I woke up this morning and the world was slightly different than it was the night before. Well, it probably always is a little different each day, but there are certain times when you notice this. I’m not talking about the bits of siding, roofing, and trees scattered about the landscape because of the very severe thunderstorm we had last night, although I suppose this is indirectly related.
If you are not a Minnesotan this will take some explanation:
Don Shelby newscaster, was the Walter Cronkite of the Twin Cities. Stately in appearance, white-haired (since birth, presumably), deep melodious voice, believable demeanor, nice guy news anchor for one of the local stations. A short time ago he retired and people noticed.
Michael Jungbauer is a Republican State Senator who sits on the most important energy-related committee for the state Senate, is a preacher turned representative, and a strong global warming denier. Given recent political shifts in Minnesota, Junbauer’s global warming denialism has been converted into real action, and Minnesota’s legislative body has been busy dismantling what was thought to be very progressive climate change related legislation since that (temporary) political shift.
MinnPost is one of those small web-only newspapers (though newspaper may be the wrong word here), an independent donor-financed (mainly) news source that became very popluar during the 2008 presidential campaign and has managed to get past the trials and tribulations of growing through a major (and very newsy) election cycle (after which financing tends to dry up) to maintain its position as a valid and legitimate, well run source of mainly local news.
That was the Minnesota part. The part of this story that you may already know because you live elsewhere on Earth is this: Mainstream news agencies have tenaciously stuck with the idea that there are “two sides” to the global warming “debate” even though the vast majority of evidence tells us that there are not. True, in recent years, news agencies are increasingly reporting that even though they are giving two sides to the debate, no one with even a whiff of credibility thinks that global warming is not real, important, and mostly anthropogenic. I assume that the news agencies are forced to do this in order to keep reasonable relationships with their news sources, which unfortunately includes all these right wing yahoos who are paid to insist that the studies are still underway and that we cant be sure about the nature of climate change in the 21st century. Which is too bad, because if the Fourth Estate were only to act on principle rather than blatant self-interest, those yahoos would more quickly either change their tune or fade away a few at a time and we could get to the point where we can think of our grandchildren living their lives in this world rather than suffering through a life we’ve ruined for them.
And this morning it all came together.
MinnPost, the new-style online news source, has a piece written by Don Shelby, the recently retired iconic local news anchor, about Michael Jungbauer, the well-entrenched Republican global warming denialist, in which Shelby explains how Jungbauer has it all wrong.
… Jungbauer is fond of making pronouncements from on high regarding the scientific weakness of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…. He takes positions in direct opposition to 98 percent of published and peer-reviewed climate, atmospheric scientists and glaciologists. … He uses big words and cites studies in his lectures… The problem is, he is not a scientist.
…He is an ordained minister, of sorts. But, although his official biography says he has a degree from Moody, he does not. In direct answer to my question, Jungbauer responded: “No I did not graduate. But I have a certificate.”
The truth is that Jungbauer was ordained by Christian Motor Sports International out of Gilbert, Ariz.
Here is a video of Jungbauer lying about his qualifications and climate change, provided by Shelby:
Shelby comments in his article:
He has said he has a major in biochemistry. That suggests he received a degree with enough credit hours to give him a major in that important science. But he does not have a degree in biochemistry. He told me that he is getting a master’s degree in environmental policy at Metropolitan State University, but that school doesn’t have a master’s program in environmental policy. When I asked him about that, he said: “Well, that’s what they told me.”
Shelby then goes on to provide a point by point refutation and expose Jungbauer’s lies and misrepresentations. That won’t affect Junbauer or his sneering attitude, of course …. I note that this damning video in which the good Senator makes himself look like an unmitigated fool was not snatched from some librul spy-infiltrator’s flipcam. It is featured on Senator Mike Jungbauer’s YouTube Channel, presumably as a great example of how smart he is. But I digress…
Shelby, seemingly unfettered by inappropriately cautious and “balanced” (as in “dangerously off balance”) editorial policy of his former news station (which is typical in this way) takes several paragraphs to do an excellent job of dismantling Jungbauer. I hope this MinnPost piece makes the rounds among the masses in Minnesota, exposing people who respected Shelby as the region’s senior anchor to a bunch of truth that they need to know.
Hey, maybe Shelby should run for Senate!
Do not fail to visit “Background claims by state Senate’s global-warming skeptic fail to check out” by Don Shelby, which concludes, “Sen. Jungbauer, an avid cross-trainer, may wish to start stair-climbing exercises. His next stop might be the top of the Capitol.”
