In an on going effort to show that the overly politically correct media is doing everything it can to do destroy not only the U.S.A but also its citizens. Keep in mind that the citizens of America have fought for Freedom in more countries than any other country in the world.
I encourage everyone to seek finacial freedom but to do that you have to pry yourself away from the television and the main stream media. The Truth is out there to quote a popular T.V. show but you have to look for it. You have to engage your brain and realize most of the media is slanted to the left.
Read the stories below. then take action.
10. Airlines are solely to blame for the unfriendly skies. Media
myth: Blame the airlines for all those flight delays; never mind the obsolete government-run agency creating the gridlock.The media were quite unfriendly to airline companies this year, attacking them repeatedly for flight delays and for making a profit. NBC’s Meredith Vieira even tried to extract a promise from one CEO – asking him to guarantee that no flight would ever be cancelled again.
“Do you fly to San Francisco by any chance?” the host of NBC’s “Today” show asked Northwest’s Douglas Steenland on the August 15 program. “OK, I have to go out there, are you going to promise me, guarantee me, that if I buy a ticket at the end of August you won’t cancel that flight?”
Vieira phrased the outrageous question as though it were Steenland’s fault that a high number of flights had been cancelled earlier in the summer.
Charles Gibson blasted companies’ bottom line on September 17: “And new airline industry numbers out today show that while millions of passengers suffer through record delays, cancellations and lost baggage – airline profits have been soaring,” said the ABC “World News” anchor. Never mind that some airlines had barely made it out of bankruptcy protection and were finally turning a profit.
Interviews highly critical of airline CEO’s, “summer travel nightmare” stories and complaints that the companies were making money populated broadcasts in 2007. Missing from most stories was criticism of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and air traffic control (ATC) systems.
Truth: The Boyd Group, an aviation consulting company that has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and other media, faults the government-run FAA and ATC system for flight delays in particular.
“The main cause of delays is the decades-long inability of the FAA to construct an ATC system that meets the demands of the air transportation system. The ATC system is not a static set-piece to which we must adjust our aviation system. Instead, it is a vital part of our infrastructure which the FAA has repeatedly failed to keep updated,” states the Boyd Group Web site.
The Boyd Group continued: “The FAA has consistently wasted billions over the past 25 years, often on programs that only get so far and are then cancelled.”
Wired magazine also acknowledged serious flaws with the outdated ATC in October saying, “Built on World War II technology, the system is showing its age. Planes move quickly, and radar takes anywhere from three to 12 seconds to accurately read a position.”
9. Consumer spending is the be-all, end-all of the economy.Media myth: Without excessive consumer spending – especially at Christmastime – the U.S. economy will collapse.“Consumer recession.” That sure sounds scary. Journalists have been worrying about consumer spending for months even before warning about a “lukewarm” Christmas shopping season.
On November 6, Erin Burnett of CNBC was concerned about gas prices impacting retail sales this Christmas: “Consumers like us account for two-thirds of the economy, and if we don’t spend all of our money at the department stores and Target and Wal-Mart this shopping season, we could have a recession. So gas prices are a crucial part of that,” Burnett said on NBC’s “Today.”
Just a couple weeks later, Burnett warned that “if consumers really start to pull back, that is what will turn us from the r-word of resilience to the r-word of recession,” on November 26 “NBC Nightly News.” Now reporters have even invented the term “consumer recession” and have warned about that too.
But it wasn’t just Burnett. It was ABC’s Dan Harris, Chris Cuomo and others.
Truth: Holiday spending wasn’t as ho-hum as journalists had worried. Despite predictions of a “gray Friday,” Black Friday and Saturday sales combined saw a 7.2-percent sales increase, rising to $16.4 billion.
But what happens if we don’t “spend all of our money,” as Burnett warned?
Economists like Arnold Kling and BMI adviser Gary Wolfram are just two experts who disagree with the overemphasis on consumer spending.
According to Kling, “The idea that the economy needs consumer profligacy is not nearly as entrenched among scholars as it is among journalists, politicians, and other citizens. In fact, there is a strong case to be made that we would be better off if we had less consumer spending and more saving.”
As for a “consumer recession,” Dr. Gary Wolfram, a Hillsdale College professor of economics, tackled that question.
“I suspect what they mean is that the economy will slow because consumers stop buying,” Wolfram told BMI. “But if they stop buying, then they must be saving. And the bears have been complaining that consumers are in too much debt, so they should be happy that consumers are reducing their debt.”
And if money not spent on Christmas, for example, were put in banks – that’s good for the economy, too.
“I think it is more valuable to look at what is happening to producers investing. If they are investing what consumers are saving, then the economy will be expanding, not contracting,” Wolfram said.
8. The stock market is trouble, whether it goes up or down.Media myth: One day the stock market can’t sustain growth; the next, we’re just one drop away from another crash.It doesn’t seem to matter which direction the stock market is moving, because both earn pessimism from the media.
Around the 20th anniversary of the Black Monday stock market crash, a nosedive that cost investors 22.6 percent in one day, reporters were warning “it could” happen again.
After explaining some reasons why a crash was unlikely, Barron’s Andrew Bary wrote, “Despite all this, a decline of 1987 proportions, while unlikely isn’t impossible.” Bary then made the case for a huge stock decline, even saying “the optimists’ case has some big flaws.”
CBS’s Alexis Christoforous worried that such a crash could happen again based on comparisons between 1987 and 2007.
“[Black Monday] was made worse by computer program trading, but the things that triggered it were overvalued stocks, a weak dollar, a period of extreme market volatility and a summer of worrying economic news. Sound familiar? Some market strategists are warning investors now to strap in,” said Christoforous on October 14.
Susan McGinnis complained on “Early Show” about a 100 point-drop in the Dow on October 15, but without mentioning the record high for the Dow on October 11 and record close of 14,164 on October 9. Meredith Vieira on NBC and Chris Cuomo on ABC both worried about a crash in September as the market saw ups and downs.
Ironically, the same downbeat view about the stock market surfaced as the market was climbing to record highs.
“Even as investors are making money in the market, Anthony Mason reports there are concerns tonight about the rest of the U.S. economy,” complained “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric on the day the Dow closed above 13,000 for the very first time.
Truth: According to the October 15 Wall Street Journal, a stock market crash is unlikely and investors “see stocks continuing their rebound.”
Unlike some in the media, “Hardly anyone is thinking about” the crash of 1987, according to Phil Roth (quoted by The Wall Street Journal on October 15). Roth is a chief technical market analyst at the brokerage firm Miller Tabak.
That Wall Street Journal article by E. S. Browning also disagreed with the “Evening News” assertion that stocks are “overvalued.”
“Stocks don’t look as overpriced today as they did in 1987. Today, the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index trade only a little above the historical average of 16 times profits for the past 12 months. In 1987, the S&P 500 was at more than 20 times profits.”
In contrast to many other reports, CNN’s Ali Velshi was optimistic about the stock market – because of the facts – on “American Morning” December 10.
“It was a strong week for all of the major indices. The Dow was up 1.9 percent, the NASDAQ 1.7 percent, and the S&P, which probably resembles more of your 401(k)s, up 1.6 percent. How is it looking for the year? Well, just a couple of weeks ago, we thought your earnings, your winnings for the year had been wiped out. But they haven't. Look at that. The Dow is up almost 9.3 percent, the NASDAQ better than that [12.04%]. And the S&P, a little weaker, but still up about 6 percent,” said the senior business correspondent.
