Tea Party freshmen may rue $100B in cuts

Now for some squealing from the “press”: Tea Party freshmen may rue $100B in cuts. I like this comment in response to the story:

Where was the press when Democrats passed $800 billion in useless stimulus? Where were they when unemployment shot up and over the 8% limit Democrats said we would reach without the lame stimulus? They sure jump up when you come up short on $100 billion in cuts…good luck and go after entitlements, please.

NBC employee who distributed “What is the internet?” video fired

The NBC employee who distributed the “What is the internet?” video was fired this week for doing so. First, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the video:

Though this video is hilarious, and does illustrate how completely contemptuous TV news anchors can be about new things they haven’t bothered to do any research about, it is also unfair to laugh at them with 20-20 hindsight. At one point or another we were all as ignorant as they are. Note also that we do not know the whole story about why NBC fired this employee.

Journalistic spin for the sake of disaster

The headline from this National Geographic story reads “Yellowstone Has Bulged as Magma Pocket Swells,” while the first sentence is designed to send chills up your spine:

Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano just took a deep “breath,” causing miles of ground to rise dramatically, scientists report.

From here, the next few paragraphs go on to talk about the wild rise of the giant caldara under Yellowstone National Park in recent years, and how past eruptions there were were among the most powerful volcanic explosions ever to occur. Obviously, from this introduction, the thing is about to blow and we better run for cover!

This story is unfortunately typical for much of today’s modern media: find a story with a hint of disaster in it and play up that disaster as much as possible, regardless of the facts. For example, the opening of this article completely misreports the substance of the Yellowstone geology research. Back on December 4, I read the paper and headlined its results as follows: “Yellowstone caldara rise has slowed.” What the scientists had actually found was that after a period of significant growth beginning in 2004, the rise of Yellowstone’s giant volcanic caldara had slowed significantly since 2006, and since 2008 had actually subsided somewhat.

While the significant rise from 2004 to 2006 was then news, suggesting the worrisome possibility that an eruption was imminent, the story now, revealed by this scientific research, was how that rise has stopped, and why.

Now, if you spend the time to read the rest of the National Geographic article above, you will find that the reporter does dig a bit deeper, and notes these facts in better detail. The trouble is that a quick scan of the headline and opening paragraphs will instead leave you with an entirely incorrect impression of the facts.

That this kind of fear-mongering by modern reporters is not unusual, especially when it comes to climate research and extreme weather events, illustrates the vital importance of maintaining as skeptical an eye to what we read as possible. Don’t assume what you read is true. Read it as carefully as possible. Try to check its sources. And compare every article’s conclusions with other reports to see if you can get a feel for the truth, hidden behind the different reports.

And that, by the way, applies as much to what you read here at behindtheblack as anywhere else!

Shooting rampage victim arrested at ABC-TV town hall meeting

Finally a response: J. Eric Fuller, the Tucson shooting victim (also a Democrat party campaigner) who blamed Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Sharron Angle for the shooting was arrested today at an ABC-TV town hall meeting when he threatened the founder of the Tucson Tea Party. Key quote:

When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.” . . . A Pima County Sheriff’s spokesman told KGUN9 News that the department has charged Fuller with one count of threats and intimidation, and said they plan to charge him with at least one count of disorderly conduct.

NPR Boss Who Fired Juan Williams Resigns

Progress? The NPR manager who fired Juan Williams has resigned. In addition, NPR’s CEO has been denied her 2010 bonus because of “concern over her role in the termination process.” And what does Juan Williams think of this?

“It’s good news for NPR if they can get someone who is the keeper of the flame of liberal orthodoxy out of NPR. . . , She had an executioner’s knife for anybody who didn’t abide by her way of thinking. . . . And I think she represented a very ingrown, incestuous culture in that institution that’s not open to not only different ways of thinking, but angry at the fact that I would even talk or be on Fox.”

Naked bodies and a new Messiah

If anyone had any doubt that the global warming movement is undergoing a serious collapse, this so-called news article from Spiegal Online, entitled “Naked bodies and a new Messiah: Green groups are trying to sex up climate change,” probably lays that doubt to rest. Key quote:

Environmentalists and scientists are concerned about the massive drop in public interest in the topic over the last year. Now they are looking for new strategies to turn the tide. They’re searching for so-called “mind bombs” — highly emotional images that reduce a complex problem down to one core message.

Sadly, the article never asks the fundamental question: What do “mind bombs” have to do with facts, data, and proving your theories are correct in the real world?

The answer of course is obvious: Nothing.
» Read more

The Space Show

For those who would are curious to hear me talk about the past year and what’s to come as well as celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the Christmas Eve reading of Genesis by the astronauts of Apollo 8, I will be appearing on David Livingston’s long running radio show/podcast, The Space Show, today at 9:30 am Pacific time (12:30 pm Eastern time). The interview is scheduled to last 90 minutes, but David and I usually end up going far longer.

Dr. Livingston has produced more than 1000 shows, interviewing almost every single important figure in the aerospace industry. As he noted recently:

The Space Show/One Giant Leap Foundation is a non-profit 501C3 and your contributions are deductible from your U.S. tax liability. But more important, your help is needed in getting the space message out there to as many as possible, including the movers and shakers in society and the space industry. Not only do we provide a platform for many of you and your own material, we play an increasingly larger and more important role in getting space development to go viral. However, we can’t do it without your help so if you are able to make a contribution to The Space Show/OGLF this year, not only will it be appreciated, it will be most beneficial in helping to achieve Space Show goals and objectives.

