501px-Rick_Santorum_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg Rick Santorum was asked about climate change recently, while campaigning in New Hampshire. The video of his response, as well as the transcript, can be found here. Suffice it to say that while Santorum sounds thoughtful and rational in his response, in fact he gravely misrepresents scientific knowledge and understanding. Let's turn to the tape.
Continue readingTag: Political Spin
DeSmogBlog: API’s New ‘Vote 4 Energy’ Ad Campaign Is Thinly Veiled Election Year Bullying
API Vote 4 Energy.jpg American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard today announced the oil and gas industry’s latest election-year scare campaign to threaten the demise of the U.S. economy unless Big Oil gets its every wish in Washington. This year the wish list includes approval of the Keystone XL pipeline,
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Rick Santorum and Science: Bad Combination!
rick_santorum_official_photo.jpg As Republican primary season schizophrenia continues, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum is now in the spotlight, having very nearly beaten Mitt Romney in Iowa. So what do we people who care about science, and global warming in particular, know about Santorum? Whoa boy. None of the Republican candidates, with the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: New Proof: Republicans Really Are Anti-Science
republican war.jpg As readers know, I’m a regular monitor of polls capturing various aspects of the public’s views on science. These polls consistently show that for the most part, even if people don’t know a ton about it, they basically think science rocks. Americans know very well that science has
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Year In Dirty Energy: Money, Corruption, And Misinformation
Handcuffed_to_Money.jpg It is said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That statement has proven itself true time after time in both politics and business, but I would like to amend that statement slightly: Power corrupts, but money and power corrupt absolutely. This year has been no different. We’ve
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: “End Medicare?” How Phony Bipartisanship Created a Fact Checking Disaster
pinocchio.jpg Just last week, I wrote about the core problem facing the new breed of political fact-checkers: The political right is more factually wrong, meaning that taking a strictly “bipartisan” approach will inevitably leave the fact-checkers themselves guilty of phony “balance.” And it will also lead to them occasionally having
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Climate-Media Paradox: More Coverage, Stalled Progress
who speaks for the climate.jpg For those of us who care about global warming, 2006 and 2007 felt like pretty good years. Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for An Inconvenient Truth, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Media attention to the issue soared, and it
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Can Fact Checking be Politically “Neutral,” When Facts Are Not Equally Distributed Across the Political Spectrum?
pinocchio.jpg Recently, I sat in on an off-the-record meeting about political fact-checking. I can’t report or quote from the event, but it spurred along some general thoughts that had already arisen in the context of writing The Republican Brain, which focuses a great deal on fact-checking—and thus, helped propel this post.
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: A Democrat Undermines Science
planb_200x170.jpg In my debate a few months back with Kenneth Green about the left, the right, and science, my colleague really could have used some more strong examples of left wing science abuse. Now, he has one. There is no other way to spin it: The Obama administration’s decision to ignore the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Science of Debiasing: The New “Debunking Handbook” Is a Treasure Trove For Defenders of Reason
dbh_large.gif For quite some time here at DeSmogBlog, I’ve been writing about the growing science of irrationality—in other words, our ever-better scientific understanding of why people reject clearly correct information. I believe we can’t possibly get to a better place, in debates over issues like global warming, until we understand
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Do Developing Nation Journalists Cover Climate Science Better (or at Least Better Than U.S. and U.K. Papers)?
ronaldo-brazil-world-cup-top-scorer.jpg As the European debt crisis scrapes along, there has been talk about the possible need for developing nations, like China and Brazil, to ultimately help bail out some spendthrift “developed” nations. A new study suggests that maybe they should also help bail out some of our media. The study comes from
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Fox News Viewers are the Most Misinformed: A Seventh Study Arrives to Prove It (and to Vindicate Jon Stewart!)
cavuto-20070117-global-2.jpg Two of my most popular posts here at DeSmogBlog were a pair of items documenting 1) just how many surveys have found Fox News viewers to be more misinformed about factual reality and 2) taking PolitiFact to task for giving Jon Stewart a “false” rating when he pointed this out.
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Climate Change Spin A Growing Problem For Fox News
fox global warming.jpg When it comes to climate change denial, a new study shows that the folks at Fox News are leading the pack. Through politically-charged news segments and commentary, Fox News personalities are helping spread misinformation about climate change while convincing their viewers that scientists are torn on the
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Koch Brothers Behind Push To Dismantle EPA
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During last week’s Americans For Prosperity (AFP) event, a common theme kept creeping into the speakers’ presentations: Dismantle the EPA. And as the major funders of…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Conservatives Attack and Misunderstand A Book They Haven’t Read…A Book About Flawed Conservative Reasoning
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This would be sad, if it weren’t also so telling.
On Monday I announced my new book The Republican Brain, which will be due out next spring. And I provided a brie…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Rush Limbaugh: Meat Eater, Science Denier
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Recently, Rush Limbaugh went on another of his anti-science rants. This one was particularly fascinating, though, because of the things he actually got right—even as he &n…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Don’t Believe in Science (or Many Other Inconvenient Truths)
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Over the last year here at DeSmogBlog, my writings have converged around a set of common themes. On the one hand, I’ve shown just how factually incorrect today’s political …
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Score Another Victory for Scientists, Michael Mann, and the Freedom of Inquiry
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Yesterday in a Virginia courtroom, Michael Mann—who is quickly becoming the Galileo of climate science—triumphed over the conservative American Tradition Institute, an…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Is There a Bias Asymmetry Between Democrats and Republicans?
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There’s a must read item today at the Huffington Post by Jonathan Weiler, co-author of the excellent book Authoritarianism and Polarization in American P…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Why Ethical Oil’s Deceptive ‘Women’s Rights’ Defense of Tar Sands is Insulting and Wrong
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EthicalOil.org’s new spokesperson, Kathryn Marshall, authored an insulting piece this week on the Huffington Post titled "Care About Women's Rights? Support Eth…
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