Representatives from Mr. Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research, recently reached out to me in an effort to set the record straight on natural gas extraction. Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed that was chockfull of scare tactics, false analysis, and misrepresentations about the science and methods behind natural gas extractions. In fact, the op-ed was so misleading it caught the attention of Mr. Pyle himself. Big Journalism is where he turned to help set the record straight.

Consider these bullets before reading the rebuttal by Mr. Pyle.

• A current estimate of natural gas in America is 2,047 trillion cubic feet (enough to power our nation for the next 100 years).
• Congressional Research Service claimed that America’s supply of recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal is the largest on the planet.

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Brian Williams was as cool as they come as sirens went off in the NBC Studios at Rock30CenterFellerLand–or whatever it’s called these days. Alarms go off and he stays cool and calm and keeps reading that ‘prompter.

I admire a news anchor who can keep his cool while flames may be sweeping across the anchor desk and mess up his hair at any moment, but excuse me if I don’t get all that excited having “been there, done that.” Actually, my suit was on fire. Watch this quick anchoring bit from a few years back (I’m the kid in the video) when a light blew in the studio during a live interview and lit up my suit. Boxing champ Virgil Hill thought I might spontaneously com-bust right in front of him, I did not, but I ruined a good suit. I kept going with the interview and was glad they gave me a clothing allowance.

NBC is hoping alarms go off with their viewers on Williams’ new show Rock Center (how’s that for a transition?) It’s the Monday night replacement for the cancelled Playboy Club, and the failed experiment with Jay Leno in the 10pm time slot. Seems NBC has still not recovered from losing Hill Street Blues, ER, Law & Order, and Texaco Star Theatre. Since Nightly News outdraws NBC’s prime time lineup, they have chosen to take Nightly News to prime time. Not a bad idea and it might even work because, through their programming, the other networks are trying desperately to help NBC get back into the game.

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Junk science has exploded thanks to the Internet.  It’s easier than ever to strike fear in the hearts of consumers by using words like “toxic” or worse, “cancer” in association with a given product.  Some of you may remember the Alar hoax. Nowadays, junk science finds willing advocates in form of uninformed celebrities who endorse their misguided causes. The latest example of embracing myth and fear over truth and reason is Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Dr. Oz has cynically leveraged his celebrity status into becoming an irresponsible spokesman against products Americans use daily, whose safety is beyond question.  He’s disgraced his status as physician by becoming an agent of fear, rather than an agent of healing.

Even worse, the mainstream media perpetuates junk science without vetting anything Dr. Oz says.  They report his nonsense, but never the criticism of it.  Nor does the MSM bother to investigate the anti-capitalist group supporting him.

Dr. Oz has irresponsibly generated public fear about dozens of safe products…and by “safe”, I mean scientific studies with rigorous protocols that have determined they are exactly that:

Apple Juice

What the … ? Is he serious?  I’m afraid so.  He recently made the outrageous assertion that apple juice is unsafe because of the amount of total arsenic found in it.  The EPA, he says, permits 10 parts per billion (ppb) of arsenic in water, but has no standards for apple juice., so he uses the same 10ppb as the toxicity level for apple juice.

Water is not apple juice.

Not only does the FDA permits 23ppb of total arsenic in apple juice, but virtually every step along the supply chain tests for arsenic levels.  Even in China, farmers are trained on how to properly cultivate apples and arsenic levels in soil are measured.  When the apple concentrate arrives in the U.S., the FDA conducts random checks.  Manufacturers then rehydrate the concentrate into juice, and test every lot.  If total arsenic exceeds 23ppb, they toss it.

Oz’s report was so misleading report that the FDA took the unprecedented step of debunking the claim publicly.  The FDA also reminds us that only inorganic arsenic, as opposed to organic arsenic, is toxic, and that dearest Dr. Oz tested for total arsenic. In addition, the FDA did the same testing on one brand’s apple juice that Dr. Oz did, and came up with results that showed ninety percent less total arsenic.  As the FDA responded to Oz, “The analysis of foods can pose a challenge to analytical laboratories and seemingly minor variations in sample treatment and analysis can have a significant effect on results.”

No kidding.