7. Anyone who ‘denies’ global warming shouldn’t be taken seriously. Media myth: Global warming could cause a ‘century of fires,’ just as it has created allergies and ended winter fashion. If we don’t do something now (i.e. spend hundreds of billions of dollars), it’s only going to get worse.
Allergies, wildfires and the end of winter coat season. What do these three things have in common? Each one was cited as a result of global warming by the news media.
CNN exploited a national tragedy on October 23 by finding a way to blame global warming for wildfires, then went on to suggest even more fires due to climate change.
"Climatologists say, while we can't blame on fire on climate change, we can say that these factors are combining in that area [Southern California] to set up what could be a century of fires just like what we're seeing now," said Tom Foreman during “Anderson Cooper 360: In the Line of Fire.”
NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman suggested on October 25 that “Even global warming may play a role” in food allergies. And Marie Claire magazine stretched even further in its October issue. The magazine called for global cooling “so we get a chance to wear winter’s hot new coats.” The 14-page segment on “hot” winter coats was more media activism against global warming and even included a staged protest photograph.
In 2007, comparisons between global warming skeptics and holocaust deniers went mainstream. ABC’s “20/20” did it and so did CBS’s Scott Pelley.
Pelley responded to criticism of not including global warming skeptics in his reporting by saying, “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”
Newsweek magazine took the “denier” comparison in another direction, comparing them to moon-landing deniers on August 13. When asked if journalists should be more interpretive or analytical in their climate change reporting, Newsweek editor Sharon Begley said, “It depends …When you cover the history of the space program, you don't quote the percentage of Americans who think the moon landings took place on a stage in Arizona.”
A number of journalists supported activism over objectivity on the climate change issue, including Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing.
“I’ve also been thinking about the newspaper industry and global warming. And frankly, I don't think newspapers are doing enough,” Outing wrote. “Indeed, newspapers’ fabled commitment to ‘objectivity’ has been a detriment to efforts to combat global warming.”
Truth: Dissent against the “consensus” on global warming gets the cold shoulder from the media, but there is disagreement.
A climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, told Alan Zarembo of the Washington Spokesman-Review that these [California] wildfires are the result of two “staples of the region's climatic history,” meaning “strong Santa Ana winds” and “a drought that turned much of the hillsides to bone-dry kindling.”
"Neither can be attributed to climate change," said the UC Merced professor.
When it comes to warming stories, the media typically downplayed extremes: No offense, “No Impact Man,” but we won’t be going without toilet paper for a year. Journalists also shied away from complaining about the huge costs of taking action.
Variations on global warming legislation have been proposed, none of them cheap. The Lieberman-Warner bill could cost $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 40 years – or roughly $500 for every American man, woman and child every year.
2007 was also the year of “carbon neutrality.” Even the Oscars claimed to be carbon-neutral and gave away carbon credits as swag. But the truth according to some experts is that carbon credits do no more to limit CO2 emissions than your salad lowers the calories from your double cheeseburger, fries and milkshake.
Jutta Kill of the Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN) said carbon offsetting does not reduce emissions and the public is being seriously misled. Kill and several other environmentalists explained that offset payments often go to tree planting and other projects, but “they are not actually neutralising their impact on the global environment.” The system is harmful, they said, because people believe action is being taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when they buy offsets.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned about the cost of another carbon scheme – carbon caps – in his book, “The Age of Turbulence”:
“There is not effective way to meaningfully reduce emissions without negatively impacting a large part of the economy. Net, it is a tax. If the cap is low enough to make a meaningful inroad into CO2 emissions, permits will become expensive and large numbers of companies will experience cost increases that make them less competitive. Jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers constrained,” wrote Greenspan.
Meanwhile, Time magazine declared the “case closed on global warming” on February 19. But the March 5 “Hannity & Colmes” scrolled a list of more than 70 scientists who “indeed do question” global warming.
Even The Weather Channel founder John Coleman declared global warming to be “the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.”
6. You’d better not eat/drink that!
Media myth: Forget the right to eat as you please; the nanny-state knows better.
The food police were hard at work during 2007, and as usual they had deputies among the media. Salt, fast food, packaged meat, energy drinks, bottled water, soda, sugary cereals and so many other foods and beverages were under attack for being dangerous, unhealthy or harmful to the environment.
“Today” warned about the dangers of grilling just before Memorial Day weekend. “We can’t broil and grill anymore?” replied “Today” co-host Ann Curry on April 5 after a nutritionist said grilling is dangerous. She was talking to Joy Bauer, who said people need to avoid salty foods, grilling, frying and whole milk dairy products.
Thus far in December, no warning about the dangers of Christmas cookies.
Journalists constantly attack the foods Americans eat and the companies that make them – Oscar Mayer, Tyson, Spence & Co. Ltd. and others. Reporters hype food dangers, complaining about the obesity “epidemic” and bringing on “consumer” experts who try to scare viewers from eating just about everything. They also rarely include any comments from the very companies or industries they attack, or even from health experts with a different view.
According to the media, red meat “that’s an issue, isn’t it, for cancer.” Barbequed chicken is a no-no thanks to fat and calories.
Instead of serving up balance on food issues, the media served a heaping order of pro-regulation stories, attacking caffeinated energy drinks and casual dining chains like Ruby Tuesday and UNO Chicago Grill but praising bottled water bans because of the environmental impact.
Truth: Moderation is the answer and personal choice is better than government intervention. A pro-regulation slant came as no surprise from the same media that constantly repeat claims from the left-wing Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“CSPI never met a regulation or tax it did not love,” wrote Business & Media Institute adviser Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan. “How to solve the obesity crisis? Tax soda, ban its sale in schools, mandate that restaurants carry detailed nutrition labels on menus, and sue McDonald’s for luring children …”
Whelan, who is also the president of the American Council on Science and Health, wrote an open letter to CSPI in 1992 pointing out flaws in the group’s methods and claims and a general lack of common sense.
“There are no good or bad foods, only good or bad diets,” Whelan wrote as a response to CSPI’s “10 Foods You Should NEVER Eat.”
“The word ‘moderation’ does not seem to be part of this movement’s vocabulary,” concluded Whelan. It may not exist in the media’s vocabulary either.
Occasionally the media quoted a dissenter, such as Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute. Ghate told “CBS Evening News,” “I don’t think the government should ever be in the position of a parent, in effect, and telling people, ‘You’re eating too many hamburgers. Stop doing that. Eat more vegetables,’” on November 7.
5. Most Americans are losing their homes.Media myth: Americans everywhere are losing their homes to foreclosure, and the housing bust is going to ruin the economy.
The housing boom/bubble/bust has been big news for the last few years, with the media foretelling economic doom all along. 2007 was the year of the “subprime crisis,” as loans made with no down payments and/or adjusting interest rates came due. It was the “credit crunch” as many, including journalists, pushed for the Federal Reserve to cut rates.
Heart-tugging victim stories highlighted housing coverage, showing those facing foreclosure as everyman. CNN talked to one homeowner in December who said he did not know he had an adjustable-rate mortgage. Anchor John Roberts asked the man whether he thought President Bush’s plan to freeze “teaser” rates was “fair.” Naturally the homeowner, who was already three months behind in his payments, didn’t think so – because the rate freeze didn’t apply to him.
Foreclosure seemed imminent for much of America, as reporters continually proclaimed “record-high foreclosures.”
“Listen to this number on mortgage foreclosures in this country,” said NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams on August 23. “They’re up 93 percent nationwide last month from the same period last year. This situation is dire. It’s creating a lot of anxiety about how that’s going to affect a great many homeowners and the economy as a whole.”
