Climate Scientist Explains How CNN, Dobbs Were Spun

Published January 16, 2009 @ 11:51AM PT

Related action: Report misinformation in the media

The RealClimate climate-science-by-climate-scientists blog does a great job addressing the bad science and disinfo tactics conveyed in the CNN/Lou Dobbs segment on global warming that aired this week.

As RC notes, "With the axing of the CNN Science News team, most science stories at CNN are now being given to general assignment reporters who don't necessarily have the background to know when they are being taken for a ride...they have to be all the more careful in these kinds of cases. Given that Lou Dobbs has been better on this story in the past, seeing him and his team being spun like this is a real disappointment."

An excerpt, with RC/Gavin's astute comments in italics:

INES FERRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And three independent research groups concluded that the average global temperature in 2008 was the ninth or tenth warmest since 1850, but also since the coldest since the turn of the 21st century.

LOU DOBBS: It's fascinating and nothing — nothing — stirs up the left, the right, and extremes in this debate, the orthodoxy that exists on both sides of the debate than to even say global warming. It's amazing.

This is an appeal to the 'middle muddle' and an attempt to seem like a reasonable arbitrator between two opposing sides. But as many people have previously noted, there is no possible compromise between sense and nonsense. 2+2 will always equal 4, no matter how much the Hudson Institute says otherwise.

FERRE: When I spoke to experts and scientists today from one side and the other, you could feel the kind of anger about –

That was probably me. Though it's not anger, it's simple frustration that reporters are being taken in and treating seriously the nonsense that comes out of these think-tanks.

Read the rest.

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