It is time for a new series. Shit that is stupid.

I was reading my daily environmental news letter from Grist, when I came across an article saying that Mitt Romney's win in Michigan was assisted by an anti climate change group American Environmental Coalition. Their home page has children frolicking (no one has told them about global warming yet) in a field. Apparently they have close ties with his campaign. Well I decided to see for myself what rhetoric this anti-climate change organization was pushing. I scanned their articles and came across one that seemed the most absurd, "Scientist Warn Against Religious Belief in Global Warming". First the title makes you think they are scientist are against religious people believing in global warming, that doesn't make any sense. Second they did not write any of the article, the web site just copy and pasted from cnsnews.com , not to be mistaken with CNN it is the cybercast news service, they slyly stick that S in there. A little digging showed that this used to be the conservitive news service but they changed their name, not only that but they are an arm of the conservative think tank Media Research Center (MRC). The MRC also puts out a video blog called NewsBusters, a conservative answer to the Daily Show and Colbert Report, it is painfully not funny but every one should check it out. Let me digress back to the article. The article is about a report put out by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. First of all the report came out December 6th 2006, I don't know about you guys but that seems a little out dated and the CNSN article does not mention this fact. Second the head of the Committee is Sen James Inhofe (R-Okla) is on record saying that "global warming is a hoax". So already this hearing is biased and the facts are outdated. Just to add insult to injury the quotes are taken out of context and it is the whole article is misrepresenting of the whole committee report. The report is a warning of reporters not doing a good job of covering the issue, having too much alarmist coverage and climate change skeptics whining that they don't get a fair share of the new coverage. Here is a quote from a paper by the Institute for Public policy Research Describing four kinds of misguided thoughts on climate change that are seen.

“Alarmism, characterised by images and words of catastrophe Settlerdom, in which "common sense" is used to argue against the scientific consensus Rhetorical scepticism, which argues the science is bad and the dangers hyped Techno-optimism, the argument that technology can solve the problem”

The article from CNSN also fails to mention that not all of the four hundred scientists mentions in the first paragraph are climate skeptics. Some of the climate skeptics in the report like Dr. Robert Carter work for conservative think tanks funded by guess who, oil companies and other big business. People what is the harm in preparing for catastrophe. What is the worst outcome, we are wrong and the planet is cleaner. If we don't do anything and the world goes to hell in a hand basket what are the skeptics going to apologize, it would be to late for that. I am not trying to teach blind faith here. There is of course a possibility the science could be wrong. As a scientist myself I understand that scientist can be wrong, they are only human.