The problem was, the numbers were inflated – and most stories were based on those numbers.
Truth: The foreclosure figures most stories used came from RealtyTrac, a source that counts each filing in the foreclosure process. One house has to go through several steps in the process, so counting each one as a separate foreclosure is inaccurate. Rick Sharga, the organization’s president, said it is misleading to call the number total foreclosures – which is what the media kept doing.
In the case of the Brian Williams report above, “It was a 93-percent increase of total foreclosure activity, and when I see the headline foreclosures up 93 percent, I cringe just like you do,” Sharga told the Business & Media Institute (emphasis added).
Amidst all the talk of housing busts, too, you might be surprised to learn that the national average home price is actually up – way up from seven years ago.
Since January 2000, the national average home price has risen by 80.45 percent, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices. But television news viewers were unlikely to hear that figure, because most reporters were focused on the 4.5-percent price decline since the third quarter of 2006. Declines from record highs should be put in perspective.
4. “Going Green” is good for America and business.Media myth: Businesses are much better off if they go green, and that’s what people really want anyway.
If you “go green,” you’ll have an easier time of it in the major media. Continental Airlines (NYSE:CAL) CEO Larry Kellner learned that when he practically got a pass from Matt Lauer in an August 23 “Today” interview, thanks in part to the company’s green efforts: “I want to end on another positive note, and again this is the easiest one of these interviews that we’ve done, but you were named one of the green giants by Fortune magazine,” gushed Lauer, in contrast to interviews with other airline CEOs.
The media have created all sorts of lists of things for individuals to do, from Time magazine’s “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference” for the planet to Marie Claire’s judging of carbon “sins.”
But businesses are also under media pressure to take big steps in the name of the environment. Just read what Time magazine had to say on June 7: “The business case for going green is increasingly clear, even without Al Gore droning on and on and on about it: where green goes, so does the bottom line.” When companies go green, the media tend to follow with positive coverage. But journalists often ignore the higher cost of “eco-friendly” choices.
Truth: BusinessWeek deserves credit for revealing the “Little Green Lies” corporate sustainability advocates have been telling. Its profile of environmentalist Auden Schendler showed the futility of his quest to “green” his company. Contrary to what Schendler once thought, and what the media say, “many major initiatives simply aren’t money-savers. They come with daunting price tags that undercut the conviction that environmental salvation can be had on the cheap,” wrote BusinessWeek.
Schendler discovered the purchase of “renewable energy credits,” a source of many companies’ green boasting, was a hollow claim. Though his company said it “offset 100 percent of its electricity use” through the credits, he found he had been deceived.
Other businesses have made green promises, only to see red problems result. According to BusinessWeek, in 2003 FedEx announced plans to begin using 3,000 clean-burning hybrid trucks a year and even won a prize in 2004 from the Environmental Protection Agency.
But the cost of those hybrid trucks proved to be too much – 75 percent more than regular trucks – and as a result FedEx had fewer than 100 of them in 2007. “We do have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders,” environmental director Mitch Jackson told BusinessWeek.
3. Lenders are responsible for everyone’s debts. Media myth: Drowning in red ink isn’t your fault; blame the guy who loaned you the money.
Americans are up to their necks in debt, but media reports about consumer debt for everything from student loans to mortgages in 2007 gave most borrowers a pass for poor decision making. Instead, reporters accused lenders and other financial businesses of “luring” borrowers, making “bad loans,” and “leading more American families down the path of financial ruin.”
ABC “World News” anchor Charles Gibson teased a story about foreclosures on March 26 saying, “The Home Wreckers. Locking families out of the American dream by offering mortgages too good to be true.”
A Business & Media Institute and Culture and Media Institute analysis of evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC found that between Nov. 28, 2006, and Aug. 31, 2007, businesses were blamed for borrowers’ debt six times as often as the borrowers themselves. The study also found that 62 percent of stories ignored the consumer’s responsibility and portrayed borrowers as victims.
Victims presented by the media included a North Carolina family struggling to make the mortgage payment who “lived off peanut butter and jelly,” a college student who was charged fees by the bank for overdrawing her account, and a Miami condo flipper.
“They’re some of the most spectacular views in Miami, but those storm clouds over this city’s condo market are now symbolic of gloomy values,” said Kerry Sanders on the July 26 “Nightly News.” “In some buildings half the units were purchased by investors. Natalie and David Luongo got caught up in the hysteria. In eight months, they pocketed $130,000 flipping an unbuilt condo. But now they’re stuck, three other condos, a quarter million dollars down, closing set for the end of the month.”
Talking about her “misfortune,” the featured condo flipper Natalie Luongo said: “It’s very hard to deal with. I mean it’s literally my whole life savings, and it’s going to be now living paycheck to paycheck.”
Truth: While some lenders may have been “unscrupulous,” no one holds a gun to someone’s head and forces him or her to take out a mortgage with a variable rate or without a down payment.
Financial experts like Dave Ramsey emphasize the need for personal responsibility when it comes to borrowing.
“You ought to kind of have a clue in your own life. If you’re behind in your bills, you have no money, your income is not great, you’re probably not getting the best mortgage,” Ramsey said on the April 3 “Early Show.”
Ramsey continued, “… being on the b-word, the budget. Living on less than you make, having a goal and saying, I don’t have to do this today. It could be a two-year goal to buy a home … It’s OK to rent for a little while, while you get your act together.” If the evening newscasts had included Ramsey and other financial experts willing to promote individual responsibility, media coverage of debt would have been much more balanced.
2. Free health care would be great!Media myth: To save our children and the 47 million uninsured Americans, and to keep up with the rest of the world, we must have government-run health care.
From children to the uninsured to Michael Moore, 2007 was a big year for health care in the media. As Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and others came out with their plans for “universal” health care, the media jumped on board with little analysis or criticism. That combined with enough gushing about Michael Moore to make a viewer “Sicko.”
“There’s something different about this Michael Moore movie,” said ABC’s Terry Moran on the June 13 “Nightline.” “For all the laughs, it’s very serious and laced with qualities not usually associated with his films: pity, compassion, generosity, sorrow.” Journalists considered government health care the compassionate, generous choice, overlooking the massive taxpayer-funded cost behind it.
And where there’s compassion, there are children. The media assumption seemed to be when the story’s got children, who needs facts? In the midst of all the concerned parents and cute kids pulling wagons of petitions, the media missed out on the crucial problem of enough tax increases to fund a $35-billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Not only did journalists downplay the initial tax increase, but they failed to realize the legislation was “a budget sleight-of-hand,” as The Wall Street Journal explained September 28. “Known as a ‘funding cliff,’ the yearly Schip layout increases to $13.9 billion in 2011, then abruptly cuts spending by 65% below current funding levels. This helps ‘score’ the bill as costing only $35 billion over the five-year budget window, but it also means that come 2012 Congress will either have to pass new spending or kick kids off the rolls.”
Coverage of any health care policy was boosted with the figure of “47 million uninsured Americans.” But the Business & Media Institute dug into that number and found several sources debunking it.
Truth: Politicians and journalists alike have touted health care plans based on the assumption of “47 million uninsured Americans.” That number is off by 10 million at a minimum. There are millions who should be excluded from an accurate total, including: those who aren’t American citizens; people who can afford their own insurance but don’t purchase it; and people who already qualify for government coverage but haven’t signed up.
Government statistics also show 45 percent – almost half – of those without insurance at a given time will have insurance again within four months. That contradicts the image of tens of millions of chronically uninsured. In fact, the uninsured population is more fluid.