Thank you Don.
Some will notice that the piece to which I refer was originally published several days ago and subsequently updated. It only came to my attention this morning, however. And it is not true that things that happened more than 48 hours ago are not relevant on blog. Well, sort of true, but not all the time.
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Good article, nice to have even a little good news.
It seems to me that there was a time, not so many years ago, when global warming was near-universally accepted in the mainstream media, and denial got no air time at all. So it’s hard to see this as progress, when we’ve still got so far to go just to get back to where we were.
Maybe my perception of this is wrong, I dunno.
Ordained by these people: http://www.teamrfc.org/information.shtml
It looks like a tax dodge, letting them deduct tickets to these events as a church-related expense.
STILL want to tax the air to make the weather colder?
Climate Change wasn’t energy or sustainability or oceans or little kids planting trees. No! It was a 25 year old CO2 Death Threat to billions of children and THANKFULLY a comfortable lie and criminal â??worst case scenarioâ? exaggeration. These remaining phony planet lovers just hate humanity and want this crisis to be true. At this stage of the game if you still believe in climate change you sure donâ??t act like it. Every remaining believer should be marching in the streets for this IS the greatest crisis ever you cried for 25 years.
Without the CO2 mistake nothing changes, except the spear of fear in our backs and billions wasted on “effects” of CO2, all the while not even understanding climate variation in the first place. Welcome home CO2. Itâ??s been a long time. You have been proven innocent.
It is SO comforting to know that SOMEONE is an expert in ALL 13 disciplines of science mentioned in the IIRC report.*sarcasm*
Any idiot knows, it’s a little more complicated than that. I am a nurse, I know general stuff about most nursing, but there are only a few areas I would declare myself expert, and some more expert than others. I can’t imagine someone declaring they know so much about all areas of a specific field as to attempt to refute the experts in their specific areas of that field. Even Einstein did not have that much hubris.
Meme Mine:
Huh?
Remaining, fading Doomers: Some thoughts from a former believer:
You donâ??t care about the planet. You faithful believers are no different from any car accident rubber neckers or arsonist. You WANT this misery to have been true.
Why would you remaining believers so flippantly surrender yourselves to scientists like domesticated cattle when it was science that polluted the planet in the first place with cancer chemicals and pesticides. They produced cruise missiles, land mine technology, deep sea drilling technology, germ warfareâ?¦â?¦â?¦ â??THEY SAYâ? isnâ??t good enough, so I took the time to find out what is behind consensus. If you are a real planet lover, you will see this as good news.
-Effects are studied almost entirely causing this consultantâ??s w%t dream to become a politically correct lie and feeding frenzy of money, power and greed.
-Consensus is a perception, not fact otherwise how would you explain the scientists vastly outnumbering the protestors?
-Consensus is as perception because the thousands of scientists should have reacted when Obama didnâ??t even mention the crisis in his last state of the union speech.
-Why are the scientists not marching in the streets as the world walks away from climate change.
-The CO2 Theory predicted the effects would be from negligible to nothing to out of control and runaway warming (death). A license to lie wouldnâ??t you agree?
-All the private research is government paid, and all denial is private paid. No, this isnâ??t about good vs evil. This is science.
-All of the scientists and the science organizations all have their very own special definition of CO2 climate crisis. This is science?
-Be happy that the CO2 climate science was a criminal exaggeration turned into political correctness on steroids.
â??They say!â? is not science.
Morons:
There’s no such thing as a “doomer”. Doom and gloom isn’t the point of it at all. The point is to say, these bad things will happen unless we do something about it. So let’s do something! It is a prescription for action.
Your position, on the other hand, can be fairly characterized as “let’s stick our heads in the sand”.
“Tax the air”? No, tax pollution. The atmosphere is not a garbage dump.
No, science did not pollute the planet. Industry did. The same industry that wants to keep on doing business as usual, and that has somehow convinced you to become a denialist.
how do you sleep at night YOU DICK.
Well Old Chap, this whole climate thing is a LIE.
If you have a political agenda which you believe in TELL THE TRUTH!
The human population of the Earth can do nothing to stop the climate from doing what it wants.
Anything built on lies FALLS!
Hence the climate movement is dying a slow death.
But HEY you have made the multinationals and the mega rich a LOT richer with their government subsidies .
Meanwhile the people you are (MISGUIDEDLY) fighting for are getting poorer.
