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Fake News Alert: New York Times issues epic climate change “scoop” correction

Fake News Alert: New York Times issues epic climate change “scoop” correction

Bombshell report explodes all over the Gray Lady!

The last time I fact-checked The New York Times, the Gray Lady was getting a much needed geography lesson about Arkansas.

The lessons continue!

Earlier this week, the newspaper-of-record published a front-page, bombshell report stating that a leaker had sent them a draft report of the National Climate Assessment, an analysis that the contact feared was being suppressed by the Trump administration. According the original article, the material wasn’t being released because it contradicted the views of Team Trump.

Now, the newspaper has been forced to issue a very public, and quite embarrassing, correction.

Turns out, the draft report has been publicly available for seven months, meaning the Times “scoop” was no scoop at all.

The Times’s front-page story said that scientists were worried that the Climate Science Special Report — a multi-agency report that lays the blame for climate change on human activity — “would be suppressed” by the Trump administration, as cabinet members have expressed skepticism that humans are causing global warming.

But, as with many reports from federal agencies, there is a period of public comment before a final report is issued. The third order draft, which the Times had falsely hyped as an exclusive of unpublished material, has been publicly available since January on the Internet Archive.

The Internet Archive — also known as The Internet Wayback Machine Archive — is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library.

In its correction, the red-faced Gray Lady wrote: “An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.”

The heat of the embarrassment is so hot that I swear I feel it in California!

Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, is listed on the report as among the lead authors. The story started to unravel when he indicated that the report had already been made public.

The Internet Archive, a website that archives content published online, says it downloaded the report from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website in January 2017.

Kopp noted the draft was published on the site during the public comment period, but then taken down after the period. But it still remained online at the Internet Archive’s site.

“The Times’ leaked draft has been on the Internet Archive since January, during the public comment period,” Kopp said.

Another scientist who authored the report, Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech who leads the school’s Climate Science Center, also emphasized that the report is already publicly available.

Legal Insurrection leaders will recall that a Red Team/Blue Team approach has been set up by the Trump Administration to challenge the entrenched attitudes supporting climate change in the bureaucracy. Members of the Red Team from the Heartland Institue shared their views about the NYT’s article.

Climate change skeptics at the Heartland Institute slammed the New York Times as “fake news” Wednesday after the newspaper reported this week that President Trump was looking to suppress a new federal report on global warming despite the report being publicly available.

“The New York Times’ front-page story on the National Climate Assessment represents fake news in collaboration with the deep state,” said Fred Palmer, senior fellow at the conservative think tank.

Isaac Orr, a researcher for the group, added that the story’s claim that government scientists leaked a draft of the National Climate Assessment “for fear of the report being suppressed by the Trump administration demonstrates how politicized the debate over human influences on global temperatures has become.”

Despite the very public shaming, I theorize that the professional climate at The New York Times will not change an iota. Brace yourselves for another #FakeNews item soon!

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Comments

They have no shame, and no integrity, and evidently no editors to do any fact-checking so I don’t expect their #Fakenews to stop being published.

    YellowSnake in reply to kenoshamarge. | August 10, 2017 at 6:39 pm

    Shame, like hypocrisy, is the lowest form of criticism. I will match you tit for tat any time you like.

    Let’s start:

    Milo Yiannopoulos was a senior editor at Breitbart and protege of Bannon.
    The NYPost and DJT never admitting they were wrong on ‘Central Park 5’
    DJT implying that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of JFK

    I can go on and on and on.

      Milhouse in reply to YellowSnake. | August 11, 2017 at 1:54 am

      Trump didn’t imply that Cruz Sr was involved in JFK’s assassination, he insinuated that he was involved in Oswald’s assassination. I got the impression he wasn’t clear at the time on who Oswald was.

        “Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

        ― Mark Twain

          YellowSnake in reply to TheFineReport.com. | August 11, 2017 at 2:17 pm

          Do you ever have anything besides ad hominem attacks? You strike me as someone who thinks he is smart, but never noticed that others don’t thinks so. So you come to a site like this where the consequences are no existent and you can indulge the fantasy that you actually know what you are talking about.