As Rick Cristol, President of the Juice Products Association told me, “The Juice Products Association, its member companies and even the FDA provided Dr. Oz Show producers with substantial information to develop a factually accurate program.  Yet, Dr. Oz chose instead to frighten the public with misleading and inaccurate information, that the former Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control, and now a broadcast reporter, described as yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Yet the mainstream media pays no attention to any of this.  They just perpetuate the fear by reporting on what Dr. Oz had to say — not his critics.

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We’ve heard it all before. Climate Change causes war and famine. Supporters of Climate Change legislation have scared us with all the plagues of Egypt for years, to trying to liberate us from fossil fuels. It’s actually been linked to every Biblical catastrophe, short of a rain of frogs.

So It should come as no big surprise that Discovery News posts this article linking “Climate Change” to wars, political unrest, famine, and generations of humans almost an inch shorter than their ancestors. (That’s a new one actually. Perhaps the oceans aren’t really rising; maybe we’re all just getting a lot shorter.)

But if you read the article a little more closely, you’ll notice something peculiar. The climate change the author is warning about here, isn’t global warming, it’s global cooling. According to the article, scientists writing for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have compared historic records of famine and wars, and population, against temperature records. They have found that the cooler the planet gets, the more frequent the wars; during the warm periods, people stop fighting, and go home to make babies. Hence, warming periods coincide with population surges.

For the first time in recent media history, all the calamities listed have occurred when the Earth got colder. Consequently, a warmer climate is actually good for humanity. It’s what I’ve always suspected. Warming is much better than cooling.

(more…)

I can hear them right now in newsrooms  across the country—

“Are you sure we need to cover this story about a possible fraudulent solar power company?”

“Won’t we look bad when we promote ‘Green Week?’”

“Should we show that video of the Obama at the Solyndra plant, or just act like we lost that file video?”

“But we have been saying for years that Green Jobs will save our future and our economy, how do we walk this back?”

“Won’t this make the Stimulus look bad?”

“If we just ignore it, it’ll go away, besides, we have the Michael Jackson doctor story to lead with!”

“How much did Obama know and when did he know it?” Wait, forget that last question, they won’t be asking that.

These questions might not be asked out loud at meetings, but they don’t have to be.

Don’t worry my media friends, I know how you roll, I’ve been in those meetings, you are hoping the public is much more stupid than they are (they are not) and hoping that they are not paying attention (and they are.) Some of those viewers actually have the internet and they know how to use it. They might even (gasp) listen to Evil Talk Radio.

The Obama connection with Solyndra is an easy one to make. Perhaps that’s why we’re not seeing the story. Protect Dear Leader.

(more…)

In a recurrence of its bout with Bush Derangement Syndrome, MSNBC recently relied on a left-wing, green activist to assert that the whole Solyndra scandal was really started by George W. Bush. Yep, it’s Boosh’s fault once again. Of course, the facts speak otherwise, but let’s not let truth get in the way of a good left-wing trope, shall we?

On the Friday September 23 episode of “MSNBC Live,” host Thomas Roberts was discussing the wasted loan of half a billion in tax dollars to the later bankrupt green company Solyndra and he brought on a the left-winger to address the mounting scandal plaguing the Obama administration. Naturally Thomas and guest were desperate to find someone other than Obama to blame this mess on. And who better to blame than the left’s favorite fall guy, George W. Bush?

Thomas had showed a video clip of Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (R, Fla) who called the loan “waste” and “corruption,” but Thomas next went to left-wing, green activist Dr. Mijin Cha who earnestly told the audience that, “the administration actually didn’t do any wrongdoing, right,” because “this loan was begun under the Bush administration.”

Sorry, Dr. Cha, but you’re wrong.

It is true that the loans for Solyndra were first broached in the Bush White House. But as noted on Sept. 14, the Bush White House also declined to approve them.

Per ABC News:

The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department’s credit committee had voted against offering a loan commitment to Solyndra.

The facts are that the Bush administration did not approve these loans. The same cannot be said for The One’s administration.

Not only did Obama’s crew approve the loans but recent investigations and news reports have shown that the loans for Solyndra were actually rushed through by the Obama regime.