I actually am on your side but for Pete’s sake pick your ground and tell the truth
headmaster151255@yahoo.co.uk
I’m confused. Why is the right consistantly complaining about how poorly (as they see it) schools are doing educating people. With the ignorance the right spews about climate change and science in general, you’d think they would look at people like meme mike, nemo, former believer, and ortman and mckay and think “that’s just about the amount of scientific illiteracy we need. keep up the good work education system.”
Greg, how was the article taken around there?
Dean, first, Nemo is one of the good guys (he’s speaking in his comment to the OTHER morons, not me!)
How was the article taken in MN? I don’t know. The comments have a lot of positive feedback plus the usual deniers. I hope Shelby does some more like this. Maybe this is even newsworthy!
I was watching a documentary about modern-day Greenland last week. One of the segments was about a new lead & zinc mine. The owners said, “Forty years ago this was covered by [tens] of metres of ice. (I think they said “25 metres of ice equalling 65 feet” but they might have said “65 metres.”) The only reason we can reach this now is because the ice has melted.” Explain that, denialists.
Today I was reading about the ocean currents around Japan. Ten years ago one of the seas near Hokkaido was covered with ice for 90 days in winter; now it’s 65 days. Explain that.
Two years ago, a rock dove showed up in Iqaluit, on the Arctic Ocean. Explain that.
Before 1995, the leaves of oak trees in Southern Ontario and northern New York state turned mud-brown in the fall. In 1995, the fall was remarkably long and fine and the oak leaves turned brown, then bronzy, then red before falling. They have continued to show red every year since. What is different about the average weather for the last 16 years that affects the oak trees in this way? Denialists? Anybody?
Something like eight of the ten hottest years on record have happened in the last fifteen years. What’s your explanation? Denialists? Anybody?
If you don’t think that the climate is changing, you haven’t been paying attention to the world around you.
Did I mention that in the last 40 years Virginia opossums have shown up in Southern Ontario and have been steadily making their way north? Or that the last time I saw a program about butterflies in the U.K. the biologist said, Oh, look! This one has never been seen this far north before? Or that records show many animals are moving several km. north per decade? Or that the permafrost is melting along the Yukon shoreline? Or that a chunk of ice 30 km long broke off the Arctic ice shelf last year? Or that storms are getting stronger because there’s more energy in the atmosphere? Do you need any more of a road map?
Climate science is dying a slow death, just like Evilution is in its sunset years.
Denialists. Creationists. Geocentrists. Peas in a pod and birds of a feather.
(Yes, I am posing the well.)
“poisoning the well.”
Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right; thanks for the information.
Sadly, your presentation of facts will make no impact on those who have apparently swallowed the “Beck deadens the Brain”(TM) Kool-Aid.
Neither meme mine nor Former Believer are into having a debate, they just want to spout ideological points.
News outlet.
You donâ??t care about the planet. You faithful believers are no different from any car accident rubber neckers or arsonist. You WANT this misery to have been true.
Subsequent comments reminding us that the misery IS indeed true (thanx, Markita, for making my day even less cheerful) really take the wind out of the crybaby denialists’ sails. With all the fake science and outright lies cast aside, we now see what’s really driving the denialists: absolute terror of a very uncomfortable truth (trust me, kids, us grownups aren’t comfortable with it either, so quit biting our ankles, okay?); and maybe even more terror at the loss of their precious comforting we-can-do-anything-we-want-and-not-pay-any-price ideology.
Nemo, my apologies. Just a stupid error on my part.
Thanks for pointing that out Greg.
Back to cleaning oak tree off my deck.
I’m so glad you’re smart. Keep hiding behind those credentials. They’re all you got buddy.
I’ve never seen so many words churned out and absolutely nothing useful said. Just a bunch of hate.
Love,
anthropogenic my ass
chestwilly@gmail.com
NASA lied about America going to the moon.
NASA lies about climate change.
If Climate Change is true then how come there are still monkeys? Huh? HUH????
///
oh man. oh man, what hast thou wrought? so, the angry angry people i can easily reject. they are clearly not in any rational or inquiring mind as to the science of global warming. and then to use other ‘wrong’ info as if that would prove AGW to be wrong…it’s histrionics, inciting the mindless masses. sadly- pretty easy to do. we have been taught NOT to think for ourselves, or look for further information. we want to be riled up–it makes us feel like we are taking action. ah, emotional addiction. so easy to keep the madding crowd busy. but, that is another story.
people seem to confuse pollution and global warming. they interact but are not the same. climate change is climate change, and what we are doing with carbon emissions is another. surely no one can negate the dangers presented by our dependency on carbon fuels? if nothing else–the natural resources of the planet are, duh, finite. new plan needed stat. so i do not understand the hail storm of fury from these oh so panties in a twist folks. it doesnt make sense to me…are they fighting to keep oil eco(not)nomy intact?? they protest toooo much, w/ over-amplified emotion, so i dont believe a word they have to say. the masses are asses, alas.