          I have noticed that I am not the only one who thinks you are the obtuse one. So even in virtual land you are exposed.

    The ‘Gray Lady’ has “no shame, and no integrity…”

    Either does any lying slut.

According the original article, the material wasn’t being released because it contradicted the views of Team Trump.

Hmm, I wonder how the NYT would have handled someone bringing them material that ‘contradicted the views of Team Obama’.

    pwaldoch in reply to rinardman. | August 10, 2017 at 3:17 pm

    Easy.. Front Page news! Before and after the fold. And a few follow up articles in other sections related to help push the agenda.

Corrupt propagandists don’t need geography lessons – they need economic lessons. Hard ones.

The bankruptcy of the ny times will be grounds for a party. Prior to that, it simply needs to be shunned.

    YellowSnake in reply to TheFineReport.com. | August 10, 2017 at 5:50 pm

    Hey FauxReport,

    “Shares of New York Times surge after subscriber growth – CNBC.com” 5/3/2017 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/03/shares-of-new-york-times-surge-after-subscriber-growth.html

    Their financials were down in previous years because of loss of advertising – like almost all print media. In addition there is something specific that hurt them. Suffice it to say it is being read by more people.

    It is not being shunned – Trump reads it; lnd it is not going bankrupt. Another wet dream. I hope your mother has a heavy-duty washing machine.

      TX-rifraph in reply to YellowSnake. | August 10, 2017 at 6:17 pm

      “Suffice it to say it is being read by more people.”

      Is your point that the market for fake news is growing or that the NYT is the market leader in this product?

      “Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

      ― Mark Twain

      Arminius in reply to YellowSnake. | August 11, 2017 at 4:56 pm

      Anybody can look up a stock price chart, Yellowsnake. I suspected the actual story was no where near as impressive as you’d like us to think. And as always it isn’t. According to your own link NYT is trading at $18.38, NYT has finally recovered to just about where it was on 31 October 1986 when it closed at $18.44. But of course stock price alone doesn’t tell the whole story. 1,000 1986 dollars had the same buying power as $2208.89.

      Congrats to people who were stupid enough to by NYT between 1999 and 2004 when it was was trading at well over $40 per share, peaking at $51.50 on 28 June 2002. You’re never going to get your money back.

      I suppose the buy-and-hold types who bought NYT shares in the 1970s when it was trading as a penny stock must be giddy. But anyone who bought NYT after the late seventies has not seen their investment keep up with inflation.

      So the CEO of the NYT goes on CNBC to hawk his product and you buy the sales pitch hook, line, and sinker. And you propose to be credible, why?

        YellowSnake in reply to Arminius. | August 11, 2017 at 7:04 pm

        I was merely pointing out that circulation has not suffered and they are far from bankruptcy. No vendors or employees have been stiffed – unlike a CEO who claims to be infallible.

        I am not long the stock – never have been

        Beyond the hurt that the web put on almost all print media, there is a specific reason why the Times was hurt. I could tell you, but I learned it during 6 years of consulting for them in the ’80s when they were very flush. I made a lot of money and had a lot of fun. While I am not under an NDA, I prefer not to say. It is in the public record and you appear to be a super analyst.

        BTW, fossil fuel stocks aren’t doing very well either. Do you want to draw any conclusions from that?

      Arminius in reply to YellowSnake. | August 11, 2017 at 5:00 pm

      * But of course stock price alone doesn’t tell the whole story. 1,000 1986 dollars had the same buying power as $2208.89 TODAY.

        YellowSnake in reply to Arminius. | August 11, 2017 at 7:23 pm

        Yeah, but if you bought the stock recently you would be happy. Can’t say that about most other print media.

        My original comment concerning the stock was in response to TheFauxReport anticipating the celebration when the NYTimes went bankrupt. Merely pointing out that he might have a long wait.