(more…)

Why is Ezra Klein considered one of the Left’s smartest bloggers / pundits? What criteria are they using? Does the ability to take the latest Center for American Progress’ talking point memo and rewording it make you “smart” among the Left? Or is it his ability to use some other Soros-funded think tank’s analysis in order to argue that up is down? It’s baffling. Naturally, MSNBC seems to be grooming him for TV — he guest hosts a few of their shows — but why?

This IQ-sapping post about the recent bankruptcy of solar-power technology developer, Solyndra, is a perfect example of Klein’s “smart” – read “not really very smart” – analysis. (via Washington Post)

I don’t know all the specifics behind Solyndra, the solar-power company that the White House touted as a successful renewable-energy investment but which went belly-up this week.

He should have stopped right there, but the failure is a very high profile one for progressives, the “green” agenda, and Obama, so Klein had to comment — and this is his problem. He takes it upon himself to be the guy who tries to explain to the peons out there why progressivism’s failures aren’t failures. For some inexplicable reason, editors and program managers out there keep paying him to do it, too. And then there are all the people who read his “analysis” and agree with it! It’s unreal.

To his credit, Klein did at least point to an article (also on Washington Post) which does a good job reporting how the $535 Million government-backed loan Solyndra received was sketchy. Chances regular Klein readers actually read the other article? Slim. They’re not there to read about the deal or if it was a wise investment. They’re on Klein’s blog to be told that a massive failure was okay. They want to hear that Obama made the right call and that Klein is going to give them a warm fuzzy feeling if it’s the last thing he does.

But as a general point, it’s entirely possible for the initial investment to have made sense and for the company to have eventually failed. If we’re going to try to support young companies doing risky things in sectors that we’re hoping to dominate, we’re going to have to be prepared for some of them to fail. In fact, we should be hoping some of them fail. If our success rate is too high, it means government is making bad investments.

There’s so much wrong-disguised-as-common-sense in this paragraph one could probably write a book about it. Klein seems incapable of asking himself if the Federal Government should be doing this at all. Should it be supporting young companies doing risky things? The question has probably never crossed his mind.

If “we” as a society are hoping to dominate the solar power sector, wouldn’t the private sector be all over it? The failure to ask these questions leads to the two ridiculous sentences at the end of the paragraph. No one hopes some of their investments fail. No one. And the government, particularly, shouldn’t hope their investments fail because they’re not investing their own money. They’re investing taxpayer money that is not being voluntarily given. They’d better have a really high success rate! If not, they shouldn’t be doing it!

(more…)

By now, you’ve probably heard a bit about the Obama DOJ’s two raids on iconic American manufacturer Gibson Guitars. The story has made headlines around the world as another shocking example of how far the current administration is willing to take their antipathy for successful businesses. If you need to get caught up, the Bigs have broken news on this story, including two exclusive interviews with Gibson’s CEO (one by me and a must-hear interview by Dana Loesch) plus an important piece by John Nolte (and this latest via RS McCain wherein Gibson’s CEO says the government told him not to use American labor.)

As much as the Obama Administration deserves scorn for their overzealous prosecution, I’ve been researching the background of this story and have found that there’s another culprit – the entire United States Congress and their passage of an amendment to The Lacey Act back in 2008 that’s a prime example of an awful, anti-business law done in the name of environmentalism.

When you learn the details of the Lacey Act Amendments I think you’ll agree that they need to repealed as soon as humanely possible.

The amendments were passed in 2008 as part of the behemoth omnibus Farm Bill. The problem they were trying to address was the deforestation in countries like Madagascar, where ‘exotic woods’ like rosewood and ebony come from. Some of these problems resulted from political instability in the country, which created a grey market for these woods where the new ruling governments looked the other way and profited from the illegal wood harvest.

Where is all this wood going? Interestingly, 95% of it is going to China – not for re-export but for domestic use. The wealthy in China love rosewood and ebony furniture. In fact, the next time you hear a liberal attack the Koch Brothers or whatever rich-person-of-the-moment that they want to attack, picture someone in China who sleeps in an $800,000 bed. That’s not a misprint – if you want to see a picture of what a nearly million dollar bed looks like, you might want to check out this stylish report – it’s on Page 11. There’s a million dollar Chinese bed on page 16, too. And the report makes mention of the first Gibson raid on page 9.

