Lorne Gunter: Incompetent or Lying? Either Way, Worth Firing
An earlier post of the errors/misrepresentations in a recent Lorne Gunter column in the National Post has attracted a host of comments and a few that further debunk Gunter's passionately inaccurate talking points.
DeSmog reader Dave Clark, for example, offers this:
Yet another whopper from Gunter:
"Snow coverage in North America this winter was greater than at any time in recorded history."
In fact, (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) the 2008 January coverage at 17.0 million square kilometers was identical to the average for that month from 1973-2008. Years having equal or greater January snow coverage include every year from 1974-1985, except the marginally lower years of 1976 and 1980.
An earlier post of the errors/misrepresentations in a recent Lorne Gunter column in the National Post has attracted a host of comments and a few that further debunk Gunter's passionately inaccurate talking points.
DeSmog reader Dave Clark, for example, offers this:
Yet another whopper from Gunter:
"Snow coverage in North America this winter was greater than at any time in recorded history."
In fact, (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) the 2008 January coverage at 17.0 million square kilometers was identical to the average for that month from 1973-2008. Years having equal or greater January snow coverage include every year from 1974-1985, except the marginally lower years of 1976 and 1980.
So, Gunter says that Al Gore is "calling on his country to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years."
That's not true. Gore challenged the U.S. "to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years."
Gunter says that "worldwide, there are nearly half as many glaciers advancing as retreating."
That's not true. Gunter's own reference source says, "Climate change is causing roughly 90% of the world's mountain glaciers to shrink."
Gunter says, "Greenland isn't melting."
That's not true. This NASA report - the most recent available - shows "that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average."
Gunter says, "Snow coverage in North America this winter was greater than at any time in recorded history."
Per the comment and impeccable scientific source above: THAT'S NOT TRUE.
More than 50 per cent of Canadians believe that there is still a legitimate scientific debate about whether human activities are causing climate change. That's not true and hasn't been for a long time, but you can hardly blame Canadians for being confused; when journalists (and journals) of record have this much contempt for science, truth and their unsuspecting readers, it's completely to be expected.
Somebody should sack this character and should start insisting that his paper (and all the papers in the CanWest Global conglomerate) carry stories that are, well, true from now on.
For more on the who's who of the climate denial industry, check out our comprehensive climate deniers research database.
Thanks for directing me to
Thanks for directing me to Gunter's column. It's a good read.
Richard, Gunter didn't claim snowfall for January was a record - he said "this winter" which is correct - you know, November to April. "In recorded history" was a stretch and should have read, "since records have been kept" i.e. since 1973. A blooper, but hardly a hanging offense.
I'll take your word that what Gore really said was "to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years" since that is sufficiently goofy to warrant commital to an institution.
Your other points - glaciers advancing and retreating etc. are subjects of debate and dispute. Neither you nor Gunter is an expert, and either can accept whichever "authorities" you wish without being branded a bad journalist.
UMMM JTK
Perhaps you should review the posts again.
The insults were just about all from Ian and other AGW advocates.
Getting Insulted by VJ is now a status simble.
Look again.
Crashing "simbles"
I'll admit to being somewhat pedantic about spelling, but I think the attention to detail that someone brings when presenting individual words can be used as another legitimate way of measuring that person's credibility - or the complete lack thereof.
Cheers! JTK
Cheers!
JTK
You have worked diligently
You have worked diligently to earn the active, almost convulsive, dislike of nearly everyone. Well done! And farewell.
JTK
Trying to think of an
Trying to think of an instance where ZOG, Gary, or Rob wrote something that led to discussion. I don't think there has been such a watershed moment. Instead, they post vitriol that leads to interminable flame wars.
There is no point in engaging these guys. Their purpose is to raise your blood pressure and responding just makes them happy because they can then insult you again. Why bother?
JTK
Great words from Peter
Great words from Peter Huber.
"So does the climate computer have a real audience, or is it really just another bag lady muttering away to herself in a lonely corner of the intellectual park? That the computer is heard in Hollywood, Stockholm, Brussels and even some parts of Washington is quite beside the point--they have far less global power and influence than they vainly imagine. Vinod Dar is right: "Contingency planning should entail strategic responses to a warming globe, a cooling globe and a globe whose climate reverberates with laughter at human hubris."