        Subconsciously, I might have referring to Trump who calls the Times the ‘failing New York Times’. Trump has failed and he has stiffed and conned others. But he has a very selective memory. He still attacks Blumenthal for a lie about service in Vietnam that he told 6 years ago. But Trump, who had 5 deferments, forgets the lies he tells every day – just like he forgets his own financial peccadilloes.

        You really do have to wonder what his life wonder what his life would have been like if his family had kept the name Drumpf.

Why post a link to a gaudy NYPost front page headline when you could have posted a link to the actual correction?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/pageoneplus/corrections-august-9-2017.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fcorrections&action=click&contentCollection=corrections&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

“An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was posted by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.”

So I am left with a question which can’t be answered until the final version of the report is released. Then we all will have the opportunity to see if the report was gutted or improved by the final reviews.

Depends on your definition of gutted and improved.

If, as I suspect, your definition of gutted is the removal of poor junk science and your definition of improved is the increased whine of catastrophilia then I suspect you will be disappointed.

Adults are once again in charge after 8 years of cry babies and lady boys at the helm.

    YellowSnake in reply to mailman. | August 10, 2017 at 11:25 pm

    More like knaves and fools.

    Gutting means taking the heart out. Improving would be adding well designed peer reviewed, repeatable studies. The scientific method has served us well while the faith based world was pulling sheet out of their a$$es.

    I can’t imagine why any conservative wouldn’t cheer that. If you want to make America great, get with the program. We invented the technologies. I played with solar cells 56 years ago. I get 100% of my electricity from renewable sources and use mass transit for most of my commuting. When I am commuting, I can read, watch a video or just enjoy the scenery. Sometimes I ride my bicycle and combine aerobic exercise with my commute. I do have a 1 1/2 year old car with 3500 miles on it. I am not exactly suffering.

    I have heard people claim they like the smell of fumes. That takes a heap of denial and a real bent for ideology over thinking. Just plain silly and argumentative.

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.

From characterization in isolation to extrapolation with global projections.

A conservative reality conforms to liberal speculation with progressive fudge factors (e.g. adjustments).

FYI, government agencies don’t do science. They do politics; whatever their political bosses demand.

It’s amusing to me that the relatively minuscule amount of money Shell or Exxon spends on funding climate research is supposed to corrupt the research of the scientists of those who receive it, but the overwhelmingly larger sum of money governments spend on climate research with the explicit expectation that the result must be that only more government can solve a problem that doesn’t exist but we can’t wait for actual evidence doesn’t corrupt the scientists’ research.

There are five armed services, but seven uniformed services. The two uniformed services are the National Public Health Service and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA operates ships; that’s what the “O” in NOAA hints at.

I’ve talked to some of these guys over a beer or two. There are a lot more of them who will tell you that the idea that 97% of scientists agree that human activity is driving climate change and it’s going to be catastrophic is complete BS. The science is nowhere near settled but if they dissent (like that Google engineer) from the prevailing orthodoxy they not only will be out of a job they’ll likely never get a job in their field again.

Just as with that Google engineer such is the power of the WrongThink Nazis.

Compleat Bulls***.

What the NYT says about a skeptic (the scientific method requires eternal skepticism; if you’re doing some sort of “consensus” you’re no longer doing science but you’re doing politics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html?_r=0

“…But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon’s work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work…”

Here’s what the USG alone spent on climate research in 2011.

NOAA: $437M
NST: $480M
NASA: $438.1M
DoE: $627M
DoI: $171M
EPA: $169M
USDA: $159M

So the USG spent approx. $2.5B alone in 2011. The USG knew what they wanted to get for that money, and they got it. And other governments are spending billions more on “climate research” as well.

And the people who are spending billions on climate research want you to believe climate scientists will sell their souls for millions. If that’s true, what do you think they’ll do for billions?

    YellowSnake in reply to Arminius. | August 10, 2017 at 11:34 pm

    There is a difference between skepticism and denial.

