I’m seeing a lot of people passing around a link to this story on TPM, which mocks Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes for saying that the case for man-made warming is "falling apart" but refusing to divulge any of his sources for that seemingly significant piece of info.
At first I just laughed about it, but it occurred to me later that maybe people really don’t know the answer to this question—maybe people really don’t know where Barnes is getting his info. The answer is an open secret:
Barnes gets his information on climate change the same place everyone in the right-wing media world gets it: from Marc Morano, the in-house blogger/agitator for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.).
Morano’s entire job is to aggregate every misleading factoid, every attack on climate science or scientists, every crank skeptical statement from anyone in the world and send it all out periodically in email blasts that get echoed throughout the right-wing blog world and eventually find their way into places like Fox News and the Weekly Standard. From there they go, via columnists like George Will and Charles Krauthammer, into mainstream outlets like Newsweek and the Washington Post.
That’s where Barnes gets it. That’s where Glenn Beck gets it, and Lou Dobbs, and Will, and Krauthammer, and all the rest of them. This is something everyone involved in climate- or energy-related media knows. But the reaction to the TPM post indicates that it’s not widely known outside those circles. So let me repeat it for the record:
The conservative movement gets its information about climate science from the office of James Inhofe.
What more really needs to be said?
For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow
Comments
View as Flat
jeffgreen11 Posted 9:05 am
09 Feb 2009
What will bring deniers into the reality of climate destruction?
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Billhook Posted 9:57 am
09 Feb 2009
this shill can be sued,
at the least for reckless endangerment, if not for complicity in generating genocide by famine ?
Regards,
Billhook
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Craig Allen Posted 10:02 am
09 Feb 2009
I can assure you that many people in Australia are now accepting the reality of what global warming means.
Whether that translates into our politicians doing something effective about our emissions is the next question.
I firmly believe that people who knowingly lie, misrepresent and twist the science to sow doubt about global warming belong in the same category as the the arsonists who lit some of the Australain fires. Fire bugs light fires, denialists work to ensure that they increasingly occur during weather events that allow them to flare into fire-storms.
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peterferrara Posted 12:14 pm
09 Feb 2009
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:23 pm
09 Feb 2009
http://greyfalcon.net/lanina
http://greyfalcon.net/elnino
It is not only that the temperature of the global atmosphere has been declining for the past 10 years.
http://greyfalcon.net/rsstemps2.png
The data now shows that the atmosphere does not display the temperature pattern it would if global warming was heating the earth,a pattern which even the UN's models show would be necessary if global warming were true. Game over. QED
http://greyfalcon.net/trends2.png
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/david_evans_and_t ...
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/david_evans_doesn ...
http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-e ...
-David Ahlport
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christophersj Posted 3:25 pm
09 Feb 2009
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christophersj Posted 3:28 pm
09 Feb 2009
And for those of you who have not seen it: here is a video of what Morano was saying on the boob tube the day of the 2007 IPCC release.
http://web.me.com/cjohnsonla/Site_5/Mark_Marano_Lies.html ...
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josullivan58 Posted 6:23 am
10 Feb 2009
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hoaxbuster Posted 10:41 am
10 Feb 2009
http://www.geocities.com/sciliterature/Climate.htm
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hoaxbuster Posted 10:43 am
10 Feb 2009
By Christopher Booker
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinio ...
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peterferrara Posted 1:05 pm
11 Feb 2009
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peterferrara Posted 1:08 pm
11 Feb 2009
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Alec Rawls Posted 6:06 pm
11 Feb 2009
Does anyone here really believe that if the Dalton Minimum happens again, or the Maunder minimum, the earth is not going to cool again? Do you live on a different planet than your ancestors? Will a grand solar minimum fail to cause cooling for the first time in 500 million years? Do you live in some fantasy world of hope and change?
With the sun in a mildly extended solar minimum already, we might not have to wait long for an answer. Maybe some of you AGW believers would like to lay money? Given the solar quiescence we are already experiencing, I will bet $50 that the earth cools over the next three years.
First four takers, non-anonymous. Buck buck BAWWWK. What about you Mr. Roberts? Care to put a week's pocket money where your mouth is?
One of my posts on the IPCC's omitted variable fraud here.
P.S. I've gotten almost no information from Inhofe, who is solid as a rock, but usually a bit behind the curve. I recommend Spencer, Singer, Svensmark, Michaels, and a host of other HONEST scientists, in contrast to the fraudsters at the IPCC.
First four takers, plus Roberts, if he is willing.
Alec Rawls
Palo Alto CA
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Billhook Posted 7:50 pm
11 Feb 2009
but to maintain the focus of public debate on the truth of AGW,
thus precluding effective public discussion of what must be done to remedy the problem.
So why, in God's name, would anyone here want to engage these fraudsters ?
And why, given that they regularly violate the site's code of conduct,
is their slander of honest scientists tolerated and published by Grist ?
