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Heat wave? What heat wave?

Remember last winter?  It was cold.  At times, it was very cold, even breaking some records.  There was snow and ice, and on the Fox News Network, people like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, Stuart Varney, and Eric Bolling could not contain their glee.  After all, this proved what a charlatan Al Gore was!  Global warming was a hoax and there was no reason to amend our lifestyles.  Keep driving those gas guzzlers!  Hang on to those old incandescent light bulbs!  Drill, baby, drill!

Fox spent hours covering winter storms, making fun of Al Gore and suggesting that the cold completely undermined the science supporting global warming.  They never mentioned that, for at least 40 years, climate scientists have warned that the warming of the planet will cause more extremes in weather, both heat and cold, drought and flood.  No, that was an inconvenient truth which did not fit the narrative they were selling on the instructions of their Washington managing editor Bill Sammon.  

In fact, 2010 tied for the warmest year on record, and 2000-2009 was by far the warmest decade on record, more inconvenient truths that you won't hear about on Fox.  So now we come to the summer of 2011.  The nation is suffering through a terrible heat wave.  People are dying of heat-related causes.  There is no end in sight.  And Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy, and all the other Murdoch dittoheads are suddenly silent on the question of global warming.  But, never mind, I'm sure they'll pick up the discussion again next January/February.

Meantime, 98 percent of climate scientists around the world are convinced of human-caused global warming and continue to try to warn us of the consequences of inaction.  As that loathed prophet Al Gore has written, "Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real."

But not in the mythological country known as Fox Nation.
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  1. Susan July 22, 2011 at 8:00 AM

    Not only will I hear this from Fox this winter, but it is also a familiar refrain in my own house! And let me tell you, no amount of explanation on my part EVER makes any difference at all. Certain people in this world are just never going to "get it".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dorothy/The Nature of ThingsJuly 22, 2011 at 8:45 AM

    Sadly true, Susan. Many of the deniers have a financial interest in refusing to accept the validity of the science on the subject, but many ordinary people are simply duped by these people because the deniers' philosophy fits in with their world view.

    ReplyDelete
  3. paulJuly 22, 2011 at 10:05 AM

    what we won't hear on any network is that the earth's axis has tilted

    there's global warming & global cooling happening all at once

    magnetic field shifts confirmed by strange deaths of birds, bees and fish

    & that's just the tip of the iceberg

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dorothy/The Nature of ThingsJuly 22, 2011 at 12:50 PM

    Very true, Paul. Excellent points. In fact, all other things being equal, earth should be in a cooling period just now because of the positioning of the planet and the fact that the sun has been in a low solar activity period. Instead, the earth is heating up. I wonder why?

    ReplyDelete

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