So how have papers like The New York Times reported on this? Do you think they might possibly use misleading or even blatantly false reporting to try and guilt out their environmentally hip urban left wing readership? This is from a 2010 article on their ‘Green Blog’…

..it is not only the Chinese who covet the rich look of rosewood. Much of the furniture gets exported to the United States and Europe. Some of it appears in the polished contours of beautiful guitars.

Let’s parse those three short sentences.

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No surprise here, the National Association of Broadcasters is applauding the efforts of those who covered Hurricane Irene over the weekend.

Forget the fact that the broadcasters did what they do best, which is to exaggerate, the NAB sees it as a “remarkable” job done by those doing the reporting.

Yes, there were some great moments, but overall, the extensive coverage was not warranted and those who covered it, know it. But when you’re in that culture you get along, or you are forced out and they will find a “team player” who can drive the viewers to the next newscast by embellishing.

I could go through the long list of foolish live shots with a bush blowing in the breeze in the background and the reporter preaching doom and gloom. I’ve been through those live shots myself and have always worked to maintain perspective and tell it like it is. I always felt my obligation was to first be honest with the viewer. In fact, broadcasters will never admit this publically, but many of them think this coverage was silly. I’ve talked to them about it. It’s a running joke in newsrooms that when rain falls everybody must freak out and make the coverage bigger than life. You do it because consultants tell you their research says everybody in your town (this could be any town) feels weather is the most important element in the newscast. Perhaps it is, but a tropical storm did not warrant the coverage given. In isolated cases, yes, but overall—it did not. Irene was still being called a hurricane long after she had been downgraded to a tropical storm. Oh well—didn’t have time to change those scripts and the graphics.

I’m all in favor of proper warnings—you can even be overly cautious, if you’d like, but to keep up the hype with 2-3 foot swells “crashing” on to an empty, sandy beach, is a little much.

(more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

In a news analysis article, Reuters looked at Republican efforts to stymie the activism of the Environmental Protection Agency, which has increased its regulatory efforts under President Obama. Reuters, in keeping with the post-Giffords “new civility,” characterizes the Republican efforts as an “assault of similar vigor” to that which accompanied the debt ceiling increase.

Reuters’ second paragraph asserts that Republican opposition is “backed by wealthy conservative lobbyists.” The report asserts that the EPA is the “last bastion of hope for [President Obama’s] environmental policy” after his “push for a climate bill in Congress collapsed last year.”

It collapsed in a Democrat-controlled Congress for good political reason, too. Popular opposition to cap-and-trade in the U.S. led to the loss of two long-held Democratic House seats in 2010 as well: Morgan Griffith (R-VA) defeated the former chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Rick Boucher, who co-authored the cap-and-trade proposal in a Virginia coal-country seat that Boucher had held since 1983. In Minnesota’s Iron Belt, retired Northwest Airlines pilot Chip Cravaack defeated Jim Oberstar, the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who had served since 1975 and supported President Obama’s cap-and-trade plan as well as an extension of the Clean Water Act opposed by his constituents. Elsewhere, in Australia, a similar effort by the Australian Labor Party to institute a tax on carbon dioxide has seen that party fall to devastating lows in opinion polls.

Reuters notes that Richard Nixon’s administration established the EPA, calling it “ironic” that Republicans now oppose its expanded authority. Of course, Nixon was no Goldwater-Reagan conservative. He once said that “I am now a Keynesian in economics” and instituted wage and price controls.

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I sometimes wonder if the opinion writers for the Washington Post let anyone read their articles before they get published. The main stream media at one point prided itself for its “layers of editors and fact checkers,” but they seem to have disappeared. I say this because, every once in a while, I come across an article so deaf to its own irony that I need to stop and wonder. I don’t mean to say that I don’t expect a misrepresentation of facts, the building of straw men and a dozen other logical mistakes in the writings of ideologically compromised “journalists.” It’s just the absolutely unbridled transference that I would think that someone in those vaunted layers would maybe dare to say, “uh … about that.”

Such is the feeling I got when reading Richard Cohen’s latest screed in the Washington Post. I hope you’re ready for this one, it is pretty laughable. The GOP is a cult. You need to take a pledge to join up. Well, no, not exactly, but certain interest groups want you to promise to agree to their causes to get an endorsement. That’s totally like joining a cult, except it isn’t. For the sake of entertainment and to see how oblivious to irony these people are we’ll take a look.

