Just Google "Global Warming" and Get a Wealth of Misinformation

I heard this show on the radio yesterday morning, Public Radio’s To the Point. Oren Olney, the host of the show, lets people talk instead of yelling at each other. How cool is that? On the show Olney and his guests said that despite the nearly unanimous consensus as to the science of climate change, the American public is increasingly skeptical about global warming. People just don’t believe in climate change the way they used to, despite the increasing evidence.

            Wow. I knew that a large portion of our population remained skeptical. But that portion of our population is increasing? What is happening? Is the warmer air making us stupider? Is there some ratio between sea level and intelligence? As the oceans rise, do our IQs go down?

            As a possible reason for this increasing doubt Olney brought up the subject of “climategate,” that supposedly revealed nefarious ways of some climate scientists. But differing investigations into the whole affair, eight in all, found no evidence of fraud or misconduct in this “scandal.” And this all happened back in 2009, long ago enough for folks to reassess the continuing science that comes in on our greenhouse gas problems.

            A couple of the guests on the show, Michael Brune of the Sierra Club and Michael Mann, the Pennsylvania State Professor of Meteorology who developed the “hockey stick” graph to display the sharp rise in recent global temperatures, talked about the global warming denial and delay industry. Right after they mentioned this, I did a Google search on the news of global warming in the past 24 hours. Here is some of what I got:

            Among the first ten search returns were three articles that depicted a skeptical view of global warming. Over at Forbes, Larry Bell, who has written skeptical pieces on climate change for the magazine for some time, has Miss Global Warming Yet? If Not, Just Wait And You Might that actually warns of a global freeze.

            Sawing an old horse from the GOP and big business that the media are biased on the issues, a site called NewsBusters claims that, on the issue of global warming, the media are also biased in favor of covering climate change. Why this bias would exist, no one knows. Once again, these folks use the canard that the press must always present an opposing view, no matter how crazy that view is, in order to exemplify “balance.”

            And there was this one from the most peevish person on the planet. John Stossel who says something about Bill Nye the Science Guy. I couldn’t open the video, but well, I’m pretty certain that John Stossel is not saying anything particularly complimentary about Bill Nye the Science Guy.

            With such nonsense being brought up on a global warming Google search, the way a lot of people get their information, no wonder so many people are in the dark on global warming.