To this I heartily say, amen! If you want to find out what’s going on in the aerospace community, The Space Show is undeniably one of the best places to go. The show deserves our support, and for that reason I want to give it a enthusiastic plug. You can make contributions by Pay Pal on The Space Show website here or on the One Giant Leap Foundation website. Checks made payable to One Giant Leap Foundation, Inc. can be mailed to P.O. 95, Tiburon, CA 94920.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, as seen at the time

An evening pause: This newsreel, made shortly after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, gives an honest sense of the rage felt by Americans following the attack. Or to quote the words placed in the mouth of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!:

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

Though it is not clear that Yamamoto ever actually said this line, it encapsulates the consequences of Pearl Harbor quite concisely.

What We Can Learn from 120 Years of Climate Catastrophe Reporting

What can we learn from 120 years of climate catastrophe reporting? We are all gonna die! Or to put it more clearly:

1: The mainstream media outlets are going to publish whatever sells. If someone publishes a story about the world getting colder and people buy it, you can be sure there will be many more stories touting the same headline.

2: There is a long lag between what nature is doing and what the media will report. The lag seems to be anywhere from 10 to 15 years after the climate changes. There is an inertia problem with the mainstream media even when the evidence is clear.

3: When all the stories are about warming or cooling, you can be sure they are all wrong.

When government agencies or United Nations Climate Change conferences warn you that the climate is changing you can be sure that is true — the climate is always changing. Determining the direction is the hard part. Based on the past reporting of these changes, be it from global cooling or warming, the trend will have reversed many years earlier than reported.

Incidentally there has been no global warming for a decade. Get a good grip on your long johns. Maybe a trip to Cancun is not such a bad idea after all, but I’ll wait until the delegates have gone home.

‘A million climate change deaths each year’

Global warming activists today released a report claiming there will be “a million climate change deaths each year” by 2030.

Wanna bet? This article from AFP is typical of what I call press release journalism. The unnamed author shows no skepticism, and simply regurgitates what these activists told him without question. I for one would love to see this so-called report, as I suspect it has more scientific holes than a hunk of swiss cheese.

Update: I just did a quick scan of this so-called “peer-reviewed” report, and it is a piece of junk. (You can see the report’s press release here. The report can be downloaded here [pdf]) Its data is compiled from UN political workshops, not scientific research. Moreover, it uses the 2007 IPCC report as its fundamental source, even quoting some of that report’s now discredited research, such as its claim that the glaciers in the Himalayas will be gone in mere decades.

When journalism runs wild…

A commenter to one of my other posts, ZZMike, asked this question today: ” What is NASA’s Secret Astrobiology Announcement?” and quoted this from another website, “Science fans across the Internet are eagerly awaiting an announcement from NASA’s astrobiology team. All NASA will say about the press conference is that it will “discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

Unfortunately, Mike, this great discovery is not the big news that everyone is hoping for, such as the discovery of life on Mars. Instead, it is about the discovery that a certain microbe can eat and digest arsenic, using it as one of the six vital basic components of life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus) in place of phosphorus. This is very significant since it tells us that alien life could very well be far more alien than previously imagined.

What makes this story interesting, however, is not the discovery itself (which is important). Instead, because NASA was so vague in its press announcement it allowed a large number of irresponsible reporters and bloggers to go nuts trying to guess what the story was about. When these rumors began to get out of control, the magazine Science finally sent out a notice to journalists noting the specific paper and discovery so that they at least would know in advance what the conference was about.

As Mike above as well as several other people noted to me in emails, I had written nothing about this story on behindtheblack. This was intentional. Without knowing what the conference was about, I wasn’t going to speculate about it. Once I knew, I still remained silent because the story was under embargo by Science and I respect these embargos. Now that the embargo has been lifted, I can speak.

What I want to speak about is the danger of speculation, especially among journalists. This is a serious problem today. Too often journalists speculate off the cuff, without knowing a goddamn thing about the subject, And all too often, they are downright wrong, and help contribute to misinforming the public. The result: the field of journalism has a terrible reputation with the public. No one trusts what journalists tell us. Worse, this lack of trust is helping fuel the ignorance and anger that seems to be rising in society, as no one knows what to believe about some of the most important issues of our time.

Journalists need to stop doing this. Rather than fantasize what they don’t know, journalists need to focus on what they do know. If they do that, they will significantly help repair the sagging reputation of their field.

The climategate email anniversary

Some cogent thoughts from James Delingpole about climate politics on the one year anniversary of the release of the climategate emails and the refusal of the elite ruling class to address the issue. Key quote:

And why is this so? In part, at least, it is because of the abject, ongoing failure of our Mainstream Media to report environmental issues with the robust scepticism that ought to be the natural tack of responsible journalists. Too many environmental reporters are still regurgitating press releases handed to them by activist organisations like the WWF, Greenpeace and Friends Of The Earth. In the MSM, as in government, it’s like Climategate never happened.

Wikipedia bans global warming propagandist

Wikipedia bans global warming propagandist. Key quote:

Through his position, Connolley for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist. His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia.

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