Fox News' Gene Koprowski Fishes For Sources To Debate Al Gore's Global Warming Argument

Fox News must be pretty desperate, posting what amounts to little more than a personal ad seeking global warming skeptics.

A request posted Monday by Fox News science columnist Gene Koprowski on ProfNet requested comments from sources who can "point out the ridiculousness" in a statement Al Gore posted online responding to Bill O'Reilly regarding global warming, part of which addresses why increased snow falls are actually further evidence of the rising worldwide temperature. The post goes on to say that Fox News needs comments "even if you accept the somewhat-implausible argument."

Koprowski's full post reads:

1. ENVIRONMENT/TODAY: Global Warming Causing More Snow? Come Again? -- FoxNews.com Deadline: Feb 01, 2011 11:00 PM EST

Former 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]

Koprowski apparently had no problem finding the people he sought, as seen in his newly published article, "Al Gore Explains 'Snowmageddon'," though he fails to recognize that Gore is quoting from an article Clarence Page wrote for The Chicago Tribune nearly a year ago.

Koprowski appears to be further fueling distrust of science, asking, "Why can't scientists agree?" -- even if that means a few dissenting voices differing with the majority of scientists who believe not only in global warming, but warming that has been exacerbated by mankind. Ultimately, Koprowski says "the incompetent media" is to blame for "failing to provide critical context for readers," then referencing the fact that assertions have been made that the world is actually cooling, despite the fact that this has been repeatedly debunked, and is a ridiculous notion to stir up following not only the hottest year on record, but the hottest decade on record.

This isn't the first time that Fox News has vehemently tried to challenge the widely accepted science of climate change. This past December, a memo sent from top Fox News editor Bill Sammon stated that staffers and journalists "should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."

It seems Koprowski is dutifully following Sammon's directive, even if he has to blindly fish for sources.

Comments

[Dardedar]

09:00 PM on 02/14/2011

Let's not forget:

Fox News' Top 10 Climate Science Distortions And Fabrications

1. Global warming "doesn't exist"

2. 2009 was "the coldest year on record"

3. "Nearly all of the [Arctic] ice has returned"

4. "How can there be global warming if it's snowing and it's bitterly cold?"

5. "The Earth is actually cooling now"

6. Hacked emails prove scientists are "doctoring" data to exaggerate global warming

7. El Nino is the cause of warming of the past 30 years

8. Climate science warned of global cooling in the 1970s

9. "NASA acknowledges solar cycle, not man, responsible for global warming"

10. Phil Jones told BBC that "the Middle Ages were warmer than the climate now"

Each one roasted to a crisp with full reference and citation, here:

http://mediamatters.org/research/201102010025

[The last sane American]

01:10 PM on 02/08/2011

AGooglyMinotaur .

Sadly HP is hiding your tome from me. I hope someone else gets its benefit

[angryangel]

09:01 PM on 02/07/2011

Carl Sagan was a prophet:

The deadly consequence of unchecked global warming:

Peer-reviewed research published 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences itself:

"An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat
stress"
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552

"The Health Effects of Hotter Days and Nights"
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/health-effects-of-heat-waves.html

"The wet-bulb temperatures we are talking about would have a feels-like, or heat-index, temperature of between 170 to 196 degrees Fahrenheit."

Finding: IF the global temperature average increases just 12-21 degrees Fahrenheit (which is respectively about 7-12 degrees Celsius) FROM ANY SET OF CAUSES (possible over a couple or few centuries), THEN the latitudes containing most of humanity will experience daytime heat-humidity heat-index temperatures during the hot months of almost 200 degree Fahrenheit, not seen on Earth for tens of million of years.

Warm-blooded life requiring evaporation to survive heat evolved in these areas only since then. Therefore these temperatures moving from 100 to close to 200 degrees Fahrenheit kills off in these areas all mammals (and almost all wildlife via food-chain destruction) including humans (including for example most of India and China - Russia will let in all those many billions to her south?).

Note: Global humidity increased 4 percent just since 1970.

"Armageddon" no longer requires nukes: The massive amount of greenhouse gases that we may spew is all it needs.

