Have you witnessed climate change? How?

There are three modes of media bias. First is the selection of stories...what a news reporter or columnist chooses to relay. Second is the content of stories...what the article actually says, is it editorialized when it claims to be news? Is it reporting one side of the issue and not the other while claiming to be representative? Third is the collection of the stories...'got story? please send' is very suspect.

So it is very troubling that ABC News is calling for stories about Climate Change.

Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?

ABC News wants to hear from you. We're currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

Does this sound familiar? If you have ever watched daytime network television (the tabloid shows) it should sound familiar.

"Does your mom sleep with your boyfriend and your best friend as part of a satanic ritual while you are attending church? Call Jerry now."

Why is this likely a great example of media bias? Because it is seeking one side of an issue and working on the assumption that the one side is a truism.

Now, the definition of climate is generally accepted to represent a span of 30-35 years. It says to me that in order for people to be able to share their direct observations of climate changes they would need at least TWO periods to compare. So, anyone under the age of 70 should be excluded from this story by ABC News for not having a large enough sample basis.

Next is the issue of calling the current "climate" era representative of "global warming". Notice how Global Warming chicken-littles use the 100-year temperaturs and something like the 4000-year temperatures? Why not the 1000-year temperatures? According to the SEPP:

The global climate has warmed over the last 100 years, but not appreciably over the last 50 years. And it is colder now than it was 1000 years ago.

Hmm, what would explain that? Certainly there is something worth examining there BEFORE claiming that humans are the cause of global warming.

A great article in the Canadian Free Press helps with some refutation. I have been saying for years that when global warming theologians claim such high numbers of scientists they leave out the nasty details about what fields those scientists are from. More importantly they fail to narrow down the list of scientists to those whose fields are meteorology or climatology. Why would that be. Often you can look and realize that most of the scientists that buy into the "global warming" ravings are social "scientists". Political science, sociology, psychology...and why we should pay attention to them in the discussion of weather and climate I have never heard explained. Yet they are included among the group of "experts".

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.

Imagine that...misrepresenting the facts of the issue...from Al Gore. This can't be. From the Global Warming zealots. Say it ain't so.

"But our CO2 levels have to be devastating to the world...they simply are not natural at the levels we are making."

Wro-o-o-o-ong!

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Hmm, difficult to see the global warming future is. Clouded are the opinions of global warming zealots by facts.

"But the ice is breaking off in Antarctica! That's because the global temperatures are melting the ice shelf making them weaker...falling off."

Wro-o-o-o-ong.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibj–rn KarlÈn, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

But KarlÈn clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," KarlÈn concludes.

Whoopsie. Damn those facts.

"But the ice is getting thinner. Al Gore said so and even quoted a study proving that."

[sigh] Useful idiots.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."

KarlÈn explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says KarlÈn.

"There are cities around the world everyday that set record high temperatures."

Yeah, and do you notice that there are cities every day that have record lows, record low-highs, blah, blah, blah. The world would be a perfect place if these people would switch two of their main philosophies. They think the global temps are static and the US Constitution is 'living'. The reality should be an understanding of 'living' global temps and a static Constitution.

Back to the cities setting record highs...

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."

Hmm, so what is the global temperature trending like then?

Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."

Now you can start to understand why ABC News calling for ONE side of the issue constitutes media bias on the matter.

With all that said, I am interested in actual studies (other than from the idiots at the IPCC) on either side of the issue.