Accounting for all those factors, one prominent study places the total for the long-term uninsured as low as 8.2 million – a very different reality than the media and national health care advocates claim.
In addition to faulty numbers, health care coverage suffered from a lack of numbers when it came to costs. The type of health care Clinton and Moore were pushing for is hardly “free.” USA Today’s Richard Wolf provided some refreshing honesty in his June 22 piece, reporting the drastic difference in tax rates for countries that provide “free” health care.
“In France and Britain, the tax burden is 42% and 27% respectively, as opposed to 12% in the USA, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,” he wrote. Wolf also noted Moore’s exclusion of insurance industry and U.S. health care representatives from his film and said “‘Sicko’ uses omission, exaggeration and cinematic sleight of hand to make its points.”
Other reports, including a film about the Canadian system called “Dead Meat,” have shown that nationalized health care leads to rationing of treatment and often long wait times.
ALSO IF YOU DO A LITTLE WEB SURFING YOU WILL SEE THAT COUNTRIES WITH UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE ARE STARTING TO MOVE AWAY FROM UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. THIS EVEN INCLUDES THE U.K. LOOK IT UP AND PROVE ME WRONG!! 1. The U.S. Economy is in recession.Media myth: The U.S. economy is nearly in, or is in, a recession.
Did you buy a sweater? A Dunkin’ Donuts latte? Well then, clearly the economy is in recession. Or so the media said in 2007. In fact, they’ve been predicting the r-word for four years now. With this year’s subprime mortgage hit, housing in general and the continued fluctuation of gas and oil prices, journalists were certain the economy wouldn’t survive, much less thrive.
They turned to several “economic indicators” to evaluate the economy’s health. In addition to sweater sales, which was an early call from “Good Morning America,” they used other sophisticated measures like Starbucks coffee and mobile homes.
“Starbucks is also an economic indicator, and the news on that front isn’t all good,” said anchor Brian Williams on the November 16 “NBC Nightly News.”
Trish Regan worried that consumers were feeling the pinch of gas prices and other expenses and cutting back. However, later she included the facts that Starbucks had raised its prices, while Dunkin’ Donuts offered cheaper lattes.
In years past, it’s been oil prices, hurricanes, global warming and terrorism that were supposed to plunge the U.S. economy into recession. Instead, the economy has been robust, and unemployment has stayed low – currently just 4.7 percent. That hasn’t stopped journalists from mentioning “recession” more than 100 times since the 2003 recovery began.
Truth: The U.S. economy is NOT in a recession and has experienced strong growth.
Contrary to media assertions and CNN’s Ali Velshi suggesting that “the bottom line is to most Americans, a recession is what it feels like to you,” there is an actual, objective definition of a recession. It’s two quarters of negative economic (gross domestic product) growth, which the U.S. has not seen in the last four years.
Instead, the economy has had 51 consecutive months of job growth. The third quarter of 2007 was revised upward to 4.9 percent GDP growth – very strong indeed. Yet the media have remained negative throughout four straight years of job growth.
And the economy has weathered oil prices. On the June 12, 2004, “CBS Evening News,” Tony Guida reported a dire prediction. “Some oil analysts see economic disaster if oil hangs around $40 a barrel,” Guida said. Oil as of early December 2007 was in the high $80s after rising above $90 per barrel, and still no recession.
Add to all that an increase in workers’ earnings, documented by Rea Hederman and James Sherk of The Heritage Foundation.
“The economy created 94,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate remained unchanged from October at 4.7 percent,” Hederman and Sherk wrote. “Wages grew at their sharpest rate since the middle of the summer, which will fatten the wallets of workers during the Christmas shopping season. The economy faces real challenges, but the evidence so far refutes the notion that it is sliding into a recession.”
Those economists aren’t alone in their analysis. “By most economists’ terms, a recession is defined as two or more consecutive quarters of GDP decline – something we haven’t seen since 1991,” wrote Fortune’s Peter Eavis on October 2. “By that narrow definition we're not even close. Of 50-plus economists surveyed by research firm Blue Chip Economic Indicators, not one is predicting a recession. They still expect GDP to grow 2.6% next year.”
IF YOU WANT TO LOOK AT ECONIMIES IN RECESSION CHECK OUT THE MESS CARTER ADMINISTRATION MADE OF THE ECONOMY. DOES ANYONE REALLY ONE REALLY WANT TO GO BACK TO GAS SHORTAGES.
WAKE UP AMERICA THE LIBERAL POLITICALLY CORRECT MOVEMENT HAS INVESTED ITSELF IN THE MEDIA SO THE ANTI-AMERICAN CROWD IS GETTING THEIR MESSAGE OUT. GUESS WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT. YOU GOT IT YOU AND ME BECAUSE WE HAVE LET THEM DICTATE THE CRAP WE WATCH ON T.V. SO YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT YOU SEE WRITE TO THE NETWORKS THEN START BOYCOTTING THEIR SPONSORS. THE NEXT BEST WAY TO GET PROGRAMING TO CHANGE IS TO TURN OFF THE T.V. I RECOMMEND THIS TO EVERYONE. ESPECIALLY THE GREEN CROWD. TURN OFF YOUR T.V. SAVE POWER AND THERE FOR SAVES THE PLANET. Labels: anit liberalism, conservative, exposing lies, politically incorrect, politics
I have long since said that the media is pushing the hysteria of Global Warming. This is supportive evidence that people are passing subjective judgement on data to get the results they want. Truth will be revealed!!!Decisions to name storms draw concern As season ends, some say center rushes to classify, which costs you!!!
By ERIC BERGERCopyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Some meteorologists say six systems during the 2007 hurricane season — Chantal, Erin, Gabrielle, Ingrid, Jerry and Melissa — might not have deserved tropical storm status because of relatively high central pressure.
Named storms and their paths from 2007 season Tropical weather links
Eric Berger's SciGuy blog The Chronicle's Hurricane Central Tropical weather updates U.S. Coast Guard storm center Categories and Saffir-Simpson FAQ: Hurricanes, typhoons, tropical cyclones -->
With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.
Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year's 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn "named storm" status.
"They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to," said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. "This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six."
Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure — another measure of intensity — suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.
Any inconsistencies in the naming of tropical storms and hurricanes have significance far beyond semantics.
The number of a season's named storms forms the foundation of historical records used to determine trends in hurricane activity. Insurance companies use these trends to set homeowners' rates. And such information is vital to scientists trying to determine whether global warming has had a measurable impact on hurricane activity.
Forecasters at the hurricane center deny there's any inconsistency in the practice of naming tropical storms.
"For at least the last two decades, I am certain most, if not all, the storms named this year would have also been named," said Bill Read, deputy director of the Miami-based center.
What everyone agrees has changed is the ability of meteorologists to more accurately analyze tropical systems, thanks to an increased number of reconnaissance flights with sophisticated tools and the presence of more satellites to monitor storms from above.
Scientists generally agree that prior to the late 1970s and widespread satellite coverage, hurricane watchers annually missed one to three tropical storms that developed far from land or were short-lived.
But this season's large number of minimal tropical storms whose winds exceeded 39 mph for only a short period has ignited a separate debate: whether even more modern technology and a change in philosophy has artificially inflated the number of storms in recent years.
Launch of QuikSCATA case in point is Tropical Storm Chantal, a short-lived system that formed in late July south of Nova Scotia and moved toward the northeast, out to sea.
Some meteorologists say the storm was never a tropical system at all, because it formed well out of the tropics. Others say it wouldn't have been named before the 1999 launch of the QuikSCAT satellite, which measures surface winds and alerted forecasters to Chantal's organization.