    It is absolutely true that the consensus can be wrong. It was wrong about the causes of disease. I don’t ever make that argument. But sometimes the dissenters are just cranks, fakes or mercenaries. The left has them, too. The ‘vaccers’ are just as misguided.

    Give it up. You are simply wrong and your descendants will pay the price.

      Cleetus in reply to YellowSnake. | August 11, 2017 at 5:36 am

      Just as there is a difference between skepticism and denial, there is a difference between those that understand science and those who do not. For example, I have had kids fresh outta highschool tell me in my freshman chemistry class at the university where I used to teach that I am a “stupid chemist” because I did not support catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and that they understand the science behind it better than I can or do. Most people with a poor understanding of science (i.e., 95+% of the general population) have never heard of various sun cycles (each with different periodicities), the PDO and other Earth cycles, do not understand that CO2 is not the primary gas involved in the global warming effect (water vapor is number one by a huge margin), how various agencies will not consider awarding a grant unless the grant application starts with the assumption that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is real (so they can then proceed to show how something will affect the global warming effect), how various agencies are continually “adjusting temperature data and the adjustments always go in favor of the Earth becoming warmer (a statistical near impossibility, and so forth.
      >
      But enough of the science. Consider the behavior of Michael Mann who was the person who created the infamous “hockey stick” graph. Michael Mann sued both Tim Ball and Mark Steyn over comments they had made concerning the hockey stick graph and where the data originated. Ball and Steyn countersued. Both of Mann’s suits were dropped and now Mann is facing a contempt judgement and and a result found against him in court which could end up costing him millions of dollars he does not have. To get out of this mess, Mann only has to release his raw data (paid for by a US public awarded grant and therefore subject to FOIA law as well), but Mann is refusing to do so. If the “hockey stick” graph is so accurate and real, then why would Mann face public humiliation and financial ruin by refusing to release his raw data? It makes zero sense unless the data had been fabricated or something similar. (FYI: Whenever I published papers I would always make my raw data available. Additionally, whenever I participated in the peer review process and some reviewer or the journal editor requested the raw data, it was always supplied as a matter of routine practice. If releasing the raw data is routine and common for everyone else, then why is Michael Mann’s data such a terrible secret that he refuses to comply?)
      >
      As an aside, you clearly know nothing about coal pricing and your information about coal prices and such is horribly inaccurate.

        “Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

        ― Mark Twain

        YellowSnake in reply to Cleetus. | August 11, 2017 at 2:05 pm

        The fact that you had ignorant students proves nothing. There are deniers that find a denier website and proceed to think they know something. I have had an interest in science since I was a kid. I have degrees in Mathematics & Computer Science and have taken numerous classes in Physics.

        I am familiar with sun cycles and the fact that the earth has cycles. I grew up on the terminal moraine of the last great ice age. We spent time looking for signs.

        Water Vapor may be #1 but it fluctuates within a range. But if you continually add another gas that is established as a significant heat trap and that gas accumulates, the result is obvious. The only question is the rate. We know from the study of Venus that there is some catastrophic limit.

        I don’t know that “various agencies will not consider awarding a grant unless the grant application starts with the assumption that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is real” But if a researcher honestly starts with that hypothesis and in doing his/her study discover that it is not true, he will publish that unless he is dishonest. You may claim that the vast majority turn dishonest. By the same token, a suspicious number of the scientists who deny climate change have funding from the fossil fuel industry.

        I am sure there are adjustments as we learn more. Whether they are all in the same direction seems to me to be an observation based on your bias. I know for certain that there have been adjustments, down. I concede that they have been accompanied by explanations – but the raw data went down.

        Mann has released his raw data. One can demand things that simply do not exist and then claim that your demands are not being met. I thank you for getting me to take another look at the available info, but I can find no site that states that a JUDGE has ruled that Mann is in contempt of court. There are a lot of websites gleefully proclaiming that Mann is in contempt. But they don’t count.

