CBS News sinks to new low; publishes crackpot global warming story, attributes it to AP, kills it

CBS News sinks to new low; publishes crackpot global warming story, attributes it to Associated Press, kills it with no retraction

Yesterday I posted a story from CBS News: Quake n’ Bake: Global Warming Causes More Energetic Earthquakes?

The main headline was this: Seismic Activity 5 Times More Energetic Than 20 Years Ago Because Of Global Warming

This drew a lot of attention because of the total lack of verifiable science associated with it. I posted some graphs of USGS data showing that the opposite was true, that recent earthquake energy was actually less that in the early 1900’s, and several commenters pointed out that the source of the story, a Dr. Tom Chalko, has some less than stellar associations with what I would describe as “new age” mysticism, such as Thiaoouba Prophecy and “reading your Aura”. He also writes a dandy piece entitled “Global Warming: Can Earth EXPLODE?” which is linked to a website he runs about “bioresonance” where you can buy a “bioresonant” shirt.

So with that sort of science background available on the web for anyone to see in a few seconds of searching, one wonders how CBS News was duped into running a story like this without even bothering to check into the author. This makes the “historic” Microsoft Word documents used by Dan Rather to discredit President Bush’s National Guard Service look like a peer reviewed science paper.

The story gets weirder. CBS attributed the story on their website to the Associated Press (AP) and you can see that clearly in the screen capture of the story [at link]. Odd thing though, there is no byline, no story author as you usually see with an AP story . . . .

After apparently learning of the less than scientific associations of the lead author of the research, CBS removed it from their website as of about 3 p.m. EST on June 19. This was the original link:

Here is where it gets interesting, after CBS pulled the story from their website, I did some searches for it on the Associated Press website at www.ap.org thinking it would still be there.

The story is not found in searches at www.ap.org using “Tom Chalko” or “earthquake global warming”

At the www.ap.org search, for earthquake(s) we find many stories either side of it on June 18th:

But nothing about the Chalko story. Putting in the authors name “Tom Chalko” also yields nothing on ap.org. I wasn’t content with that, so I asked my radio station newsroom at KPAY to run a search on the AP wire stories they receive; nothing turned up. I also asked the editor of our local newspaper, the Chico Enterprise Record, to run a search, and he also found no evidence that AP had transmitted this story.

A further point- it seems to be only connected to CBS News, and their attribution to the AP appears when I do Google News searches such as this one:

“earthquakes global warming Associated press” or “Tom Chalko AP” the only association that appears is the CBS story with (AP) in it, as shown in the screencap [at link].

THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html

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The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation periods. Now look very carefully at this relationship between temps and CO2 levels and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the graph indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000 year period actually lagged behind temperature increases ...by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these 4 past glaciations. Yet Gore dishonestly and continually claims otherwise.-ETL

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"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present.":
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M

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FWD:

So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

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FWD:

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Hugo Chavez on Global Warmimg

"The environment is suffering damage that could be irreversible — global warming, the greenhouse effect, the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising sea level, hurricanes — with terrible social occurrences that will shake life on this planet."

"I believe this idea has a strong connection with reality. I don't think we have much time. Fidel Castro said in one of his speeches I read not so long ago, 'tomorrow could be too late, let's do now what we need to do'."

"I believe it is time that we take up with courage and clarity a political, social, collective and ideological offensive across the world — a real offensive that permits us to move progressively, over the next years, the next decades, leaving behind the perverse, destructive, destroyer, capitalist model and go forward in constructing the socialist model to avoid barbarism and beyond that the annihilation of life on this planet."

--Hugo Chavez, at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Caracas on August 8-15, 2005
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/640/640p16.htm

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Maxine Waters warns Shell president in House committee hearing

A report by Fox News, captured in a clip posted on YouTube.com (Must see video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUaY3LhJ-IQ) , showed Waters challenging the president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, to guarantee the prices consumers pay will go down if the oil companies are allowed to drill wherever they want off of U.S. shores.

Hofmeister replied: "I can guarantee to the American people, because of the inaction of the United States Congress, ever-increasing prices unless the demand comes down."

The Shell exec said paying $5 at the pump "will look like a very low price in the years to come if we are prohibited from finding new reserves, new opportunities to increase supplies."

Waters responded, in part, "And guess what this liberal would be all about. This liberal will be about socializing … uh, um. …"

The congresswoman paused to collect her thoughts [for about 5-6 seconds this went on, while her colleagues behind her laughed].

"...would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies. …"

The oil executives responded, according to Fox News, by saying they've seen this before, in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Congresswoman threatens to nationalize oil industry Maxine Waters warns Shell president in House committee hearing:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=65111

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Chávez vows to nationalize all energy - International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/14/business/chavez.php

Venezuela's Chavez says government could nationalize supermarkets, food storage facilities:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/15/business/LA-FIN-Venezuela-Nationalizations.php

Chavez to nationalize telecom, utilities:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16530241/

U.S. blasts Chavez plan to nationalize electricity, phones:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2007-01-08-venezeula-usat_x.htm

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