UPDATE: BBC (and now the Independent) commit the same FAIL. See below.

More “Row to the Pole” nonsense writ large:

Ummmm…no, Mr. Hough, the Telegraph’s headline and story are simply wrong. You are a victim of spin and/or a failed geography lesson.

First congratulations, to the RttP team for reaching their destination, which is not a pole of any kind, much less the actual “North Pole”. I didn’t think they would make it.

As I explained before the trip even started, there’s no ‘pole’ achievement here, not even close. They are 738 KM short of the actual magnetic pole. The 1996 magnetic pole doesn’t exist there anymore and thus can’t be a pole of any kind.

The Telegraph article says:

The successful trip to the Pole, described as the “greatest ocean rows of all time”, was only possible because of more seasonal ice-melt in the Arctic that has opened the waters up.

No mention of the fact that they aren’t even close. The actual North pole is 790 miles away:

The FAIL is strong with this one. h/t to reader “Angry Exile”

And the BBC is in on the act of shoddy journalism too:

Kitefreak says:

August 26, 2011 at 12:20 am

BBC reporting that the Pultney rowing expedition has reached “the north pole”. Reported on Radio Scotland at 8am (main news bulletin) and on the news website

Absolutely no mention on the radio or the website that it’s the magnetic north pole from ‘96, no, they just say the folks have rowed TO THE NORTH POLE.

Pure propaganda.

UPDATE: The BBC commits the same FAIL here:

What a bunch of liars.

UPDATE2: The load of porkies continues…now the Independent repeats the lie.

Though climate change hasn’t received quite the same attention it had back in 2006 and 2007, it’s not too surprising that the vast majority of Americans still know at least something about it. But what they know exactly is changing, and national politics certainly seems to be playing a part.

According to a Gallup poll released Friday, 96 percent of Americans in 2010 said they know a great deal or something about climate change. And while that’s down 1 percentage point from 2007 to 2008, it’s not a significant change, especially considering how media attention to the issue has dropped off quite significantly since around 2007, when coverage was at its peak. [Read: Do Americans care about climate change anymore?]

However, what Americans who know about climate change think about it has changed quite a bit - namely, they see it as less of a problem - and that change has happened much more rapidly than in the four other top greenhouse gas emitting countries, China, Russia, Japan, and India. In 2010, according to the poll, only 55 percent of Americans believed climate change was a threat to them and their families. That’s down 9 percentage points from 64 percent in 2007 and 2008. Also, the percentage of people who believe climate change results all or in part from human causes is down a full 11 percentage points. While 61 percent of Americans in 2007 and 2008 believed that humans were at least partially responsible for climate change, only half believed so in 2010.

In Japan, where a higher percentage of people say they know about climate change, the same decline in threat perception and belief in human causes happened too, though less significantly. In Russia, people’s perception of threat went up from 2007 and 2008, but there was no change in the belief in human causes. Then, by contrast, in India, more people in 2010 (an increase of 16 percentage points, from 58 percent to 74 percent) believe that climate change is caused by humans. That same increase happened in China, though it was not as significant. [Read more from the Energy Intelligence blog.]

What’s interesting about these results is that climate change has been a predominantly international issue, with the United Nations and its International Panel on Climate Change taking the lead on many initiatives and scientific reports. But, it’s clear that rather than listen to the multilateral body - which continues to publicize both the threat and human causes of climate change - people, especially in the United States, are much more tuned in to the politics and the news of their own country.

In America, at least, the strong push from many climate change skeptics, which are now represented by many Republicans in Congress, appear to be making a difference in public views, particularly on the issue of whether humans are the cause. The more conservatives make noise denying the problem of climate change, perhaps, the more people, especially their base, catch on to that view. The decrease in media coverage may also play a role in the public’s perception of threat, as climate change has been put on the backburner in favor of energy security and green jobs. [Read about whether global warming will matter in the 2012 elections.]

As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast this weekend, expect a round of commentary from groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council calling attention to the effects of climate change. But, with the trend shifting away from believing in such warnings, it’s unlikely that many Americans will even take notice.

A commenter was quick to point out the Exxon and Koch funding of the skeptics. I responded: “So what. Exxon gave $100 million to Stanford to support their global warming propaganda programs. BP gave $500 million to U Cal Berkeley.

Thank God for Koch and anyone else for any help in getting the truth exposed and the green energy policies that have paralyzed the EU shot down in the US. Please send some our way.”