        You are right that I have limited (as opposed to no) knowledge of the coal market. I am quite familiar with the oil market and futures trading. So I looked for a coal futures market since nothing is quoted in the places I frequent – not even in energy futures. I finally found that NYMEX has such a market https://www.investing.com/commodities/coal-cme-futures , but there is not a single quote as of 1:56 PM! In general, it appears to be illiquid, with occasional large movements.

        In any event, that is not what I was writing about since the price used for determining royalties owed to the the US government is not based on the futures price. That is the problem! Coal companies mining on public lands have been allowed to set the price based on 1st sale – even if that sale is to their own subsidiary. Obama’s administration implemented a rule that based the price on the FIRST ARMS LENGTH SALE. That seems pretty reasonable to me. But Trump has now stayed that rule.

        For tax purposes, I would very much like to set up a second consulting company that I wholly own and sell them my services for $1, but have that subsidiary sell my services to the client at my customary rate. Do you think I would get away with that? At best they would tax the subsidiary’s ‘profit’. But coal companies set the price unrelated to the futures market or the real market for their coal. I don’t know how the coal companies handle the fictitious profit of the subsidiary, but I will bet that the pass on the costs and are able to write off those profits.

      Immolate in reply to YellowSnake. | August 11, 2017 at 12:18 pm

      To be a liberal is to lack a functioning BS detector. In flyover country, we refer to that as “common sense.” Skepticism is the root of all truth in science. Lacking that, you can accept what is told you, even when it is logically unsound.

        YellowSnake in reply to Immolate. | August 11, 2017 at 2:59 pm

        Common sense can be highly overrated. Common sense led people to believe that a heavy rock falls faster than a light one. Was Galileo a conservative? That would make the pope a liberal. I don’t think so.

        It seems to me that I have heard a lot of BS from both liberals and conservatives. If you don’t recognize BS from the people who you agree with, your detector is not what you claim it to be.

        Besides, this whole line is devoid of any facts. It is just another ad hominem attack. For about half the commenters on this site, ad hominem is the limit of their rhetoric – and yes I recognize the irony in that. But my comments are usually factual. It just annoys people, here, because I don’t join in the group think – and again 1984 is claimed by both sides. It probably means that Orwell was right, but says nothing about the people who claim him.

      Arminius in reply to YellowSnake. | August 11, 2017 at 9:03 pm

      I am so far from wrong it’s ridiculous. I only get this from people like you who get their information from journalist school grads who have no clue what they’re writing about.

      First of all, there is no consensus. The only source I can find for the 97 percent consensus is a paper written by researcher John Cook et al of the University of Queensland. It was titled Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature and was published in the May 2013 issue of Environmental Research Letters. It has been thoroughly debunked by a variety of researchers, some who actually agree with Cook about AGW but know that their cause is not helped by dishonest research.

      First of all, Cook and his fellow activists couldn’t even get their story straight about how many papers they reviewed. It’s approximately 12,000. But the various authors own estimates varied by several hundred.

      Then there’s the fact they didn’t actually read the papers they “rated,” but only the abstracts (this was no mystery as they said so in their paper) before determining whether or not the author(s) supported the theory that human activity is the dominant factor in climate change and that climate change was going to be devastating.

      Most of the authors, as in over half, said that Cook’s “raters” misinterpreted their conclusions.

      It’s not a representative sample of the available literature. When other researchers attempted to duplicate their sample (one fundamental aspect of the scientific method is repeatablity) they couldn’t. Of course, they were hampered by the fact that Cook wouldn’t release his data. He and his University claimed some of data couldn’t be released because of confidentiality agreements.

      There were no confidentiality agreements. I know this because someone hacked into Cook’s system and released all his data to the world. That’s how I know Cook’s “raters” were not honest brokers but activists. Note: the “raters” were not among the authors of the paper. Then it became apparent why Cook wouldn’t release his data. It did not support his conclusions.