Gunter
Gunter
Ah, Richard. Such venom.
Ah, Richard. Such venom. Could it be that you're a tad envious of Gunter, a successful journalist, whereas you've been reduced to an attack dog for a cheezy PR firm financed by an international scam artist? Naw, couldn't be that.
And your point is ....?
Zog, are you saying that Gunter is reporting information accurately?
Have you references to demonstrate that what he is saying is actually true?
You may well imagine me weeping in jealously at Gunter's most wonderful "success," as a "journalist" (boo, boo hoo); but my point - rendered venomously or otherwise - is that the guy is either incompetent or a liar. I have provided examples and references to support that position.
Have you ANYTHING to say that is relevant to that point? Anything at all?
It's all a fad
Just like the pet rock and parachute pants, going green will be gone before you know it; once another "new and exciting" way for corporations to squeeze your wallets dry to fill their own!
The complete opposite of
The complete opposite of what that guy (robby) said.
Awesome post, Jon. Why not
Awesome post, Jon. Why not come up with something really brilliant and original, along the lines of "Robby's mama wears army boots"?
You may be overoptimistic, Robby. AGW is almost a dead issue in the scientific community where only "saving face" by the likes of Hansen and Mann keep it alive but, venal politicians and the media, a couple of years behind the parade as usual, will keep it alive for years - because it has developed into a glorius public milch cow.
Hoggan's harlots on DeSmog will continue to fulminate for as many years as dirty money continues to flow from Lefebvre and the Suzuki Foundation.
Same old boring diatribe Zog
Same old boring diatribe Zog - take a look in the mirror.
?????????????????????????? An
??????????????????????????
And your point is?
Why are most of the warmist posters at this site (Kevin's sock puppets excepted) so abysmally dense and inarticulate? I hope that it isn't genetic or that, if it is, they don't breed.
What kind of name is Zog
What kind of name is Zog anyways - how stupid (abysmally dense and inarticulate) is that?
comes along
comes along
"Here's some good news for
"Here's some good news for anyone sick of being force-fed a relentless diet of pernicious environmentalist hogwash: Last week, The New York Times noted that the advertising industry is pulling back from green-themed marketing, having "grasped the public's growing skepticism over ads with environmental messages."
Actually
I admire Lorie Goldstein to having the backbone to speak out against the AGW scam in a very hostile politically correct world where deviation from doctrine can be career limiting.
Roy Spencer even more, since he has more to lose.
AGW is absolutely the best tool the lefties have ever had and they will guard it with what ever it takes to the bitter end.
And zog accuses
'warmers' of 'dropping their political drawers in public?'
News Flash: for deniers it is all about and only about politics.
None of it is about the science, that's for sure.
Good catch Exusian
Since there is no good science t support the AGW hypotheses, it really does come down to politics.
The IPCC, a Political body formed by the people that gave is the oil for food scam, began their agenda with the stated goal of achieving social change.
If that is not politics, nothing is.
Time for another remedial
Time for another remedial reading class, Exusian. I didn't "accuse" warmists or anybody else of anything. I merely noted that AARONB had written a lengthy left-wing political diatribe with no relation whatever to climate.
However, since we're on the subject, I find it odd that most warmists posting here (Steve is one happy exception) are wild-eyed leftists in the '60s mold. The same mindset that saved the snail darters and almost killed the U.S. nuclear industry seems to be at work here. i.e. it's not so much climate change (about which most of you have only a vague understanding) as anti-humanistic disdain for modern high-tech society that drives you.
ZOG is off his medication again
ZOG, you are one deplorable and disgusting person with your personal insults to people who show everyday day by what they do and say that they are far superior to you.
Why not try and be civil once in your life, you can be a big boy by letting us know who you are, maybe you do something useful that we can see. Otherwise you are just an ignorant ant disgusting troll.
Ian Forrester
Yeh, sure, identify myself,
Yeh, sure, identify myself, when I live in the same city as a Neanderthal gun nut whose idea of winning the minds of people who think that he is a mindless $hit disturber is "attack, attack, attack."
BTW, I didn't see any relevance of your spewing to the post to which you were apparently referring.
All your posts require the same response
You are one sad excuse for a human being. You hide behind a wall of anonymity and hurl defamatory insults to anyone who challenges your level of educational advancement and knowledge. You should be banned from this site till you stop your libelous and defamatory insults.