"Without QuikSCAT, Chantal might never have gotten named," said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and founder of The Weather Underground Web site, a popular resource for tracking hurricanes.
As the technology to observe storms has grown better, the definition of a tropical storm has remained unchanged. Such systems have a center of low pressure with a closed circulation, organized bands of thunderstorms and winds of at least 39 mph. Storms are upgraded to hurricanes when their winds reach 74 mph.
In earlier years before widespread satellite coverage, the hurricane center placed more emphasis on measurements of central pressure than wind speeds in designating tropical storms and giving those systems names, Frank said. Central pressures and wind speed are related, but the relationship isn't absolute.
Frank said he prefers using central pressure, because it can be directly measured by aircraft dropping an instrument into a tropical system.
If a reconnaissance plane had measured a wind speed above 39 mph during Frank's tenure, the system would not automatically have been named. His forecasters might have waited a day to see if the central pressure fell, he said, to ensure that the system really was a tropical storm.
That practice probably would have prevented some systems, such as Tropical Storm Jerry, from getting named this year, Frank said. After being upgraded, Jerry remained a tropical storm for less than a day in the northern Atlantic.
"In the past, we would have waited to see if another observation supported naming the system," Frank said. "We would have been a little more conservative."
Data inconsistenciesThe apparent change in the philosophy of naming systems has rankled some longtime hurricane watchers. Jill Hasling, president of Houston's Weather Research Center, said comparing the number of tropical storms and hurricanes today with the historical record is almost impossible.
But Read, of the hurricane center, believes wind speeds are the true indicator of a tropical system's status. Now that more accurate wind measurements are available, it only makes sense to use the best technology to quickly determine if a system has reached tropical storm strength, he said.
"An oncologist today would use the latest technology for determining and assessing one's cancer," Read said. "Would you use a doctor who only used X-rays instead of the latest MRI?"
Inconsistencies with the data have plagued scientists trying to determine whether global warming has increased the number or intensity of hurricanes.
In fact, there are reasons to believe that historical storms have been overcounted as well as undercounted, said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Before satellites, scientists had few ways to tell the difference between tropical systems and non-tropical storms. As a result, some non-tropical storms probably were named.
"The bottom line is that, yes, we do have errors in tropical cyclone counts," said Curry. "But it is not clear whether this adds a net negative or positive bias to any trend."
http://eric.berger@chron.com
I don't know what is more pathetic that a political party would actually stoop to this level of Lunacy to influence the media and the public or that fact the any media outlet would even want their name associated with this type of scandal. But again lets be honest the MSM has already sold their souls to the liberal left and we all know the MSMs are not gonna investigate themselves. Hopefully someone like Fox News will go after this story. I figured out where all the hippies who sold out to corporate america have gone. MSM journalism don't believe me just look at their stories and ask yourself this question are these peoples stories pro-America or anti-America. If you say Pro then I already know how you vote.Saturday, November 17, 2007
All six of CNN's "undecided voters" were Democratic operatives UPDATES BELOW - CNN hits bottom and digs: All six debate questioners appear to be Democratic Party operatives. So much for "ordinary people, undecided voters". To paraphrase Junior Soprano, CNN is so far up the DNC's hind end, Howard Dean can taste hair gel.
In a nutshell, CNN's six "undecided voters" were:A Democratic Party bigwigAn antiwar activistA Union officialAn Islamic leaderA Harry Reid stafferA radical Chicano separatistWow. This looks "rather" like a scandal.
Hot Air:
...You’d think the network’s audience might want to know who among the questioners has had a paid, formal relationship with the party....I went back to the beginning of the debate to see how Blitzer introduced the format. Did he offer any details on who’d be doing the questioning? Why, yes. After mentioning that the debate was sponsored by the national party — something likely understood by most viewers as a mere formality — he described them as “ordinary people, undecided voters.” Note: not even “undecided Democrats.” Just undecided.Word on the street is that Hillary's staffers are extremely pleased with CNN's Wolf Blitzer for
his softball questioning of Sen. Clinton during Thursday's Las Vegas debate. Blitzer "was outstanding, and did not gang up like Russert did in Philadelphia. He avoided personal attacks, remained professional and ran the best debate so far."Who were the questioners upon whom Blitzer called?
According to CNN, they were "ordinary people, undecided voters.” Like these folks:
Plant #1: LaShannon Spencer, whom Blitzer introduced as an "undecided voter", was tagged by
Dan Riehl: in truth, she served as the political director of the Democratic Party of Arkansas.Plant #2: Khalid Kahn, who expressed concern about profiling and the Patriot Act, asked "[m]y question is that -- our civil liberties have been taken away from us. What are you going to do to protect Americans from this kind of harassment?"
Classical Values notes that Mr. Kahn is the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, who has hosted
conferences like this one (with guest speakers like
Muzzamil Siddiqi). In fact, Kahn in no stranger to CNN, appearing on a show called
Keeping the Faith in Sin City.
Plant #3: Suzanne Jackson -- mother of a three-term Iraq war veteran -- is aso a well-known antiwar activist. She appeared in the
Las Vegas Review Journal protesting -- with a poor monkey, no less -- outside of Harry Reid's office in May. Note: Suzanne Jackson may have been mistaken with Jeannie Jackson, another vet's Mom. See Update IX, below.
Plant #4: Maria Luisa -- the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" --
wrote that CNN forced her to ask the "frilly" question instead of a pre-approved query regarding the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility.
Update: Andy writes to point out the eerie similarities between
Maria L. Parra-Sandoval and "Maria Luisa." Regarding Ms. Parra-Sandoval, the UNLV website states:
This spring she will serve as the political communications intern for Senator Harry Reid in Washington, D.C. Currently a junior at UNLV, Maria is... is an immigrant on a quest to become a United States citizen.In other words, she's not even eligible to vote, unless the Democrats changed the rules when I wasn't looking (Added later: Commenter wjb states that "Maria Parra-Sandoval was sworn in as U.S. a citizen in Las Vegas by Magistrate Judge Lawrence R. Leavitt in March 2006." So presumably she really is eligible to vote).Update II: rumors are flying of a fifth plant. An anonymous commenter at
Gateway Pundit writes that the "50-ish lady who 'asked" her memorized question was a union offical. Gee, lucky she got in!" Judy Bagley, a 27-year cashier at Fitzgerald's was quoted in
RGT Online (a gaming magazine) in an article about Culinary Workers Union Local 226's collective bargaining agreement.Update III: Judy Bagley was definitely a fifth plant. An anonymous email alerts me to this portion of the debate transcript:
Obama: Well, first of all, Judy, thank you for the question, and thanks for the great work you do on behalf of the culinary workers, a great union here.Update IV: an anonymous email alerts me to a possible sixth and final plant. George Ambriz is an Executive Director of the
¡Sí Se Puede! Foundation and is a recruiter at UNLV. His bio states:
George joins our team from Douglas, Arizona, having earned his associate’s degree in administration of justice from Cochise College in 2000. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in political science and criminal justice from Western New Mexico University. He is currently completing a master’s degree in ethics and policy studies at UNLV. He plans to pursue doctorate and law degrees, practice corporate law, and become active in politics.Care to guess which party's politics George is active in?