[ICIP40]

02:46 AM on 02/08/2011

Dude lay off the Redbull, I don't know how old you are,but I am I'm probably a little older than you, the goverment lead by different leaders has told us over the last 50 yrs that we are going into a ice-age, we are burning a hole in the atmoshere,with hairspray, all along somebody made huge amounts of money off the fear. Now we are being told the gas we exhale, or the gas from everthing that rots, burps,breathes,burns, is detroying the planet, I thinks all that stuff makes co yes but then makes oxygen, when plants convert it back. I think we are a carbon nutrial.there is a few misspelled words so you can mock me and make the point that I don't know how to spell,thus throw,out the whole point because of it.

[gallon]

03:46 AM on 02/08/2011

Dude, when you make accusations like this, you should be able to support them with references. Since you don't provide references, one can only conclude that you are full of hot air.

[Publicola]

10:59 AM on 02/08/2011

ICIP40: "the goverment lead by different leaders has told us over the last 50 yrs that we are going into a ice-age"

Science denier talking points never d!e, not matter how many times a stake has been driven through their hearts.

"In the 70s, They said there'd be an Ice Age"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3S0fnOr0M

[tedmore123]

05:22 PM on 02/07/2011

"Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted."

- Carl Sagan

[DocSkull]

06:04 PM on 02/07/2011

Carl Sagan on Global Warming:

The world scientific community has begun to sound the alarm about the grave dangers posed by depleting the protective ozone shield and by greenhouse warming, and again we're taking some mitigating steps, but again those steps are too small and too slow.

If we keep on with business as usual, the Earth will be warmed more every year; drought and floods will be endemic; many more cities, provinces, and whole nations will be submerged beneath the waves—unless heroic worldwide engineering countermeasures are taken. In the longer run, still more dire consequences may follow, including the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the inundation of almost all the coastal cities on the planet.

[tedmore123]

05:21 PM on 02/07/2011

Come on, everyone knows God creates the weather, just like he creates the tides.


...Bill O'reilly

[jpylot]

03:07 PM on 02/07/2011

The danger in continuing to ridicule questionable scientific positions and supporting one specific outcome is that the "acceptable" (in this case climate warming is agreed to by everyone and is caused by CO2 increases directly attributable to modern day industrial growth) quickly becomes a new paradiem. Paradiems drive out others who may have facually supported opposing views which can result in public policy that could drive exactly the opposite outcomes from the original desired goals.


Check out on Google the Phlogiston theroy which kept the scientific understanding of simple combustion set back for over 100 years. Proponents of the failing theory/paradiem were so set in their "false facts" that they literally invented "negative" phlogiston to explain obvious facts in direct opposition to the theory......they knew that "everyone" agreed with their position even when it was filled with questionable facts. The setback in advancing important scientific knowledge will never actually be known but was clearly delayed for over 100 years until molecular oxygen was discovered and the theory died an embarrassing death.

Today an array of credible scientists from universities like MIT, Standford, CalTec, Univ of Chicago etc) provide a large scientific CAUTION before we automaticall agree with the current paradiem that humans are the primary cause of climate warming.

It may be best to view invest in ongoing valid research prior to reaching conclusions to drive national and world-wide economic policies.

Just my thought on a complex issue.

jpylot

[tedmore123]

05:20 PM on 02/07/2011

You took the words right out of my mouth.

[angryangel]

07:10 PM on 02/07/2011

Those who truly embrace the scientific world view welcome the questioning of a prevailing scientific view.

But those who truly embrace the scientific world view also hold to the principle that such questioning must be done with ideas that are good enough to get past the referees of a reputable, peer-reviewed journal to become published as a refereed research paper in such a journal. (For those of you who don't know, this is what it means for ideas to be peer-reviewed.)

Such peer-reviewed scientific scholarship is the best that humanity has with respect to finding out what really is the case about the physical world and with respect to freeing itself from the tyranny of crankery, propaganda, and superstition.

To reject the notion that we should let the peer-review process work and inform us over time what is really the case about our physical world or even worse, reject peer-reviewed science itself, is to "put our brains on the shelf" and hand the world over to those whose ideas are not good enough to get past the referees at such journals, the cranks, the propagandists, and the superstitious.