I think you touched a nerve. 🙂 The madmen came out to play. LOL!
Greg, I think the ‘bot rotation schedule failed — they’re all posting to your new topic on the same day. But they’re effective distracting from your topic if allowed. Scienceblogs still hasn’t got a humans-only filter yet, eh?
Greg, PS — ‘moliva’ is a prolific spambot, copypasting text from earlier in the thread, to put an ad link behind the fake name. Don’t click the name without malware protection.
Greg, PS — ‘moliva’ is a prolific spambot, copypasting text from earlier in the thread, to put an ad link behind the fake name. “Steve Ortman” link is to an online gambling site. I quit checking at that point, you’ve got an infestation here.
Don’t click the names/links without malware protection.
I assume that Greg thinks that this is the first thunder storm that has ever struck where he lives. Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right needs to look at this information and the next post I offer to see what they think:
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”
Who reported this? the IPCC, the Meteorological Office…. No, that was the US Weather Bureau in 1922.
Having done much boating in S. E. Alaska, I have great respect for what these sailors of the past accomplished. Keep in mind that Geo. Vancouver’s ships were wind powered; therefore, he wasn’t spewing out any diesel smoke to start this massive retreat of these glaciers. “The explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait, at the south end of Glacier Bay, choked with ice in 1794. Glacier Bay itself was almost entirely iced over. In 1879 naturalist John Muir found that the ice had retreated almost all the way up the bay. By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier was at the head of Tarr Inlet about 65 miles from Glacier Bay’s mouth. This is the fastest documented glacier retreat ever. Scientists are hoping to learn how glacial activity relates to climate changes and global warming from these retreating giants.” What do you think they will discover, Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right?
I well imagine that Greg will soon shut his site down if too many “deniers” try to state their valid post, as he has done in the past. Greg seemed to want to make this latest about education; so, in that context I present these “facts.”
This may be a shock to some that worship at this cathedral of their religion, global warming, but Al Gore, the spokesman for this scam, has no scientific credentials. He studied law at Vanderbilt Law School and for sure didn’t finish his divinity training there either. The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, is an economist. â??It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all, 80 percent of the IPCC membership has absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.â?
Steve Running, who shared in the Nobel prize with Gore, holds a â??B.S. in Botany; Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1972, M.S. in Forest Management; Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1973 and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecophysiology; {what ever that is}, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 1979.
“Plant ecophysiology is an experimental science that seeks to describe the physiological mechanisms underlying ecological observations.” At least he has been exposed to science but is a long ways from being a climatologist, but then again, how much difference do credentials make when the head of the IPCC is an economist?
Â
Then we have Dr. John Christy:
â??Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1987 M.S., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1984; B.A., Mathematics, California State University, Fresno, 1969â? and also “Richard Siegmund Lindzen who is a Harvard-trained atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen is known for his work in the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, atmospheric tides and ozone photochemistry. He has published more than 200 books and scientific papers. He has been a critic of some anthropogenic global warming theories and the alleged political pressures on climate scientists” I tend to listen to Dr. Christy, Dr Spencer and Dr. Lindzen before paying much attention to Gore or Running. We shouldn’t forget James Hansen that was predicting global cooling back in the 1970’s
This will be the last one that I post for now because I do have other important things to do. This, among many other “facts”, is why I’m a denier and very proud to be among their ranks. The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: “The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” I’m not sure that “deniers” are in the minority, but you get my point.
There are some obsessed with the supposed increase of 280 ppm to 392ppm of CO2 and I hope that this information will help you to sleep better at nights.
This, I hope, will put this into some kind of a perspective that makes one understand just how insignificant this increase is.
A part per million is like 1 drop of ink in a large
kitchen sink.
A large kitchen sink is about 13-14 gallons. There
are 100 drops in one teaspoon, and 768 teaspoons
per gallon.
Some other things that are one part per million areâ?¦
One drop in the fuel tank of a mid-sized car
One inch in 16 miles
About one minute in two years
One car in a line of bumper-to-bumper traffic from
Cleveland to San Francisco.
One penny in $10,000.
I know that you understand that these 112 additional ppm are spread out over this 16 miles in different one inch segments and wouldn’t it be a task to be told to sort out the 392 pennies from the number that it would take to make up $10,000.