Update V: Andy writes to add some more background on Suzanne ("Jeannie") Jackson. On September 20, 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the only vote against the resolution authorizing President Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against anyone associated with the terrorist attacks of September 11th.Jeannie Jackson wrote a supportive note on the
Mother Jones website. She's active on the site of Soros front group
Americans United for Change and hangs out at Dem site
Think Progress. She also had a harsh antiwar letter published
in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Andy's snarky question: "Just another undecided voter I guess. Right?"Update VI: A
commenter at LGF provides an insightful summary:
Wow this is a scandal.A Dem activist from ArkAn anti-war activistA union activistAn Islamic leaderA Harry Reid stafferAll being presented by CNN as undecided voters.Update VII: An anonymous email alerts us to Kahn's background as a
heavy Democratic contributor (e.g., $2000 to Harry Reid earlier this year):
Update VIII: Another helpful email points us to lefty blogger
Live from Silver City:
Ambriz was just before my time at WNMU, but I later met him in Las Vegas at a model United Nations conference. Like me, Ambriz was heavily involved in student government and other clubs while at WNMU — he served as president of MEChA...What ic MEChA?
According to
this website, "The official national symbol of MEChA is an eagle holding a machete-like weapon and a stick of dynamite... The acronym MEChA stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan... [it] is an Hispanic separatist organization that encourages anti-American activities and civil disobedience... [they] romanticize Mexican claims to the "lost Territories" of the Southwestern United States -- a Chicano country called Aztlan. In its national constitution, MEChA calls for self-determination by its members to liberate Aztlan."From all appearances, MEChA wants to overthrow the United States government.
The American Patrol has more.In a
discussion board post, George Ambriz states "my name is George R. Ambriz, former student of Western New Mexico University, more importantly, a former M.E.Ch.A. President... we worked in sync... with the local and state Democratic Party to inform many people about the importance of voting..."Update IX: An alert reader notes that Catherine Jackson and Jeannie Jackson -- both Mothers of Iraq War vets -- may have been mistaken for each other by several bloggers, yours truly included. More info to come.Update X: A
pro-Obama blog links to this story and offers some additional insights:
A conservative blogger reports that the “Diamonds vs. Pearls” questioner was a former staffer for Nevada Democratic Party Chair, Harry Reid. Reid’s son heads Hillary Clinton’s Nevada campaign.LaShannon Spencer, the woman who asked about court judges, is a high-level staffer for the Arkansas Democratic Party and has been so since the 1990s. Bill and Hillary hail from Arkansas.Update XI: It appears
CNN has removed Ms. Spencer from their copy of the transcript!
* * *Dan Riehl also notes that
of 1,000 tickets given to UNLV, a measly one hundred made it to students.I'm glad CNN randomly selected ordinary people like you and me. We wouldn't want anyone to think that Hillary was shielded from all of the tough, grueling questions that Tim Russert asked.Seriously, it looks like CNN and Hillary's staffers (but I repeat myself) really had this thing rigged from the get-go to avoid a Russert-esque browbeating.Hat tip: Larywn.
Instapundit,
Gateway Pundit and
Jammie Wearing Fool were on this from the very start. And even the
New York Times is criticizing CNN's Hillary bias.Linked by
Instapundit,
Ace of Spades,
American Thinker,
Captain's Quarters,
Dan Riehl ("you can't spell Clinton without CNN"),
Dr. Sanity,
Ed Driscoll,
Gateway Pundit,
Jammie Wearing Fool,
Jawa Report,
National Review's Campaign Spot,
Patterico's Pontifications and
Polipundit. Thanks!Notes: Captain's Quarters and the NRO are somewhat underwhelmed with the magnitude of the controversy. Frequent commenter jpm100 put it best when he said:
It isn't that they are Democrats.It's that their careers are either with the Democratic Party or need a good Relationship with the Democratic Party.They basically could be counted upon to softball Hillary because their careers depended on it.
This is the repost of the most telling truth behind Global warming. Sad when only the conservative media is the only people that will tell the truth. Probably because the Truth may hurt someone's feelings and well that just ain't P.C.M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E
All in a Good CauseBy Orson Scott Card
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have.An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.Well, that's not acceptable.Cooking the FiguresHe starts with his software. There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data.He can run it on random numbers and it gives him the shape he wants. Unfortunately, the real-world numbers aren't random — they have a very different shape. All the numbers. Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants.All he needs is any data shaped the right way. And so he looks a little farther, and ... here it is. It looks, on the surface, like all the other data that he's been working with. Other researchers working in his field, just glancing at it, will assume it is, too.But it isn't. Because the source that gathered this batch of data had some other key information that takes it all away. The numbers don't mean what they normally mean. In fact, this number set is absolutely false.If you use these numbers along with all the other data, however, the clever little program will pick them up, magnify them radically, and voilá! The final report shows exactly the shape he needs the numbers to have.The trouble is, these numbers are supposed to be double-checked. Anybody who looks closely at his numbers and at his program will see what he's done. It's not hard to find, if you have the original data sets and can examine the program. He will be exposed as a fraud. It will do his cause more harm than good, if it's made public.But he's not afraid. He knows how this works.He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody.Second, he is given a big boost by the fact that another researcher — we'll call him "Santer" — had his own axe to grind. He was also the author of a questionable report and got himself appointed to a position that allowed him to get to the final report before it's published, delete all statements about how "there is no way to reach a definitive conclusion," and replace them with his own conclusion, which is absolute.And it works. Santer's report is accepted, even though it has since been proven false. Mann's report continues to be relied on, and no one questions it. The government agency issues the report which they know has been altered to fit preconceived conclusions.Vast sums of money are expended on the basis of what he claims to have found. People's live are put at risk.Mann and Santer didn't do it for the money, though grants do flow in their direction.They did it for the cause. It's a noble cause. And even though the data don't actually say what they wanted them to say — in fact, they say the opposite — they are untroubled by that. Because the government actions that are being taken are the Right Thing.Santer and Mann are true believers. They don't need evidence. Evidence is just something you create to persuade other people.Here's the amazing thing about Mann's original report: He's not the only researcher working in this field. In fact, it's the job of many hundreds of researchers to refuse to accept his data at face value. After all, his findings disagree with everyone else's. Before they accept his results, they have a duty to look at his software, look at his data, and try to duplicate his results.But nobody does it. Not a soul.Nor, when it goes public, does anyone in the press check the results — because they want him to be right, too.Steve the Canadian BusinessmanNot until a Canadian businessman — let's call him "Steve" — took a look at the stats and got curious. Now, it happens that Steve is in the mining business; he also happened to be a prize-winning math student in college. He knows how to read number sets. He knows what good analysis looks like.He also knows what cooked figures look like. He has seen the phony projections that companies use when they're trying to swindle people. Their results are too perfect. Mann's report looks too perfect, too.So Steve starts digging. First, he read's Mann's original report. He finds it an exercise in obscurity. From what he published, it's very, very hard to tell just what statistical methods Mann used, or even what data he operated on.This is wrong — it's not supposed to be that way. Scientists are supposed to leave a clear path so other people can follow them up and replicate their research.The fact that it's so obscure suggests that Mann does not want anyone checking his work.But Mann used government grants in his research. Which means he has an obligation to disclose. Steve contacts him, asks for the information. He gets a runaround. He gets pointed to a website that does not have the information. He tries again, and again gets a runaround — in fact, Mann sends him a very rude letter saying that he will no longer communicate with him.Why should he? Steve isn't a legitimate researcher in that field. He's just a businessman.But Steve is now sure there's something fishy going on, and he doesn't give up. He gets other people to help him. Finally they are pointed to a different website, where, to their surprise, they find that someone has accidentally left a copy of the FORTRAN program that was used to crunch the numbers. It wasn't supposed to be where Steve found it — which is why it hadn't been deleted.Also, there was a little more carelessness — there is a set of data labeled "censored." Steve can't see, right away, what's significant about it, except that a score or so of data sets are left out of the censored data.Steve looks at the program. He finds the glitch rather easily. He tries the program on random numbers and realizes that it always yields the distinctive shape that has caused all the stir.Sorting out the data sets is much harder. He contacts a lot of people. He does what anyone checking these figures would have to do, and he realizes: If anyone had tried to check, a lot of this information would already have been put together.He realizes: I am the first person ever to attempt to verify these astonishing, anomalous, politically hot results. Out of all the researchers in this field who had a responsibility to do "due diligence" before accepting the data, none of them has done it.Finally he has all the original data put together. It includes more than just real numbers — it includes "extrapolated" data, which means that sometimes, where there were holes, Mann just made the numbers up and plugged them in. This is sloppy and lazy — but it's just the beginning.What's crucial is that Steve now understands why the "censored" data sets are smaller than the ones Mann used. The full source data includes those misleading results that shouldn't have been used. But the "censored" data sets leave it out.This means that Mann knew exactly what he was doing. This was not an accident. Mann ran the program on the data without the misleading numbers, and then he ran it with the misleading numbers. What he published was the results