Government agencies and international institutions that have worked tenaciously to vilify carbon dioxide (CO2) as a dangerous pollutant have done a great public disservice, Dr. Craig Idso, a scientist and author told audience members at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual meeting earlier this month. Contrary to what has been widely reported, CO2 is a key component to life on earth that could be beneficial to the environmental and humanity in particular, Idso explained during his talk in New Orleans.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding issued back in December 2009 claims that the “elevated concentration” of GHG (Greenhouse) emissions in the atmosphere “endangers public health and welfare.” The EPA also claims it has the authority to issue new regulations under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

But Idso, who is the chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide, argues that conventional thinking is exactly wrong. He spells out in 55 ways, listed in alphabetical order, how CO2 actually enhances environmental conditions in a new book entitled: “The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment.” Idso co-authored the book with his father Dr. Sherwood Idso.

Enlarged

“Plants in a CO2 enriched atmosphere generally prefer warmer temperatures than those exposed to air with lower CO2,” Idso said as he described a series of experiments. “The doubling of the air’s CO2 concentration typically boosts the optimum temperature for plant photosynthesis by several degrees centigrade and this also raises the temperature at which plants experience heat related death.”

As a result of higher atmospheric CO2, earth’s plants are likely to sustain themselves within large portions of their natural habitats, which will also work to the advantage of animal life that depends on those plants, Idso observed.

“The end result is a future where there will likely be a great CO2 induced proliferation of regional biodiversity as opposed to extinctions of species globally,” he said. “Lots of peer reviewed research supports this outcome.”

Roger Helmer, a member of the European Parliament, and a noted climate skeptic, also took part in the panel discussion. Organizations like the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), omit key pieces of information from their reports, he said.

“Everyone knows CO2 is a greenhouse gas, what very few people seem to know is that water vapor is a much more significant greenhouse gas and so as far as I know we will not be able to control water vapor in the atmosphere as long as the wind blows over the ocean,” he noted.

Although the IPCC warns that heightened counts of CO2 will also accelerate the amount of water vapor, this reasoning overlooks the possibility of “negative feedbacks,” Helmer pointed out.

“It could also be that water vapor makes more clouds and this would increase the earth’s albedo and this means more sunlight and more energy would be reflected back into space,” he explained.

A renewed appreciation for CO2 as a naturally occurring, life sustaining element can help to redirect public policy away from costly, counterproductive initiatives favored by green groups, Robert Ferguson, president of the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), suggested. Ferguson chaired the panel discussion.

Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government.

See also Erl Happ’s What is the Optimum Temperature?

What he found was that temperatures in different regions and seasons moved in different directions at the same time. While one region or season was cooling another was warming. So this regional/seasonal disparity very strongly made an explanation in terms of CO2 useless. AGW theory could explain uniform warming only and uniform warming is NOT happening.

World News’ Diane Sawyer on Monday hyped a disaster at a rock concert in Indianapolis as an example of “weather gone wild” and linked it to global warming. Hyperbolically connecting the tragedy to other weather events, she proclaimed, “Something strange going on around the globe.”

The anchor teased the segment by warning, “And tonight, the weather gone wild. Winds that come out of nowhere. Floods swelling streets. Heat breaking records in all 50 states. Snow where it hasn’t fallen in decades.” The program also hid the identity of a global warming activist.

Video link.

Reporter Jim Avila covered the deaths of five people in Indianapolis due to freak wind causing a stage to collapse. He suggested they might be connected to climate change: “But, is it related to the heat around the globe?”

The journalist featured a clip of Heidi Cullen, who ABC simply labeled as a “climatologist.” She announced, “When you crank up the heat, when you globally warm the planet, you’re going to see more extreme events.”

Yet, Cullen is also the communications director for Climate Central, a group dedicated to “helping mainstream Americans understand how climate change connects to them, and arming our audiences with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their future.”

Avila made no mention of her advocacy on this topic. Yet, on May 23, 2011, in another World News piece by Avila, the network did identify Cullen’s connection. (She also touted climate change as host of a now-defunct show on the Weather Channel.)

In that World News segment, Sawyer saw tornadoes as examples of climate change. She worried, “this is the evidence of a kind of preview of life under global warming?”

On July 23, 2010, ABC reporter Jon Karl ambushed Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, a global warming skeptic, and attempted to suggest that heat in the summer was evidence of climate change.

A transcript of the August 15 segment, which aired at 6:31pm EDT

DIANE SAWYER: And tonight, the weather gone wild. Winds that come out of nowhere. Floods swelling streets. Heat breaking records in all 50 states. Snow where it hasn’t fallen in decades. Something strange going on around the globe.

6:31

SAWYER: As we begin this week, the weather across America has forecasters ripping up the record books. Stunning extremes tonight from coast to coast. And we are going to tell you what we have learned today about the freakish wind that hit the Indiana state fair. The wind that did not even show up on radar. More on that in a moment. But is it related to the heat around the globe? The heat so powerful, the Arctic sea ice is melting away, leaving the smallest amount of July ice at the pole since they started keeping track more than 30 years ago. To begin it all tonight, here’s ABC’s Jim Avila.

