Fox News doesn't know climate-change skeptics numbers?
Fox News's Gene Koprowski wants people to comment on the notion that increased greenhouse gases can worsen winter storms. But apparently only if they think the suggestion is stupid. He put out this query on profnet, a resource journalists use to get in touch with academics and other experts on deadline. He wants "comments from someone who can point out the ridiculousness of [the] argument." Gawker has the text.
Perhaps Koprowski already had scientists who agree with the idea that climate change can worsen winter storms and needed Profnet to seek out a skeptic, to provide "balance." (Can't find a finished column online.) But you would think the Fox folks would have a well-used (if thin) folder of those folks on speed dial.
1. ENVIRONMENT/TODAY: Global Warming Causing More Snow? Come Again? — FoxNews.com Deadline: Feb 01, 2011 11:00 PM ESTFormer Vice President Al Gore told Bill O'Reilly that: "A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species." We need comments from someone who can point out the ridiculousness of his argument, even if you accept the somewhat-implausible argument. I've been assigned this story just now by Fox News in New York for the science and technology desk. I'm looking for comments. Please send comments via e-mail. Please send your name, title and company you represent. Please send comments by 10 p.m. CST. Contact: Gene Koprowski, [redacted]







Comments
There are plenty of skeptics out there, sorry if we don't all fall in line with Al Gore and just believe everything we're told. Have you noticed that everything is caused by global warming? They blame it for everything. Last decade they said global warming was going to be the end of snowy winters. Now that it's snowing like crazy, it's because of global warming. You can't have it both ways.
Posted by: jswo | February 2, 2011 2:13 PM
Scientists produced cruise missiles, cancer causing chemicals, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, cluster bombs, strip mining technology, Y2K, Y2Kyoto, deep sea drilling technology and now climate change.
Climate Change has done to science, scientists and lab coat consultants and journalism, what nasty priests did for religion. And how ironic is it that up until global warming 25 years ago, scientists were condemned for producing planet killing chemicals and making environmentalism necessary in the first place? Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 24 years of climate control instead of needed population control.
If you in academia had any credibility you would weed out your criminals.
A wave of former believer rage has arrived.
I urge everyone to contact their elected leaders via email to get these criminal fear mongering journalists charged with treason for knowingly leading our country and the entire globe to a Bush-like false war of climate change. We missed getting Bush jailed so lets go after these irresponsible lazy copy and paste journalists and see them all judged by the courts of our country. We owe it to our children to make this CO2 mistake right. We mistakenly condemned our kids to death by CO2 for 25 years because of the lies spewed about a dying planet. Yelling "FIRE" in the theatre was criminal.
System Change, NOT climate change.
Posted by: mememine69 | February 2, 2011 2:23 PM
I've never gotten a coherent explanation as to what caused ice ages, severe winters, excessively hot summers, floods and hurricanes long before man became industrialized. The climate has been cycling since the beginning of time. I think it's a little sketchy to submit that after 120 years of industrialization that the entire earth's multi-million year climate has been altered accordingly.
Posted by: Randy | February 2, 2011 2:26 PM
From a recovering global warming believer, you do have to admit that this fallback position taken by the alarmists belies common sense? I mean come on. The warming (which has been non-existent for over a decade) is causing the extreme cold and winter weather.
Note to Fox, you all need look no further that Sen Inhofe's office. He has assembled over a 1000 prominent scientists who question the global warming theory.
Posted by: Mike D | February 2, 2011 2:29 PM
Senator Inhofe has not "assembled over a 1000 prominent scientists who question the global warming theory." (Actually, he only claims 700, but even that claim is bogus.)
As the chart here http://bit.ly/eBuDad shows, over 80% of the names on the list have not published peer-reviewed papers on climate science. Many on the list are not scientists. Many others do not even question anthropogenic climate change. A full breakdown is here: http://bit.ly/eyAsz1. (Many of those on the list have requested that there names be removed, requests that Inhofe has simply ignored.)
You would be better served by reviewing an open letter published in Science and signed by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences, which states that "Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively."
Posted by: Stuart Levine | February 3, 2011 1:58 PM
I neglected to provide a link to the letter in Science. It is here: http://bit.ly/hyzNUo
Posted by: Stuart Levine | February 3, 2011 3:03 PM