that made his ideological case.Where's the Press?This story is true.Anybody who cares to can verify the story. In fact, one of the leading science journals was prepared to publish Steve's results. But then, before publication, they kept cutting back and cutting back on the amount of space they would let Steve's report take up in the journal.Finally the space they were going to allot was so small that they concluded Steve could not tell his story in that number of words, and therefore they decided not to publish it at all.Meanwhile, serious publications did publish Mann's savage response to what Steve was saying on the website where he was putting up his results for everyone to read.Notice: Steve is making all his work transparent to the world — anyone is free to check his data.Mann is still hiding, denying, attacking — but not providing the full information. You still have to do detective work to ferret it out.Now, if you were a reporter — you know, those brave guys and gals who are committed, body and soul, to "the public's right to know" — wouldn't you smell a rat? Wouldn't you jump on the chance to expose such an obvious fraud?After all, there are now governments all over the world basing their decisions on Mann's false report. Crucial decisions are being made. Schoolchildren are being terrorized with dire projections of what will happen if Mann's report is not believed and acted upon. Vast sums of money are being spent. People are treating Mann's cause as a crusade — and his fake results are the chief weapon they use to prove their case.Where's the press? Why am I able to tell you this story in full confidence that very few who are reading it will have ever heard it before?Because Mann doesn't report to the Bush administration. The government agency for which the result was filed was a UN agency — specifically, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.And Mann's report is the famous "hockey stick" that "proves" that global warming not only is happening, but right now we're in the warmest climate period in the past thousand years.Ah! You've heard of that report, haven't you! The press has been all over that one! Your kids are being taught about it in school!You have friends who look at you like an idiot or the scum of the earth if you don't get energized by it, frightened by it, determined to act on that information. Don't you care about the future of the environment?Why haven't you joined the cause? Why doesn't the Bush administration act to save the world from the most terrible threat imaginable?It's like the opening of the "Talk of the Town" section of the February 12th New Yorker: "Except in certain benighted precincts — oil-industry-funded Web sites, the Bush White House, Michael Crichton's den — no one wastes much energy these days trying to deny global warming."This statement is not just false, it's stupidly false. It speaks of such deep ignorance at The New Yorker — ignorance that they're actually proud of — that it makes one despair, for this is a magazine that once prided itself on knowing what it was talking about."By the time the IPCC publishes an assessment, it has been vetted by thousands of scientists," says The New Yorker — but we know that in fact nobody vetted the Mann paper, and nobody checked Santer except, of course, Santer — while he went ahead and removed statements of some of those "thousands of scientists" (p. 27).In other words, whoever wrote this New Yorker piece did not check. He or she just spouted.What is really being said here is, "We believe in the IPCC and anybody else who supports Global Warming. We believe it so much that we refuse to listen to anybody who says otherwise."The only difference between this and Jim and Tammy Baker on the old PTL Club is that nobody says "Jesus." It's all faith, no science.They're like four-year-olds putting their fingers in their ears and chanting "La la la la" until the person talking to them goes away.The Hockey Stick Hoax should be a scandal as big as the discovery of the Piltdown Man Hoax. Bigger, really, since so much more is at stake.But because the media are dominated by True Believers, they are doing everything they can to maintain the hoax, to keep the public from learning the truth.What were those bad numbers Mann plugged in to get his fake results? Modern bristlecone pine tree-ring data in which recent tree rings showed the widths that would normally mean unusually warm weather.However, these trees were located near temperature recording stations that showed lower than usual temperatures. So instead of being a sign of warmer temperatures, the tree rings are actually responding to the increased CO2 levels.Even the heading on this bristlecone pine study clearly stated that the wider tree rings did not indicate higher temperatures. But Mann plugged them in as if they did, producing the one dataset that showed "warmer weather" (i.e., wider tree rings) in recent years, allowing the defective software to produce its hockey-stick result.The bristlecone pine study was real science. Mann's use of it was deliberately fraudulent.How Can We Know What's True?All this can be checked. I didn't even change the names. "Mann" is Michael Mann; his co-writers on that hockey stick report are Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. "Steve" is Stephen McIntyre, and the writer of the report I'm working from is Ross McKitrick, who is a climate scientist. Their report is a chapter in Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming, edited by Patrick J. Michaels.Do you know how True Believer scientists respond to this? Just like the ignorant New Yorker writer. There's no attempt to answer any specific charge. They simply dismiss any disagreement by saying, "All the smart scientists agree that global warming is happening; anybody who denies it is just a crank, and you should ignore them."This is exactly the kind of bias that President Bush's enemies accuse him of having during the run-up to the Iraq War. They claim that Bush and his people only believed the intelligence reports that told them what they wanted to hear, and ignored the rest, claiming that "everybody knew" things that were false.That's not what happened with Bush (but you don't actually have to prove accusations against President Bush these days). But with the Hockey Stick Hoax it can be proved — yet the very same reporters pay no attention at all. It's "not a story."In other words, the very people who attack Bush as a liar are actually behaving exactly as they accuse Bush of behaving.Global Warming vs. Climate ChangeIf you pay close attention, you'll find that Global Warming alarmists are not actually saying "Global Warming" lately. No, nowadays it's "Climate Change." Do you know why?Because for the past three years, global temperatures have been falling.Oops.The thing is, we've had twenty years since the Alarmists first raised the banner of Global Warming. They told us that "If This Goes On" by 2010 or 2020, sea levels will be rising so high that coastal cities will be flooded, famines will cover the earth, and ...Oh, you know the list. They're still making the same predictions — they just move the dates farther back.It's like those millennarian religious cults in the 1800s. Religious leaders would arise who would predict the Second Coming of Christ in 1838. When Christ didn't oblige them by showing up, they went back to their visions or scripture calculations or whatever they claimed and report that they miscalculated, now it was going to be 1843. Or whatever.Here's the raw truth:All the computer models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict that past.That is, when you run their software with the data from, say, the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, they project results that have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.In other words, the models don't work. The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done.Why are so many scientists so wrong?First of all, there aren't all that many scientists. You hear about how "everybody" agrees about global warming. But who is "everybody"?I had somebody at a conference get very angry with me for even raising a question. "I have a friend who's a climate scientist and he says that the Everglades are definitely drying up!"But that's not the question, I said. Global warming isn't even the question. The question is, what is causing global warming or cooling or climate change? Is it human carbon dioxide emissions or something else? Your friend is studying aquifers in one specific area. In what way is he qualified to speak about global climate?The only answer I got was the answer you always get when you challenge the roots of someone's religion — fury, dismay, and a refusal to talk about it any more.That's what happens over and over. Who are the scientists who are qualified to speak? There aren't that many. It's the relatively few scientists who are studying paleoclimate and those who are working on contemporary data collection and collation and analysis.And here's where it almost gets funny. Even the IPCC, which was so heavily biased in favor of Global Warming alarmism, could not get its pet scientists to agree that Global Warming in recent decades is even probably caused by human activity.What Is Driving Global Climate?Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. When a hypothesis — or a computer model — fails to correspond to the actual real-world data, you throw them outThat's what the real climate scientists are doing. They have found, in recent years, a very close correspondence between global climate and variations in the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun.The light and heat we get varies depending on the distance and position of the Earth and the amount of radiation the Sun puts out. The Earth's distance and position seem to determine the big cycles — the Ice Ages — and the Sun's variations seem to determine the smaller climate cycles.We have historical data indicating several global warm periods. There was one during the heyday of the Roman Empire; then there was a global cooling during the Dark Ages (beginning about 600 A.D.) The Medieval Warming kicked in about 950, followed by the Little Ice Age beginning about 1300.The Little Ice Age ended in about 1860. You'll notice that most reports on our modern Global Warming set that as their base point, and leave out all prior warmings.But those warm periods are real, as are the cool periods. Ice core samples from various places around the world back it up, as do ocean floor samples. In fact, the predictions based on the 1500-year (approximately) solar cycle are borne out everywhere.There's now at least as much real-world evidence supporting the solar cycle as the cause of climate variation -- including all of today's climate variation — than there was for, say, tectonic plates or the asteroid-caused extinctions at the time when they were first plastered all over the media as the hottest science news of their day.It's not that it's really a secret. The book Unstoppable Global Warming by Singer and Avery tells us what the media could easily have reported to us:"On 16 November 2001, the journal Science published a report on elegant research, done by unimpeachable scientists, giving us the Earth's climate history for the past 32,000 years — along with our climate's linkage to the sun" (p. 8).They quote Richard Kerr of Science:
... the climate of the northern North Atlantic has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years in step with the waxing and waning of the sun.