Cohen has to make a silly jab at the memory of Ronald Regan to start things off.

“It is not enough to support the party or mouth banalities about Ronald Reagan …”

It is true there are those in the Republican Party who would use President Reagan’s memory as a political tool without actually believing in any of the principles that made the GOP the party of Reagan. However, the majority of Republicans do not “mouth banalities” about Reagan; they hold the truths that he espoused to be the bedrock upon which the country stands.

What are the pledges that have Cohen so up in arms?

No increase in taxes and any closing of loopholes would be matched by other tax cuts. Right, you can now run screaming into the woods as the mad cultists of the GOP come for you. Just not for your money.

The pro-life pledge is next on the list of bugaboos for Cohen. GOP candidates who want the endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony List must agree to oppose abortion including the opposition of judicial nominees who might decide against the wholesale slaughter of the unborn. Can you smell that? That’s the irony burning. If I could remind the Washington Post editorial staff it is the Democrat party who have for years been using the pro-abortion stance as a litmus test for judges. It is the radical feminists of NOW who have raised the concept of abortion to an inalienable right. A right that trumps every other consideration.  A politician can be the biggest womanizing, sexual harassing scum bag, but if they are a pro-abortion advocate Democrat then they’re good to go. That’s a Pro-Hypocrisy stance if I have ever seen one.

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Whenever there is an unusual weather pattern, members of the Holy Church of Global Warming Moonbats start spreading new scare-tactics. Usually it sounds something like:

This planet is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament real wrath of God type stuff.  Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!  Forty years of Gilligan’s Island Re-runs! Earthquakes, volcanoes, another Rocky Movie rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner living together… mass hysteria!

And just as common is the fact that scientists dispute their contention.  It happened when both Time and Newsweek blamed this spring’s tornado activity on Global Warming (contradicting earlier claims by the Magazines which blamed tornadoes on Global Cooling) and it’s happening now when Salon is blaming the extremely hot temperatures in the American West:

Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It’s happening right here, right now.

…Nonetheless, we have been experiencing a historic drought for about a decade in significant parts of the region. As topsoil dries out, microbial dynamics change and native plants either die or move uphill toward cooler temperatures and more moisture. Wildlife that depends on the seeds, nuts, leaves, shade, and shelter follows the plants — if it can.

….Global warming, global weirding, climate change — whatever you prefer to call it — is not just happening in some distant, melting Arctic land out of a storybook. It is not just burning up far-away Russia. It’s here now.

The seas have warmed, ice caps are melting, and the old reliable ocean currents and atmospheric jet streams are jumping their tracks. The harbingers of a warming planet and the abruptly shifting weather patterns that result vary across the American landscape. Along the vast Mississippi River drainage in the heartland of America, epic floods, like our wildfires in the West, are becoming more frequent. In the Gulf states, it’s monster hurricanes and in the Midwest, swarms of killer tornadoes signal that things have changed. In the East it’s those killer heat waves and record-breaking blizzards.

Gee, they left out the Giligan’s Island runs and the New Rocky movie. Maybe its because what Salon is saying above is totally fraudulent.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

In a Tweet sent by White House media official Jesse Lee in direct response to AIM’s coverage of the Politico report on the elusive “green jobs” the President has promised, the press office sent “a few folks who disagree.”

The first item was an image of President Obama at a photo-op with workers at a solar energy plant. The second item is more interesting. Lee Tweeted an article written for CNBC by “freelance journalist” Rob Reuteman which claimed that “everyone seems to agree there will be many more [green jobs] in the coming decades.” Reuteman claims that “market forces” in addition to regulatory mandates are creating such jobs.

Reuteman notes that “twenty-nine states have ordered their utilities to produce up to 30 percent of power through renewable energy in the next couple decades.” This is a mandate, not a market force.

Reuteman reports that the stimulus program “earmarked more than $70 billion in direct spending, tax breaks, and loan guarantees … most of it for ‘green energy.’” This too is not a market force but state intervention.