Are you afraid your mother or neighbours or co-workers find our what a worthless piece of pond scum you are?
You are selfish and uncaring for the rest of humanity with your continual unsupported venomous attacks on AGW and science in general.
Do us all a favour and get lost.
Ian Forrester
How does one go about
How does one go about "defaming" anyone with your colossal level of arrogance and ignorance?
You and your foul vocabulary should have been banned months ago but haven't been because you are a brainwashed believer and therefore welcome on DeSmog, without reservation.
Now shuffle back into your cave and dream dreams of your own significance.
You are an ignorant and disgusting person
You are an ignorant and disgusting person, I don't know why DeSmogBlog allows you to post your disgusting filth.
You should be banned along with the other trolls who provide nothing of substance only lies, insults and defaming remarks to the honest posters who try and discuss AGW in a rational manner.
I'm sure the quality of the discussions would greatly improve if the trolls were banned.
Ian Forrester
Ian!!!
Getting a little frustrated because Glo-BULL Warming isn't going the way you want any more?
You seem ... Irritable.
Try some Fiber.
It may also help push through some of that BS as well.
Over the top ...
Your mama? Your bigger mama?
This string has really deteriorated, you guys. I think it's adequately on the record that we all have a low opinion of one another, but gosh it's nice when an actual argument breaks out.
Can we park the casual invective and get back to making points - perhaps adding information or criticizing actual content?
Hey, Knuckledragger, how's
Hey, Knuckledragger, how's the biotech business? Maybe you should lick your wounds and concentrate on some sort of honest work. That might even sweeten you nasty disposition.
Are you Exusian's Daddy or something? I think that, if he is so inclined, he is probably capable of responding to my post.
he doth protest too much
We see a pattern. Are ZOG's real initials L.G.?
Roy Spencer''s paper
Spencer's paper will of course be attacked by the cult and the multibillion dollar AGW industry because it marks the beginning of the end and they know it.
The hype will get more and more shrill and ridiculous as they try in vain to salvage reputations and investments.
Of course it won't work and they will all mysteriously vanish out of embarrassment.
Gee, how many
"beginnings of the end" and "final nails in the coffin" of AGW have there been now, Gary?
You're always good for a laugh, at least.
all of the above actually
I would say “get used to it”
Before 2007, few people had heard of or cared about AGW.
In 2007, Al Gore and the IPCC saw the writing on the wall and pulled out all the stops in an attempt to get their changes in the works before the truth got out.
They over played it to the point that people began to take an interest and finally started to read and learn about what was behind it.
In 2008 the real story is emerging.
2008 is marked as the year that AGW died.
History will record it as the end of a myth based era when the massed actually began to look at science and stopped listening to environmentalists.
In the nest decade, environmentalists will be reduced to carnie status.
Note the level of hyperbole
Note the level of hyperbole in these comments. "Shrill and ridiculous" describes them pretty well. Gary must have studied under Lorrie Goldstein.
National Post employs hacks?!
The National Post has always employed hacks. It's a lot like the Bush administration: ideology matters--competence not so much. There are no real standards on the opinion side of some newspapers. The Post is the most glaring example I've seen.
Read the Globe sometime Rod,
Read the Globe sometime Rod, they publish more then their share of left wing idiots; Salutin and Stanford being two that come to mind.
Civitas
Lorne is part of a groupthink structure called Civitas.
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/11/29/HarperBush/
A network is already in place to assist Harper in foisting his radical agenda on the Canadian people.
In 2003, he delivered an important address to a group called Civitas. This secretive organization, which has no web site and leaves little paper or electronic trail, is a network of Canadian neoconservative and libertarian academics, politicians, journalists and think tank propagandists.
Harper's adviser Tom Flanagan is an active member. Conservative MP Jason Kenney is a member, as are Brian Lee Crowley, head of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and Michel Kelly-Gagnon of the Montreal Economic Institute, the second and third most important right-wing think tanks after the Fraser Institute.
Civitas is top-heavy with journalists to promote the cause. Lorne Gunter of the National Post is president. Members include Janet Jackson (Calgary Sun) and Danielle Smith (Calgary Herald). Journalists Colby Cosh, William Watson and Andrew Coyne (all National Post) have made presentations to Civitas.
