’s true or not. If it guides public opinion to greener, more sustainable choices, it’s all good!”
Straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals .
Pathetic.
“Don Searing, Ph.D. says:
August 3, 2012 at 9:32 am
Read the new story at Yahoo… contains gems like this:
It’s possible the heat itself isn’t responsible for the event — it’s being reported on Facebook that a nearby dumpster fire may have been the cause of the melting plastic light housings. Still, that dumpster fire was caused and aggravated by the record heat and dryness. And if dangerous, spontaneous fires aren’t reason enough to go green, we don’t know what is.
I guess the dumpster was suffering drought conditions…”
We must save the dumpsters. Long have they had to deal with mankind’s trash, being treated horribly by trash collecting vehicles, and the occasional arsonist. NO MORE!!!! For just 8 dollars, you can symbolically save the dumpsters by increasing my bank account. Please, have a heart and donate today. Save the dumpster.
Now all we need is Rosie O’Donnell to make a statement like,
‘First Time in History a Dumpster Fire Has Ever Melted plastic’
Facts do matter to Judith Curry
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/01/john-christys-epw-testimony/#more-9260
One weonders if she not about to through AGW under the bus pretty soon
Apologies misspelling wonders and throw previous
Don’t know at which point Yahoo decided to close comments off. At 2224 comments in 6 hours it was;
Wow! This is going into a great many archives as we read. This most clearly represents the heights of hysteria and the depths of dementia when the mainstream media accepts that trash can fires never occurred before Carbon Dioxide reached 4 parts in 10,000 of the atmosphere.
Fox Van Allen:
Not only is he a hater with NO H8 written on his face but he’s proud to have produced that crappy article. That’s quite an achievement. Where do they get these people? Remind me to sell my Yahoo shares. Oh, did that already in 2000. Fine.
this guy has proved beyond a doubt he is unfit to practice journalism….. bad enough to publish such an incompetent article in the first place, but to snark at the obvious correction instead of being grateful to get the facts right indicates he is wholly incompetent to practice any fact-based craft (I know, contemporary journalism doesn’t qualify either, but it should):
all of these entities should dump this clown immediately (for they cannot trust what he writes for them):
“freelance writer for Tecca and WoW Insider. Yahoo!, MSNBC, and USA Today syndicated”
Never mind….. Yahoo moved it from the top of the front page to the Tech section…and no, don’t ask me why the Tech section.
Still, I am not sure how many hits Yahoo gets in an hour compared to all rational sites in a week but I feel alone, very alone.
Fox appears to have incredibly little understanding of common physics of radiative heat transfer and combustion.
Scientifically, his “perfectionist” label is laughable – is that perfection in fear mongering?
Or will he redeem himself by posting a correction?
http://youtu.be/Z5p5FzjWp_Y
Writer. Editor. Perfectionist. Unquestioning Parrot.
Did I miss anything?
No really! Seriously!
Stephen Greenspan, PhD. Exploring and facilitating human competence. Home · Biography · Gullibility & Foolishness
http://www.stephen-greenspan.com/pdf/TableofContents.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Perfectionist.
Reminds me of a definition I heard ages ago:
“A perfectionist is one who takes great pains…and gives them to others.”
In Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”, greenies conspired to create environmental disasters in order to further their agenda. Could the dumpster fire have been set for the purpose of melting the streetlights? How else this false PR?
His site allows comments. I just put up one “Any more streetlamps melting today?”
Gonna go back and see how many times I can. Join the fun!!!!
GlynnMhor says:
August 3, 2012 at 10:56 am
> Did he run for office in New Hampshire in 2008?
Not that I recall.
OTOH, and Oh, OT:
About that NO H8. My wife is responsible for getting “H8” banned from New Hampshire license plates. Our child protective service agency, DCYF, has some of the same imperious types I see in the warmist community, and my wife hates to see some of the things they do to push their agenda. (Their policy manual used to tell the supervisors to explain new legislation to the judges – “The various meetings recommended will help substantially to ease the burdens on the Division and to ensure the Court’s fullest cooperation.”)
New Hampshire is fond of vanity license plates, so my wife got “H8DCYF”. It took the state a year before DCYF got the DMV to send armed officers to our home to remove the plates. Long, long saga is at http://wermenh.com/h8dcyf.html .
Visit http://www4.egov.nh.gov/platecheck/platecheck.aspx and enter the chemical formula for propane.
Okay, if CAGW is real and that dumpster caught fire because of it, why did I freeze my assorted body parts off at Stonehenge, Hastings, Scarborough, etc. last month? I’m pretty sure England is in the northern hemisphere and it’s summer there just like it is here, but it was sure rainy and chilly (yes, even cold) much of the month I was there.
He can write a book called “Farenheit 115” where people, houses, and dumpsters spontaneously catch fire when the ambient temperature reaches 115, and a gritty team of plucky survivors are headed to Alaska…
Okay, more of a pamphlet.
Maybe a drunken late-night internet post.