Reuteman then finds his first “market force,” noting that a for-profit university in Colorado offers a degree in “Wind Energy Technology.” This is the same “Wind Energy Technology” that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) noted receives “25 times as much [in subsidy] per megawatt-hour as…all other forms of electricity combined.”

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From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

While researchers at King Juan Carlos University in Spain found in 2009 that the Spanish “green jobs” program killed over two jobs for every one it created, Politico notes that “the White House can’t point to much solid evidence” that green jobs are being created. Politico states that “Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers suggests 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or preserved,” but does not acknowledge the follow-on effects identified by the Spanish study.

Politico, which deserves some credit for its open skepticism of Obama administration claims, reports that “White House officials say asking about the connection between the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and the administration’s green jobs campaign is the wrong question.” Instead of looking at macroeconomic effects of policy, Politico notes that the officials would rather show off the “exponential growth” in highly subsidized “clean technology industries.”

The Politico quotes “top Republican” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as “not seeing [green jobs].” Murkowski said, “I don’t know” when speculating on whether it was premature to judge.

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Considering how incredibly rare it is to find balanced global warming reporting in the mainstream media, Noel Sheppard’s 4/24 NewsBusters headline was worthy of a double-take: “Retired Anchorman Apologizes for Presenting Both Sides of Global Warming Debate.” Having written an American Thinker article last year where I quantified the outright bias at the PBS NewsHour to be a ratio of 3 “skeptic” to 200+ “pro-Al Gore/IPCC” going back to 1996, I was puzzled. Who could it be?

I was disappointed to see a name I didn’t recognize – imagine it being NBC’s Tom Brokaw. The bigger disappointment for me was in Sheppard’s third and fourth paragraph reproduction of the original Duluth Budgeteer article, where it said:

The TV newsman’s mea culpa about having misreported climate change came after of years of treating the story the same as he would any other, requiring the views of two opposing parties…

….climate change is not a pro or con issue; it’s a scientific fact. And journalists who work to “balance” a story present an inaccurate picture when they give equal weight to sources promulgating inaccurate facts.

The significance of that eludes most people, but I’d been researching the origins of the fossil fuel funding accusation against skeptic scientists for 16+ months, two of my articles about it are at Breitbart pages here and here, among a pile of others I’ve written. For me, the words “equal balance”/”equal weight” in reference to people pushing “inaccurate facts” jumped right off the page as yet another repetition of 15-year old talking points consolidated by anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan and his associates at the Ozone Action enviro-advocacy group in 1996. For those not familiar with that group, just think Greenpeace because its founder John Passacantando merged Ozone Action with Greenpeace USA in 2000 and took over as its new executive director. (more…)

Like clockwork—you can count on the activist old media to take a human disaster and make it political.

They are still searching for bodies in Missouri and leftists have started their chant of “global warming,” ”climate change,” or “global cooling,” or “global whateveritisthisweek.”

NBC’s Al Roker jumped right out of the box on Tuesday and laid the blame for the killer tornados on “climate change.”

In a conversation with Martin Bashir on MSNBC Al imparted his god-like wisdom upon us;

“And you know look – yesterday, or the day before yesterday; we had the tornado in Minneapolis. We have had these tornadoes and earlier this week we had a tornado in Philadelphia. And so, you know our weather, or climate change is such now that we are seeing this kind of weather not just in rural parts of our country, but in urban centers as well.”

I’ll put this right up there with the comments after Katrina when Robert Kennedy Jr. blamed George W. Bush for the hurricanes because he didn’t sign the Kyoto Treaty. “The Kyoto Treaty clearly forbids hurricanes from coming ashore,” said Kennedy. “Without the protection of this vital document, the United States will continue to remain vulnerable to bad weather.”

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Once again, its time to add to the official Jeff Dunetz, “Stupid Things Blamed on Global Warming” list. During the past two and a half years, global warming moonbats have blamed each of  the following on global warming, climate change or whatever the latest they have decided to give their over-hyped environmental calamity.