      I don’t have time to go through all the flaws. As I said, first of all it wasn’t a representative sample. Some papers that should have been reviewed weren’t. Many irrelevant papers such as one about a TV show that assumed everything about AGW that Cook et al were included. So the most they reasonably could claim is that 97 percent of the papers they chose to review supported the theory about human activity being the dominant cause of catastrophic climate change. Instead they misleading claimed the entirety of the scientific literature on the subject as they claimed.

      But even had they admitted that only the papers they chose to review established some 97 percent consensus, even that wasn’t true. As it turned out, they didn’t even read the abstracts. Some of hacked data included the identities of the raters and the time stamp data. Information that of course Cook refused to admit, claiming non-existent confidentiality agreements in the former case and that a) he didn’t collect time stamps and when that story fell through b) the time stamp data would serve no scientific purpose. This was of course absurd. The time stamp data showed that the “raters” could have not possibly have read the abstracts they claimed to have reviewed before jumping to their conclusions. The time stamp data for one “rater” showed that individual reviewed 675 in a 72 hour period. That’s impossible.

      The bottom line is that when researchers finally got their hands on Cooks unrepresentative sample of papers they found that three quarters had nothing to say on the subject of catastrophic human-caused climate change. And upon a close study of the papers, only 41 papers supported the theory. That’s only about half of one percent, a far cry from the 97 percent that Cook et al claimed.

      So the 97 percent number is pure propaganda fabricated to appeal to scientific illiterates such as Democratic politicians. And they can’t even get the propaganda straight. How often do they claim that 97 percent of scientists agree about global warming when these charlatans only reviewed papers.

      So let’s move on to the science that is supposedly settled. Another lie; it is far from settled. Al Gore and other AGW hysterics (some of them actual scientists such as Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University and of GISS) have been insisting the science is settled since at least 2006. And since 2006 major discoveries that effect climate keep being made.

      For instance in late 2015 scientists from the universities of Lyon and Leipzig jointly published a paper about their discovery that isoprene can be produced abiotically. Previously the “settled science” was that isoprene, an atmospheric gas that aids in cloud formation and thus has a cooling effect, could only be produced biologically by terrestrial and oceanic (phytoplankton) plant life. But with the this discovery that the sun’s effect on the surface microlayer of the ocean also produces isoprene, it’s entirely possible that the ocean produces twice as much isoprene as previously estimated.

      Oh, another major discovery. In 2016 researchers discovered that dryland forest covers 40 percent more of the earth’s surface than previously thought. They were being undercounted because researches had been using an algorithm to estimated forest coverage. But when researchers studied samples of satellite imagery and actually counted the trees themselves they discovered the algorithms were wrong. They were seriously underestimating the amount of dryland forest.

      This means that forests cover at least 9 percent more of the earth’s surface than previously estimated. I say at least because dryland forest is only one of 26 types of forest. Given that the algorithms are wrong then none of the previous estimates are reliable.

      Researchers can’t even get a tree-counting algorithm right and I’m supposed to trust the climate models? I don’t think so, as we keep learning that scientists have no idea about the factors that effect climate. Hence the comedic series of scientists predicting disaster. Prediction from the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s have failed so miserably that scientists have wised up and are more recently predicting unless we act NOW disaster will inevitably follow but only in 100 to 150 years.

      In other words, after were all dead and won’t be around to point and laugh.

      But then, we’re all dead already from the last major environmental scare that required us to act NOW or else we’re all DOOMED. Because of the ozone hole NASA predicted would open over North America in 1992. So I don’t see why anyone should worry about global warming since harmful, unfiltered UV radiation killed us all over two decades ago. And unless President George H.W. acted immediately to ban the production, sale and use of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) we were all going to die. His plan to phase it out by 1995 would be too late.

      I mean, that came true, didn’t it? So we’re all dead now, right?

