Moving the Climate Ball Forward

"Moving the ball forward".  It's a football reference.  Obama likes to use it to talk about his grandiose programs, such as making illegal immigrants legal or creating 'climate change hubs'.  Lately the administration has been focusing a lot on climate change, aka, global warming.

So what does CNN do?

Why, focus more on global warming. 

But not just focus on it, advocate for the administration's position.  Two stories today on their headline news webpage provide evidence. Here's one..

STELTER: So when you see a television segment that features a climate skeptic or a climate denier, how do you feel? Do you feel that network or that newspaper or that website, whatever it is, do you feel they're being irresponsible?

KAKU: Well, it's a free country. However, they should present the facts and that is that the overwhelming majority of scientists in the world who have studied the question believe that the temperatures on the planet are rising. And if there are skeptics let them present their computer program so that we can pick it apart. Let us understand this, because science is testable, reproducible and falsifiable.

AGW proponents love to conflate the accepted fact that the climate of the Earth has warmed since the Little Ice Age with the causation of said rise.  If someone disagrees that mankind caused the warming they deny the warming.  They are then called 'deniers'.  Or worse.  Because the debate is over.

The odd thing is Doctor Kaku demands to see models and studies from 'deniers' to disprove the theory, but it's doubtful he could get consensus on the exact contribution of mankind's activities to the temperature rise.  In other words OK, it's warming--what's causing it exactly?  When did it start, what year?  What's the precise contribution of humans?  Why did the Earth warm significantly in the early 20th Century?  Is 120 years of measurement data with thermometers and 35 years of satellite data enough?  Questions not answered.  But the debate is over.

The doctor talks about a 90 percent 'confidence' level that man is causing it, but that's not like saying that mankind has CAUSED 90 percent of the warming.  BIG difference.  But the debate is over.

The doctor demands scientific proof from the other side that his theory is not true when it's his side claiming it's a man-made problem.  The burden of proof is his.  Again, it's easy to prove it's warming, harder to prove how and why.  So they resort to name-calling and smearing when challenged, because the debate is over!

Only one side has Hollywood twits and well-known blowhards like Al Gore, who recently warned of another Dust Bowl if we don't go all socialist, yet he can't tell us what caused the first one back in the 1920s and 30s.  You know, back when the Washington Post was alarmed about the melting North Pole.  Only one side has journalist experts wailing idiotically about the "Polar Vortex" as if it's some kind of global-warming created abominable snowman never before seen.  Even though we saw it with a vengeance back in 1977.

Anyway, the above was on the "Reliable Sources", this morning they had a splash feature with Carol Costello entitled, "Why are we still debating global warming?"  Yeah.  So, after reporting about somebody that has developed a statistical grouping of all the opinions on the issue and narowed down the Tea Party to 15 percent (while basically putting the number of non-convinced Americans at above 50 percent when the groups are added up) Ms Costello goes on to proclaim:

The good news is, those uninformed minority voices are being quieted by nature and by those who have powerful voices. Extreme weather is forcing people to at least think about how global warming affects them directly.

And, perhaps more important, many religious leaders, including evangelicals, are now "green." They concur with the scientific community and take it a step farther. They say we have a moral obligation to save the planet.

What better illustration of how far the media will go to serve their master, ie, they will call the death and destruction from severe weather "good news" because it will show those hayseed Tea Party yahoo denier Republicans just how wrong they really are, once and for all.  Good news, another EF4 twister!  And of course they are taking their cues from the Master (even if the Flat Earth Society objects to be called flat-earthers on climate). 

If the above is not an example of advocacy journalism, nothing is. Maybe the GOP should advocate for that FCC study of newsrooms to come back--maybe they would stumble into discovering the real bias.  Just kidding on that.

Let's end with a final cut from the Reliable Sources piece, which by the way didn't include a real scientist skeptic like "heretic" Judith Curry or Dr. Roy Spencer (who recently objected to being labeled a "Nazi" for his dissenting views--the same Nazis who believed in science over religion and a cult of personality). Doctor Kaku is asked about skeptics:

STELTER: Dr. Kaku, do you think there's some room at the table for skeptics? For example, if I was to write a story about this topic and quote nine scientists who believe it's happening, should I be quoting at least one who is a skeptic? Or is this so settled that there's no room at all for something like that?

KAKU: Well, scientifically speaking, it's a settled question. But the average person out there hears the skeptics and therefore some of their arguments have to be addressed because they're out there anyway. In the scientific community, it's pretty much settled. In the court of public opinion, it is not yet settled. So it's good to present the balance, but you have to say that, with 95 percent of the scientific community behind this theory, it has more weight than another theory.

Well except good science REQUIRES listening to his 5 percent.  No reputable scientist would disagree!

Again, the game here is to conflate the temperature rise with the cause of the rise because it serves the need. Notice how the reporter is getting permission from the AGW scientist to exclude anyone who doesn't agree with the consensus narrative.  CNN didn't bother inviting an actual dissenter to debate whether dissent was valid or not.  Because the debate is over.  Truly amazing stuff.  It should scare people.
  
Obviously they don't want to clear up these misconceptions or they would, so there must be a motive to the madness.  And it's not just with climate.  Take this NY Times piece on Obama's Stimulus program over the weekend. Notice carefully what the "Paper of Record" did here:

This may be the singular tragedy of the Obama administration. Five years later, it is clear to all fair-minded economists that the stimulus did work, and that it did enormous good for the economy and for tens of millions of people. But because it fell short of its goals, and was roundly ridiculed by Republicans...

Behold!  The same strawman tactic used for global warming, ie, "all reputable scientists" becomes "all fair-minded economists", ie, nobody in their right mind would disagree that the Stimulus didn't save America.  That tactic allows them to bypass the shaky facts and go right to the flogging of dissenters.  It's a timeworn tactic narrowed by Alinsky and favored by most all statists and totalitarians with the ultimate goal of crushing dissent.  And dissent is the problem they are trying to solve now. It's the only thing standing in the way of Utopia.