And Kerr quotes glaciologist Richard Alley of Penn State:
The ... data are sufficiently convincing that [solar variability] is now the leading hypothesis to explain the roughly 1,500-year oscillation of the climate seen since the last ice age, including the Little Ice Age of the 17th century (p.8).
We're not talking about fly-by-night wackos. We're talking about leading scientists doing solid research.And other scientists have found data that correlates closely with their findings all over the world. In other words, these solar oscillations account, completely, for the global variations.The opposite is the case with the Global Warming alarmists. Their human-emitted carbon dioxide hypothesis is made ludicrous by the fact that most of the warming since the 1860s occurred before 1940, an era when human CO2 emissions were not significant. And we had significant global cooling between then and 1970, precisely the period when CO2 emissions were steeply rising.CO2 really is rising, though. Any greenhouse heat effect seems to be dissipated by a newly discovered "Pacific Heat Vent." Moreover, CO2 emissions are provably involved in fertilizing vegetation wherever CO2 levels have risen.Global Warming "Solutions"We can't stop global warming or cooling. We simply don't have the power to do it. We can't heat up or cool down the sun; we can't jiggle the Earth in its orbit or change its position. We'd be idiots to try, even if such unimaginable powers came within our reach.So we'll continue, as long as the human race persists, to have ice ages and warm periods, with relatively minor oscillations (like the Little Ice Age and our current warm period) in between.In fact, what we have right now, while we are not yet as warm as the peak of the Medieval Warming (a fact that Mann and others have tried to deny or obscure), is a superb climate that is making life better for people all over the world. It's the cold periods that cause famines and population drops, and promote plagues and floods.We should be grateful.Instead we are being hit with dire warnings, every one of which is either false or a normal part of the Earth's history; our business should be to adapt to the unavoidable solar-caused warming, not to destroy the worldwide economy in order to prevent something that human activity is not causing.Because the "solutions" proposed by the alarmists do not solve anything — and they admit it! The drastic proscriptions of the Kyoto Protocols, even if anybody were actually following them, would not have had any effect on Global Warming, even if it had been caused by human CO2 emissions.Do you understand that? When Al Gore goes on and on about what we must do to save the Earth, he knows — and everybody involved with the Global Warming alarmist movement knows — that none of their drastic proposals would have the slightest effect on Global Warming even if it worked they way their fantasies say it does.So why do they propose it? There are many personal motives, of course, but when you look at the non-solution "solutions" they propose, the pattern is clear: They are not trying to stop global warming. They are trying to punish the Western democracies for being richer than the rest of the world.There are solutions to that problem (and I believe it is a problem), but they involve stabilizing bad governments, increasing international trade, and making unsafe parts of the world safer so they can take part in the global boom.Not only that, but many of the programs the alarmists advocate are actually needed for completely unrelated reasons. It is a mark of our folly and blindness that we continue to be so ridiculously oil-dependent all these years after the oil embargo of 1973.For national security, environmental, futuristic, and personal-happiness reasons we should be working hard to change our automobile centered culture into more civilized patterns that invariably make people happier wherever they are tried.It can't be done by cutting back on automobile emissions or even by raising taxes on gasoline — especially because these changes are hardest on the poor and the marginal middle class.But I'll write about how and why we need to cut back on our destructive love affair with that faithless mistress, the car, in another column.What matters right here and now is that it is time for the world's scientists to apostatize from the Church of Global Warming. It is a false religion. It is based on lies, and its leading prophets know that it is because they're the ones faking the data or stretching it to ridiculous lengths to pretend that the real world hasn't already ruled against their claims.It is time for our school systems to stop accepting the gospel of that false religion and start doing their due diligence. Our children should be taught about the demonstrable solar cycles and the whole human-caused Global Warming theory, along with the Hockey Stick Hoax, should be taught only as another example, after Piltdown Man and pre-Copernican theories of planetary movement, of how science can be corrupted when ideology gets ahead of the data.It is time for us to laugh at the ideologues who try to pretend that any criticism of Global Warming alarmism is idiotic and unscientific. They are the ones who ignore the data; they are the ones who believe on faith alone, without evidence; and, most important, they are the ones who are trying to stifle the opposition without answering it.The Global Warming alarmists are the anti-science religion that is trying to forcibly indoctrinate and convert everyone while suppressing dissent. And the news media are their patsies, their stooges, their puppets.Right now, let's start demanding that whenever the local newspaper or TV stations say anything about Global Warming, they back it up with actual data that takes into account the solar oscillations, the real climate history of the earth, and the facts about what CO2 actually does in the atmosphere.It's time to stop letting them lie pass along other people's lies. It's time for the news media to stop doing cocktail party "research" and dig down into the science and get it right.Read It for YourselvesI could not possibly array all the evidence here; you must read the books for yourself. Unstoppable Global Warming is a highly accessible book written for ordinary educated readers. It's the book I recommend most highly.Shattered Consensus, on the other hand, uses the language of various disciplines of science to a degree that makes some chapters fairly difficult for untrained readers, though the key chapter I cited here, on the Hockey Stick Hoax, is quite readable and worth looking at by everybody.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.Patrick J. Michaels, ed. Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming.. (See especially: Ross McKitrick, "The Mann et al. Northern Hemisphere 'Hockey Stick' Climate Index: A Tale of Due Diligence," pp. 20-49.)