JIM AVILA: From the mid-Atlantic to New England, buckets of rain, a record ten inches fell on New York’s Long Island yesterday.

MAN: It’s been wicked. We’ve been trying to get around all day. You can’t get nowhere.

AVILA: If this was January, that storm would have dumped nine feet of snow. Instead, the north east flooding.

SECOND MAN: We’ve had rain. We’ve had flooding, but never anything that looks like this, no.

AVILA: Never had anything like this heat either. Triple digits across Texas again today. Halfway through August, 5,000 heat records have been broken across the country. Every state in the U.S. set a heat record, all 50. Waco hit 100 for the 63rd time this year, tying an all-time record. It was nature from another angle in Indianapolis over the weekend, straight-line winds, unseen on radar, out of nowhere, hit 70 miles per hour, knocked down the concert stage, killing five.

THIRD MAN: That is a monster tornado.

AVILA: A summer of extremes. Tornadoes in Massachusetts. Dust storms in Phoenix. And this weekend, Wellington, New Zealand, of all places, got its first snowfall in 35 years. What is going on?

HEIDI CULLEN (George Soros funded Climatologist): When you crank up the heat, when you globally warm the planet, you’re going to see more extreme events.

AVILA: How is this for extreme? The arctic sea ice is at its smallest ever. While globally, July was the seventh warmest ever. Making the drought in Texas easier to explain. 75 percent of America’s second largest state, bone dry. Kemp, Texas’ water tanks ran dry for days and farmers all across the southern tier are suffering. Crops from corn to soybeans are dying on the vine. And soon prices on vegetables and beef are expected to climb.

GERALD NELSON (International Food Policy Research Institute): Every farmer in the world will be affected by climate change one way or the other.

SAWYER: So, Jim, you say soon the prices will begin to rise. How soon?

AVILA: Well, hit hardest is corn and soybean. That’s all the way from breakfast cereal to steaks. And that could start happening as soon as fall, certainly six months by now.

Of course a strong thunderstorm wind gust never happened before. Notice they had everything covered from snow to heat to tornadoes. Sawyer and Avila are just as guilty as Cullen in perpertrating this hoax.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Contact: Paul Chesser, Executive Director, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org

This week four groups, whose boards represent a distinctly liberal worldview and who oppose scrutiny of taxpayer-funded science by academics, asked the University of Virginia to disregard its agreement before the court (link) with American Tradition Institute to provide the records of former climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, which belong to the public. The groups, led by the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists, sent a letter to University president Teresa Sullivan on Tuesday complaining the agreement gives ATI’s in-house lawyers “needless access” to documents that ATI’s Environmental Law Center requested, and the agreement “threatens the principles of academic freedom protecting scholarly research.”

Response to Union of Concerned Scientists, et al, from ATI Environmental Law Center director Dr. David Schnare:

“The groups seek to have the court create a non-existent ‘academic freedom’ exemption, and also claim there is a so-called ‘balance’ between academic freedom and public accountability, which is similarly imaginary. The court’s, and UVA’s, only fealty is to follow the law, which our agreement reflects.

“The groups appeal to lesser authorities such as a state advisory board and - amazingly -a Washington Post editorial, as opposed to what the FOIA law clearly says, as justification to toss aside our agreement with the university. Their objection to scrutiny is new-found and selective as well, since they seemed to have no problem when Greenpeace sought the records and emails of academics who do not accept the alarmist perspective on global warming.

“The groups also insult our professionalism with the insinuation that we would risk disbarment by violating a gag order that prevents us from disclosing possibly exempt records we review pursuant to the agreement. Such an accusation only reflects poorly on the integrity of UCS and their letter’ co-signers.”

Response to Union of Concerned Scientists, et al, from ATI executive director Paul Chesser:

“Once again these self-interested groups - who hope to protect their billions of dollars in government funding of dubious, unsupportable research - accuse ATI of ‘harassment and intimidation’ of scientists. It shows how blind they are to the fact that ATI has acted in the interest of sound, verifiable science and for the protection of the hard-earned money that taxpayers are forced to relinquish for such research.

“A Rasmussen Reports survey out earlier this week shows that that 69 percent of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists who study climate change have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40 percent who say this is ‘very likely.’ Only 22 percent believe it’s not likely that some scientists have falsified global warming data to fit their theories.

“Considering this is how the public sees them, UCS and their cohorts in academia need to look in the mirror and try to figure out where it all went wrong. Meanwhile, ATI will continue its pursuit to hold them accountable.”

For an interview with Dr. David Schnare or Paul Chesser, email paul.chesser@atinstitute.org or call (202)670-2680.