On the Frontiers of Junk Science: Newsweek

Newsweek cover for 6 August 2007

Newsweek is, once again, promoting the "green" globalist climate agenda -- and when these folks talk "green," they mean the color of money.

Not since that weekly tabloid charted a retreat and surrender path out of Iraq a few months back have its editors published such a stupefyingly nescient cover story as this one, which features a spectacular photo of the Sun, with the large caption "Global Warming Is A Hoax.*"

And what of that asterisk? In small print, the cover smugly notes, "Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change."

We at The Patriot Post are not "well-funded naysayers" who reject evidence of climate change -- nor are the growing ranks of other organizations that refuse to comport with Albert Gore's eco-theological orthodoxy. Fact is most of the dissenters would agree that the climate is changing -- and has been from the beginning of time.

The real "hoax" is the false dichotomy created with Newsweek's cover and others like it. The division is not over "climate change" but why the climate is changing. The lie being perpetuated by the Leftmedia and Al Gore's cadre of bed-wetting pantywaists is the assumption that climate change, and the greenhouse effect, are one and the same.

Notably, the first entry on Newsweek's "Global Warming Timeline," which accompanies the cover story, is dated 1896, when a Swedish chemist speculated that carbon-dioxide emissions might be related to climate change. The next entry is not until 1979, when a National Academy of Sciences report warns of global warming. The gap between these entries is notable because, for most of the interim period, scientists were issuing apocalyptic predictions of global cooling and the coming ice age.

Having thus proved that its journalism isn't to be taken seriously, Newsweek forged ahead in its current issue, even trotting out a photo of two polar bears on a "receding ice floe." Apparently, the magazine's crack editors hadn't heard that when Al Gore used a similar photo to make his globaloney case, scientists who study polar bears debunked his assertion, noting that polar bears often drift on lone pieces of ice, waiting patiently for unwitting seals to present themselves as dinner on a platter.

And in a see-through attempt to strengthen its shoddy case, Newsweek is running the article during the hottest month of the year.

(For a rational summary of climate change issues, link to "Global Warming: Fact, Fiction and Political Endgame".)