I thought that this was a
I thought that this was a blog related to climate.
You shouldn't drop your political drawers in public, AARONB.
He's a hoser. Always has
He's a hoser. Always has been. Some people simply make careers out of devil-advocacy, but he's always been a real piece of work.
Pretty much all media needs weeding and is due for some kind of severe comeuppance, and I can think of no better candidate than Gunter for beginning the process. Turf him!
This Just In!
Good news for Desmoggers worried about atmospehric CO2 levels:
Testimony of Roy W. Spencer Before the US Senate EPW Committee: Latest Research on Climate Sensitivity to CO2
Excerpts: Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Another way of saying this is that the real climate system appears to be dominated by "negative feedbacks" -- instead of the "positive feedbacks" which are displayed by all twenty computerized climate models utilized by the IPCC. (Feedback parameters larger than 3.3 Watts per square meter per degree Kelvin (Wm-2K-1) indicate negative feedback, while feedback parameters smaller than 3.3 indicate positive feedback.)
If true, an insensitive climate system would mean that we have little to worry about in the way of manmade global warming and associated climate change. And, as we will see, it would also mean that the warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural. Of course, if climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control, and is likely to end -- if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now.
Realclimate on Roy
Realclimate on Roy Spencer:
http://tinyurl.com/3h4qy5
"...Roy does have a handful of peer-reviewed publications, some of which have quite decent and interesting results in them. However, the thing you have to understand is that what he gets through peer-review is far less threatening to the mainstream picture of anthropogenic global warming than you'd think from the spin he puts on it in press releases, presentations and the blogosphere..."
Testimony before the US Senate is not peer-reviewed.
About Peer Reviews
Prof. John Brignell at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2008%20July.htm#refereeing has an interersting take on peer reviews and how it has become corrupted. It includes this bit on the IPCC:
"The creation of the UN IPCC was a cataclysmic event in the history of science. Here was a purely political body posing as a scientific institution. Through the power of patronage it rapidly attracted acolytes. Peer review soon rapidly evolved from the old style refereeing to a much more sinister imposition of The Censorship. As Wegman demonstrated, new circles of like-minded propagandists formed, acting as judge and jury for each other. Above all, they acted in concert to keep out alien and hostile opinion.
'Peer review' developed into a mantra that was picked up by political activists who clearly had no idea of the procedures of science or its learned societies. It became an imprimatur of political acceptability, whose absence was equivalent to placement on the proscribed list.
As global warming alarmism stumbles inevitably towards the later stages of Langmuir’s Laws, its defenders have become increasingly shrill. The pressure on science, both from external politicians and internal quislings, has become intense.
The question of whether science can ever recover its innocence is moot. After life as a harlot on the mean streets of political imperative, a return to the sanctity of the cloister looks out of the question. If so, humanity has forever lost a bright jewel in its culture."
Science as a harlot? It's
Science as a harlot? It's the denialists who lie and cheat for money and/or out of stupidity.
Wiki about Brignell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brignell
Testimony before the US Senate is not peer-reviewed
Is James Hanson's testimony before the US Congress peer reviewed?
IS Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", peer reviewed?
Given that AIT is not a
Given that AIT is not a scientific study, but is based on many of them and speaks to the general public, it does pass muster:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/
Despite a couple of scientific errors, "Gore gets the science right, just as he did in Earth in the Balance". Consider this the inverse of the "Swindle" show, which gets a few points correct but misrepresents everything else.
??
Are sean's comments peer reviewed?
Agreed Spencer is at least a
Agreed Spencer is at least a scientist, and a climatologist. I can respect his journal publications on the topic, that is what scientific debate is about, his other comments tend to be a bit more silly but at least he is for real. However, that same cannot be said about the countless numbers who claim to be experts but have little (like 1 in the last 30 years not to name names) to no publications at all on climate, many of whom get outed on the posts here.
Opps ... Again
NASA Discovers 70% Of Global Climate Due To Pacific Ocean Oscillations - Not CO2
Wonder where we have heard that before?
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/5693
Hmmmmm
Lets see now, so far:
That’s 70% from PDO
~50% from cleaner Air
~30% from livestock
~20% from solar variation
~20% instrument error
So 190% natural causes….. hmmmm
CO2 is looking a bit wimpy these days.