Regards,
Billhook
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peterferrara Posted 5:57 am
12 Feb 2009
Or is that like the United Nations, which is grossly biased in favor of supporting the idea of man made global warming because that is a powerful excuse for massive increases in the organization's institutional and political powers?
Supporters of global warming regulation such as cap and trade costing a trillion dollars a year are not going to be able to get that through Congress by calling people snide names and telling them to shut up. They are only going to succeed by carefully and thoroughly making the case for such enormous costs and answering everyone's questions. That is how democracy works. That means the debate is just beginning not over. Note public support for such regulation is declining not increasing. That is another reason why Fred Barnes is right after all.
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Willis Eschenbach Posted 7:17 am
13 Feb 2009
Is the data and information true?
Is it accurate? Does it pass the smell test? Is it verifiable from another source? Can it be replicated? Did they give confidence intervals?
I don't care if it came to Fred Barnes in a dream, or if he got it from Einstein himself. Is it accurate and real and true and verifiable, or not?
So to attack the "conservative movement" for getting information from the "right-wing media world", who get their information from Senator Inhofe, who in turn gets it from Marc Morano means ... well ... nothing. Zero. Nada. Zip.
Attacking the people involved, rather than discussing the issues, is what is called an "ad hominem" argument. It comes from the Latin, meaning arguing "to the man" instead of to the data or procedures or results. It is a common logical fallacy. It follows the old lawyers dictum "if you can't argue the law, argue the fact. If you can't argue the facts, pound the table". Or as the cowboys used to say when I was a kid, "He couldn't argue the pig, so he argued the squeal". It is a crude attempt to shift the argument from the issues to the people propounding the issues ... but it can be an effective attempt in some cases.
Note that nowhere in the entire piece does he refute anything said in Inhofe's blog. Nowhere does he claim that something on Inhofe's blog is not true. Nowhere does he refer to the actual subject supposedly under discussion, climate science.
Instead, he just lines up a bunch of folks and says the information is coming from them, the rotten bastards, so it's likely false ...
Say what? I don't care if something was said by the head of Exxon or the head of Greenpeace. I want to know if it is true. Anything else is just an argument against the man ... an argument far too frequent in climate science these days, more's the pity.
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christophersj Posted 9:06 am
13 Feb 2009
YOU are the contrarian who must change the minds of those scientists who are vastly more qualified than you, not climate policy evaluators around here at Grist. The burden is on YOU.
Willis, Peterferrara, Alec Rawls, hoaxbuster,what are you even doing here? Why are you slumming here with us instead of confronting the real climate scientists through published journals and university lectures and conferences?
Nobody is going to argue the minutiae with you here. You're in the wrong playground.
Make your arrangements with NASA or Stanford see how you do. Let us know. Id love to hear a report back. Maybe a postcard.
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rbs Posted 3:50 am
14 Feb 2009
Pretty insightful.
http://scorpionbowl.blogspot.com/2005/09/oily-inhofe-r-ok ...
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christophersj Posted 10:46 am
15 Feb 2009
That was a fantastic post. Glad he's losing power in the Senate.
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hoaxbuster Posted 1:53 am
20 Feb 2009
The evidence shows alternative energy is expensive.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509599682529113.html
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/02/20/dont-count-on-c ...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1116088/Woman-91- ...
Supporters of green will kill more people than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim Jung Il combined.
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hoaxbuster Posted 2:00 am
20 Feb 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
penn and teller global warming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbHKOM4c6H8
The Truth About Al Gore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQygvUrBMGU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JD1KOXbrfw
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hoaxbuster Posted 2:05 am
20 Feb 2009
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hoaxbuster Posted 9:21 am
23 Feb 2009
(1) Leadership by a New Age prophet -- in this case, former Vice President Al Gore.
(2) Assertion of an apocalyptic threat to all mankind.
(3) An absolutist definition of both the threat and the proposed solution(s).
(4) Promise of a salvation from this pending apocalypse.
(5) Devotion to an inspired text which embodies all the answers -- in this case Mr. Gore's pseudo-scientific book "Earth in the Balance" and his new "An Inconvenient Truth" documentary.
(6) A specific list of "truths" which must be embraced and proselytized by all cult members.
(7) An absolute intolerance of any deviation from any of these truths by any cult member.
(8) A strident intolerance of any outside criticism of the cult's definition of the problem or of its proposed solutions.
(9) A "heaven-on-earth" vision of the results of the mission's success or a "hell-on-earth" result if the cultic mission should fail.
(10) An inordinate fear (and an outright rejection of the possibility) of being proven wrong in either the apocalyptic vision or the proposed salvation.
Finally, since this cultic juggernaut has persuaded (brainwashed?) a majority of Americans into at least a temporary mindset of support for its pseudo-religious scam, Mr. Stephens's label of "mass neurosis" seems frighteningly accurate.
Jim Guirard
Alexandria, Va
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/letters.html
Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/al_gore_places_infan ...
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