It is easy to laugh at Fox Van Allen, but he does make a valid point. If we can quantify how many doublings of CO2 are required to see off the Polar bear, and how many will sink Tuvalu, it is our moral duty, as responsible human beings to work out what we have to do to save the street lamps
I see Fox is picking up the melting streetlights story…. This should be interesting.
Brian J BAKER says:
August 3, 2012 at 10:14 am
What a [snip]!!! Where the hell do you yanks get such trash!!
________________________________
From our Government
BrainwashingEducational Institutions.His picture shows he is still in the wet behind the ears, just our of school and still needs his Nanny stage. Unfortunately too many remain in that stage because of all the fail-safes in our civilization that keeps the Universe from whomping them upside the head with REALITY.
No one who has faced reality, like traveling in a third world country, or following the north end of a south facing mule plowing a rocky field, would agree to dismantling our civilization based on no real evidence… Well maybe they might if they were really really brain dead.
The ‘following the north end of a south facing mule plowing’ is the reason A Felon Won 41% In WV Democratic Presidential Primary Over Obama Much of West Virgina has to be farmed with mules or horses because a tractor will roll over and kill you. I have had a tractor roll on me and a neighbor was killed by a tractor roll on the hill where Johnny Appleseed was born. Coal is the other reason.
I refer, of course, to Fox Cable, not Van Allen.
Ric Werme says:
August 3, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Visit http://www4.egov.nh.gov/platecheck/platecheck.aspx and enter the chemical formula for propane.
NHDMV-nanny sez verboten — but RW4G0V is still available…
I used to see garbage can fires all the time in NY City. They almost exclusively happened in winter, often in areas inhabited by vagrants.
During summertime, however, apparently global warming got the potable water system boiling to the point that fire hydrants burst, because water would be shooting out of them.
“OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I PISSED SENATOR JIM INHOFE OFF this is turning out to be an amazing day”
We have seen the enemy, and he is a nine-year-old girl.
If there was any confusion left about the debate being if our CO2 was driving climate , or if instead it was just hysterical emotion driving thought processes, I think we’ve buttoned that one up…
DirkH says:
August 3, 2012 at 11:45 am
Fox Van Allen:
““OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I PISSED SENATOR JIM INHOFE OFF this is turning out to be an amazing day””
Not only is he a hater with NO H8 written on his face but he’s proud to have produced that crappy article. That’s quite an achievement. Where do they get these people? Remind me to sell my Yahoo shares. Oh, did that already in 2000. Fine.
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He reminds me of that that guy that verbally abused that girl at the Chick-Fil-A drivethrough. The poor guy didn’t even recognize that HE was the only one spewing “hate”.
Talk about reprobate minds …
(Or “minds void of sound judgement”, if that makes more sense to you.)
Laurie Bowen says:
August 3, 2012 at 1:19 pm
No really! Seriously!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
I can see the headlines in 2015 now — “Al Gore to World: ‘AGW IS A Hoax! And You Guys Fell For It! Aaaah-hahahahahahaaaa!’ “
Yes, that would make sense as a classic CYA strategy. My favorite is: I’m wrong? Well, I was just testing you!
Perfectionist? I am seeing a lot of that from the progressive left. They claim to support diversity, but are against diversity of opinion. They are the new progressive/fascist statists.
@Don Searing, Ph.D. says August 3, 2012 at 9:32 am
Read the new story at Yahoo… contains gems like this:
“…. Still, that dumpster fire was caused and aggravated by the record heat and dryness….”
Ans the evidence for this is? sorry? where did you say it was? uh?…
Richard Muller on Science Friday… just saying.
http://sciencefriday.com/segment/08/03/2012/changing-views-about-a-changing-climate.html
Alvin says:
August 3, 2012 at 2:52 pm
“Perfectionist? I am seeing a lot of that from the progressive left. They claim to support diversity, but are against diversity of opinion. They are the new progressive/fascist statists.”
Never trust a hippy.
@ Fox Van Allen
You ego requires you to read this thread. It’s your 15 minutes of fame. Now you look like a fool and for the world to see. Congratulations! Only I doubt that you pissed off Inhofe for even an instant but you will be seen as a fool for much longer than your 15 minutes twitter fame. I’ll bet we never here from you on Yahoo, CNN, MSNBC, or any other media again. Once again, congratulations on your 15 min fame.
Your redeeming factor — you showed what a fool the MSM can be.
“OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I PISSED SENATOR JIM INHOFE OFF this is turning out to be an amazing day”
Oh the juvenility! As pleased as toddler with a full potty.”Look what i did!”
Luckily this is the calibre of your opponents.
“banjo says:
August 3, 2012 at 3:52 pm
“OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I PISSED SENATOR JIM INHOFE OFF this is turning out to be an amazing day”.
Someone called me and said Harry Reid set the dumpters fire just to Piss off Senator Jim Inhoff. LOL
If I hear one of these dweebs say “amazing” one more time…
ZT says:
August 3, 2012 at 12:43 pm
I watched that video until the advert and felt my brain atrophy!
DaveE.
The H8 got to his brain and melted it. Powerful stuff, that.
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@Dodgy Geezer,
No need to worry about people like this realizing how stupid they sound and shutting up any time soon.