Very unfortunately, these rejections are what political conservatism does regarding peer-reviewed climate science (as it always has regarding peer-reviewed evolutionary science, which should not be surprising since by a vast majority it's the same bunch), these rejections clearly being politically (and for some, religiously) motivated.

[millebocca]

01:44 PM on 02/07/2011

they can have my down-home relatives who think they are being clever when they make "where's the heat?" wisecracks about all this snow. take them -- pleez!

[Capn Slamo]

11:05 AM on 02/07/2011

my toaster is freezing my kicthen

[jimboy71]

11:55 AM on 02/07/2011

Then you need to get off the meds.

[Sirlarek]

12:53 PM on 02/07/2011

My refrigerator heats my kitchen....I need a new fridge.

[apogee2perogee]

04:55 PM on 02/07/2011

Actually, your refrigerator DOES heat your kitchen....while it cools its interior. The coils on the back expel the heat that is removed from the interior.

[Capn Slamo]

10:00 AM on 02/07/2011

Obamacare won't raise the deficit

[jimboy71]

11:55 AM on 02/07/2011

Inanity doesn't make you interesting.

[Sirlarek]

12:49 PM on 02/07/2011

You're right...it really needs to be a single payer system.

[bubbatech]

08:48 AM on 02/07/2011

Since Fox "News" is a conservative political organization, it will of course continue the attack on science, which is a central goal of the radical right because their policies are not consistent with the facts. Since all they care about is pushing the radical agenda, they have to attack the source of the facts: scientists, academics, government agencies - whatever the source of contrary information might be.

[marshhen]

08:55 AM on 02/07/2011

lol. Yet new corp is one of the biggest funders to waxman and boxer, environmental zealots.

[DocSkull]

09:38 AM on 02/07/2011

"Yet new corp is one of the biggest funders to waxman and boxer..."

The activist judges in the Supreme Court are trying to change it, but corporations like News Corps can't fund politicians. They do it indirectly by giving them free airtime and deriding the politicians opponents.

[ClimateHawk]

08:20 PM on 02/06/2011

New Rule: if it's not renewable and sustainable, it's a scam.

[jimboy71]

09:01 PM on 02/06/2011

The basic premise of modern state capitalism is precisely this scam.

[Sirlarek]

12:47 PM on 02/07/2011

I see you have decided that Newton's laws don't apply to you. Enjoy driving without roadsigns.

[marshhen]

08:58 AM on 02/07/2011

In advance of the G-20 meeting in Seoul, the IEA released its annual World Energy Outlook, a 738-page analysis of the global energy market that is highly critical of governments that subsidize fossil fuels.

"The U.S. doesn't even give enough subsidies to oil, gas or coal to register on a worldwide ranking of the biggest subsidizers," says Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge. "Yet the Obama Administration and Senate Majority Leader Reid continue their campaign to eliminate not only the few tax breaks that fossil fuel providers currently receive, but to withhold from them the ordinary tax treatment of business expenditures that many corporate taxpayers benefit from."

The report is Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact, No. 252, "IEA Study Ranks Nations' Subsidies to Fossil Fuel Consumption," at http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/26851.html.

[Howmanyreally]

10:11 AM on 02/07/2011

They make more money than G@d. Why do they need tax breaks?

[DocSkull]

10:13 AM on 02/07/2011

The Tax Foundation was started by executives of the auto and oil industries and receives substantial funding from the Koch brothers. The opinion of the Tax Foundations is that of the people who receive the subsidies.

But, lets pretend they are correct and they aren't getting much subsidies. They won't be missing them since the industry continues to have record profits.

[fireofenergy]

03:35 PM on 02/06/2011

I can't believe there are still people who don't know that CO2 is an infrared absorber, that humanity has accelerated its count about 40% higher than it was just 200 years ago, and that there ARE better solutions than just drill, baby drill (what's left).

[Junksciencecutecritters]

11:02 PM on 02/05/2011

Gene might want to talk to some the scientists in this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orfX_nbYTSs&feature=related

[Publicola]

12:48 AM on 02/07/2011

Another citation to the "The Great Global Warming Swindle" - a swindle has been greatly discredite­d.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/mar/13/science.media
http://www.desmogblog.com/media-coverage-slams-the-great-global-warming-swindle

One of the scientists featured in it is Carl Wunsch, who slammed it for gross misreprese­ntation:

----------­----------­----------
I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-indu­ced component.­..