      Oh, were not? Well it’s still too late. That’s been the UN’s message since at least 1989 when one of their senior environmental officials said that unless we reversed AGW by drastically cutting our carbon emissions by 2000 whole continents would disappear. And the message of the UN climate conference in Bonn, Germany in 2001 was that was our LAST CHANCE to stop catastrophic human-caused catastrophic global warming. And then again in 2008 when Rajendra Pachauri, then chairman of the UN’s IPCC, said that unless the world took strong action by 2012 it would be too late to stop catastrophic human-caused climate change (Dr. Hansen of the Columbia U./NASA’s GISS said the same thing when he said Obama had only his first term to “save the world” [is Manhattan underwater yet like it’s supposed to be?]).

      Note we keep getting last chances. As I said, the message of the UN climate change conference was that conference was our LAST CHANCE. And that was the message of climate conferences in Montreal 2005, Bali 2007, Poznan Poland 2008, Copenhagen 2009, Cancun 2010, Durban 2011, Doha 2012, Warsaw 2013, Lima 2014, and Paris 2015. I expect the next climate conference will be REALLY OUR LAST CHANCE, THIS TIME WE MEAN IT!!1

      The climate clowns have been wrong for decades. I haven’t been and I’m still not. But please join the climate clowns and tell me I’m wrong about something you have no clue about.

      My bad; you already have joined.

        YellowSnake in reply to Arminius. | August 11, 2017 at 10:00 pm

        “I only get this from people like you who get their information from journalist school grads”

        I stopped reading after that. You have no idea where I get my information and where I get information is irrelevant. The information stands and falls on its own.

        I don’t know that is is necessary to degenerate into ad hominem attacks. I know, and have even visited, websites dedicated to providing talking points for climate change deniers. There are even websites dedicated to providing counter arguments to the deniers. If I did not wish to have a genuine discussing, I wouldn’t bother having a discussion at all. I come here not to troll, but to inject some small amount of dissent from the party line of this website. Of course I am exposed to liberal propaganda. But I treat that with the same skepticism as I do this BS. I make up my own mind. So, when someone tells me otherwise, I know they don’t have good arguments.

        Goodbye. I have unsubscribed.

        Arminius in reply to Arminius. | August 11, 2017 at 10:04 pm

        I suppose I need to state the obvious. The fact that dryland forest cover at least forty percent more of the earth’s surface, and given the fact that amounts to at least nine percent more total forest coverage of the earth’s surface, that’s at least nine percent more CO2 scrubbers.

        CO2 is of course not a pollutant but plant food.

        In addition trees produce isoprene, which aids in cloud formation and therefore has a cooling effect on the earth.

        The question of course is, what is the amount of total forest coverage of the earth’s surface? The algorithms researchers use seriously undercounted the extent of dryland forest. Science is a method. When your method is wrong, your results are worthless. It may be that researchers have arrived at the correct amount for some other types of forest, but that just means they happened to guess right despite using a seriously flawed method. Lucky guesses aren’t scientific.

    Jackie in reply to Arminius. | August 11, 2017 at 7:52 am

    Try to get a job in the field of climate science if you haven’t written papers endorsing the climate mafia. You simply would never gain employment in the first place. In a business that runs by grants, scientists craft their grant requests to please those granting the money. I’m surprised it’s not 100% of climate scientists agree.

      YellowSnake in reply to Jackie. | August 11, 2017 at 10:06 pm

      So the fossil fuel industry hasn’t set up a career path for deniers – a la the tobacco industry? That’s funny because there seems to be a lot of denier papers. Is it all pro bono?

That should be NSF (National Science Foundation) not NST, which doesn’t exist.

I would say the handwriting is on the wall when the Coal Mining Museum of WV switches to solar power.

The only way coal is in any way competitive is because the Trump administration is allowing the coal companies to not pay realistic royalties. The coal companies are allowed to set the price for royalties by ‘selling’ the coal at an artificial price to a subsidiary instead of setting the price in a free market transaction as would have been required by an Obama regulation. So if they can get the coal for almost nothing, they can maybe stay in business a little longer.