Your comment reminds me of the jail scene in Shrek 2 where Donkey is going on and on about the right to remain silent and finally Shrek says, “Yes Donkey you do have the right to remain silent. What you lack is the capacity.”
These people couldn’t shut up if their lives depended on it.
http://www.tubettiworld.com/files/lor8.jpg
There is another reason why the CAGW crowd will not deal in a normal fashion with this; it is because any admission of error on their part shatters the thin facade that they’re always right and everyone is always wrong. Even when they are wrong, it’s still for the right reasons. It’s a sign of emotional immaturity and if the CAGW folks have any appeal at all it’s certainly an appeal to the emotions.
Be fair.
Is there anyone here who wouldn’t consider it a good day if they pissed off a Senator from their opposing party?
Oh, come on. Did the lack of a “sarc” tag really confooze ‘ums that much? “the suffering of dumpsters everywhere”? It’s humour. Sarcasm. Irony. Parody. It’s also quite clever. Unlike yourself.
Edohiguma says:
August 3, 2012 at 9:25 am
###
Shadow Priest? Sounds about right …
BTW, with a handle like yours, I’d figure you for a Druid 🙂
Every dumpster now needs the sign:
“No hot climate”
How ridiculous.
Jeremy. Sweet, dim, child. He’s mocking the line and the story. “Gems” is sarcasm. RU sure you’re smart enough to be a sceptic?
He’s misappropriating credit. It was Yahoo’s witless journalistic and editorial irresponsibility in actually carrying it that ticked off Inhofe. Part of the MSM’s web presence. Loons like Fox are a dime a dozen. Giving them “air time” is the problem and issue.
Duncan says:
August 3, 2012 at 8:01 pm
Be fair.
Is there anyone here who wouldn’t consider it a good day if they pissed off a Senator from their opposing party?
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If I my goal was to just piss people off, sure. If my goal was to persuade …………….
“The true defining cultural artifact of our time is syndicated technology blogger Fox Van Allen.”
FVA exemplifies the Dunning-Kruger Effect ………………..perfectly.
Kinda semi off topic here but….hipster post modernist ‘science writer’ Jonah Lehrer has just been humiliated for ‘making stuff up’ in a book, ironically about ‘creativity’.
It would be nice if someone could find out if his scientific pronouncements ever extended to Global Warming – a field, which as we all know is rife with ‘made up stuff’!
He and Wiley E. Van Allen would make a good matching pair!
There’s never anything in the MSM about Larry or Curly, and now THIS!
P***ing off Inhofe is more important than reporting the facts? Idiocy like this sums up the whole CAGW oeuvre. Stupid is as stupid does, I say.
What does NH O8 mean? And does it have something to do with picking ones nose as he seems to be doing? /sarc
Is that a Van Allen Belt-Up stuck to his mouth? Looks a good fit.
Not that it would matter, but a little basic understanding of plastics, melting points and glass transition temperatures and knowing what type of plastic is typically used in street lights MIGHT have helped this doufus from proving he is an idiot.
Yahoo has a new CEO called Marissa Mayer who worked for Google before. Maybe this is her idea of manipulating the masses. A kind of Huffington Post, only with more lies and hate.
Duncan says:
August 3, 2012 at 8:01 pm
“Be fair.
Is there anyone here who wouldn’t consider it a good day if they pissed off a Senator from their opposing party?”
If I were publishing idiotic crap like Marissa Mayer’s Fox Van Allen, I wouldn’t consider it a good day but the biggest embarassment ever.
And knowing the politicians in the parties I oppose, I wouldn’t care for a second whether anything I do or say pisses one of them off, as their game is to be offended by … well usually by things they made up themselves. It’s called the 5 minute hate, and you should read 1984 some day.
Dear Van Allen: 115F does not cause dumpsters to spontaneously combust.
That tweet is pure fantasy. Inhofe didn’t strike me as “pissed off.” The tweet should have said “I embarrassed myself in front of…”
The toads link doesn’t work. Get a 404 error on the Tecca website.
DirkH says:
August 4, 2012 at 4:56 am
Yahoo has a new CEO called Marissa Mayer who worked for Google before. Maybe this is her idea of manipulating the masses. A kind of Huffington Post, only with more lies and hate.
___________________________________
Marissa Mayer has a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University. This is the same place Paul Ehrlich is president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. This is the same Ehrlich who with Obama Science Czar, Dr. John P. Holdren, wrote “The Population Bomb” and “Ecoscience: Population, Resouces, Environment”
Looks like Ms. Mayer is following what she learned at Stanford. I would expect Yahoo to out do the Graniad in idiocy from now on.
( She’s also on the board at Wal-Mart, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet.)
Here is the propagandaStanford University is feeding its students.
Of course such deliberately misleading stories, which are obviously published in oreder to make a pecuniary gain, are a breach of US Fraud Laws. Both Fox Van Allen and Yahoo are culpable. Not so funny or trivial then is it ?
Under US Law – Title 18 U.S.C. , § 1343 (Wire Fraud) – Provides that :
“Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”