The science of climate change remains incomplete­. Some elements are so firmly based on well-under­stood principles­, or for which the observatio­nal record is so clear, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true (adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to rise,...). ....

Channel 4 now says they were making a film in a series of "polemics"­... I knew I had no control over the actual content, but it never occurred to me that I was dealing with people who already had a reputation for distortion and exaggerati­on...

As a society, we need to take out insurance against catastroph­e in the same way we take out
homeowner'­s protection against fire.
----------­----------­----------
http://oce­an.mit.edu­/~cwunsch/p­apersonlin­e/channel4­response

[Sirlarek]

01:10 PM on 02/07/2011

A couple of things....I agree with you about much of what you are saying. Climate change is the nature of it...things change, climate is, necessarily, changing too. The question is about Our part in it. Without doubt human activity affects climate...it is and always will be a part of the butterfly effect and apart of the interconnected web of existence. The Question is what best to do to decelerate the velocity of change so that we may best survive within the system as it changes and shifts.

Where I have a problem with your position is with the concept of Insurance. This isn't a car accident...everyone is in the car. Who is going to cut the check when we are all dead...or, realistically, who is going to pay the premiums that will rise rapidly prior to any final catastrophe.

The only insurance is to stop producing waste.

[sviolette]

11:01 PM on 02/05/2011

Deny climate change if you want but for the first time in 56 of years living in Maine this is the first time I've seen a thunder storm in February.

[Junksciencecutecritters]

11:12 PM on 02/05/2011

The skies are becoming electrically charged because of all those airplanes spraying metal.

http://stopsprayingmaine.com/chemtrails.html

[PlinytheYounger]

12:29 AM on 02/06/2011

Nothing like a good conspiracy theory to spice up a message board.

[gallon]

12:50 AM on 02/06/2011

False flag HP.

[jimboy71]

10:30 AM on 02/06/2011

This last storm was highly charged. It produced so-called 'cold thunder'. It isn't itself a sign of AGCC, but the overall increase in the frequency, energy and severity of storms globally is. I have witnessed cold thunder during the Quebec ice storms.

[George Hanshaw]

04:34 PM on 02/06/2011

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february042011/global-superstorms-ta.php

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/29dec_magneticfield.html

[ICIP40]

10:17 PM on 02/05/2011

Global warming is a sham, I can't believe how many educated folks have fallen for it. polititions have been pulling our legs for years in order to line their own pockets, and those who will keep them in power. The biggest trick are the stupid light bulbs that don't last half as long as they are suppose to, have murcury in them. I can't wait to see all the green jobs we are going to get from the clean up industry after they have been out a while. After enough pollution is spread around from these things, your going to have test kits for the murcury, law suits, massive clean up projects. All you smart folks with your math and science degrees and all are being played, always follow the money.

[DG3]

10:49 PM on 02/05/2011

When you learn to actually SPELL mercury, get back to us about that educated thing you were talking about.

[ICIP40]

11:06 PM on 02/05/2011

Wow you must be really smart, edumicated, and can spell,sounds like you got your moneys worth! can you think for yourself?

[BigRex]

12:39 PM on 02/07/2011

Least ICIP40 managed to spell pollution correctly, ofcourse I don't know what a politition­s is...

[sviolette]

12:04 AM on 02/06/2011

So the 90% of the scientists agree with climate change are the uneducated ones. I'm glad you let me in on the scam.

[ICIP40]

12:31 AM on 02/06/2011

Dude first of all you didn't get my point, we are being played, they have created a industry out of thin air, like recycling pop cans, ask us to do it and most will. I recycle everything for god and good, and someday people will mine our landfills when they no longer make methane gas to make power,for electric etc. I love education, although I have no formal education, most people can not think for them self. sorry if I hurt anybodies feeling.

[canuckhoser]

01:27 AM on 02/06/2011

It's actually upwards towards 98% and the remaining skeptics have conceded that the *global* trend is warming...facts matter