Incredible shrinking sheep, Invasion of jellyfish in the Mediterranean, Surge in fatal shark attack, Boy Scout tornado deaths, Global conflict, Beer tasting different, Suicide of farmers in Australia, Bigger tuna fish, longer days, shorter days, Collapse of gingerbread houses in Sweden, Cow infertility, UFO sightings in the UK, Rise in insurance premiums, Heroin addiction, Frigid Cold Winters in Great Britain, Cancer, Death from heart disease, diabetes, stroke, respiratory disease and even accidents, homicide, suicide, water -borne disease outbreaks, heavier, wetter snowstorms treacherous for travel and ambulation, Lyme disease, swarms of allergy-inducing, stinging insects, along with mosquitoes and devastating pine bark beetle infestations and the spread of forest and crop pests, 40,000 dead crabs , unrest in the Middle East. screwed-up love making, the Japanese earthquake-tsunami, horrible rash of tornadoes in southeast United States.

The latest addition comes from  Dan Ferber and Dr. Paul Epstein, authors of a new book, Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It. Ferber is a reporter, and the good Doctor is Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (wow, an MD and Harvard Medical School, his mother must be so proud).

Some might say the two authors simply chose something new to alarm the public about.  However, I disagree. These guys may have stumbled upon a solution to climate change and the violence in the Middle East. Miraculously they their book has “killed two birds with one stone.” Allow me to explain.

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The recent deadly tornadoes have killed hundreds of people. Our hearts go out to all who have lost their loved ones. It will take a long time for things to get back to normal for the affected areas and the good people of America are already lining up to help. These are times that bring out the best in us.

Unfortunately, these are also the kinds of events that bring out the worst in some. As the storms were still raging, global warming fanatics were out there linking the storms to their theory. To the members of the Global Warming (or is it Climate Change now?) cult, any severe weather is a confirmation of their dogma. ThinkProgress (shocker) put this out:

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

Do you see, rubes? Don’t bother actually trying to figure out what is causing the severe weather because “the science is settled.” Interesting. I thought real science meant that it is never really settled. Sure, some things can be settled like when it was finally determined that the sun is the center of our solar system. Before that, the “settled science” was that everything revolved around the earth. When you’re talking about an incredibly complex system like the weather and climate, the science will never be “settled.” It’s the height of arrogance to suggest otherwise. Of course, Leftist talking point factories like ThinkProgress want to reinforce the conventional wisdom within the Left’s ideological Iron Curtain, but even long time residents of Leftyville, like the Washington Post, were telling people not to jump to conclusions: (more…)

Knowing what you know about the “mainstream media”, allow your mind to wander to a place where a former White House adviser for a Republican was now part of a “mainstream” think tank. On the side, this adviser is involved with other, shall we say, not-so-mainstream organizations. Most of those other organizations revolve around the same subject matter for which he was a White House adviser. They’re just not very well known. For the sake of discussion, we’ll call this person the former “Getting Oil Out of A Rock” Czar. He is no longer a White House adviser because he once signed onto a cause that held some pretty far out views.

After leaving his position at the White House, the former czar kept a pretty high profile as a speaker at “Getting Oil Out of Rocks” events, etc. Despite the controversy which led to his ouster, he remained a well-respected member of the movement. His fans in government and academia still think he shouldn’t have been let go. They think he was a victim of politics instead of a victim of his own unorthodox views. Then one day, it became known that the former adviser was now a board member for a group that believes rocks should have the same rights as humans. Remember, he advised a Republican president. How do you think the media would react to this news?

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The absolute disconnect between the media and reality on “Pain at the Pump” gets more profound every day.

The first rule for the media on high gas prices, do not make a connection between Barack Obama and rising prices, in fact, make it look like he is doing everything he can to help stop the suffering.

Second rule, tell the viewers/readers that there’s really nothing they can do about the high prices, just deal with it and believe in wind chimes and moonbeams to fuel our future. Instead of pointing out why gas prices have risen to 4, 5, soon to be 6 bucks a gallon, they tell us to just accept it and buy a Nissan Leaf, drive only downhill, or walk. “Thank you sir, may I have another.”

First things first: Obama. As I have pointed out before, the incessant printing of money is causing prices of everything to rise. You don’t have to be Alan Greenspan to know that when you print money at the rate of this administration prices will go up, especially on gas because the price of oil is tied directly to the dollar. Last week NBC briefly mentioned this salient fact towards the end of one of its news stories (without blaming Obama, of course) but then ran virtually the same story in its next newscast without mentioning the main reason why prices are going up. Somebody must’ve made a phone call.

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