Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Is Superman the next Drudge? Clark Kent quits newspapers in latest issue | Fox News
"He is more likely to start the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report than he is to go find someone else to get assignments or draw a paycheck from," Lobdell told USA Today.
TV Tuesday: Frontline
...Entire industries, wind and solar, "are based on public fear of global warming," another skeptic says, aided and abetted by a mainstream media that "has pretty much given up its role as an independent reporter and has (instead) become an advocate."
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After all, as Frontline's narration notes, climate deniers rely on a small group of outspoken scientific contrarians who insist the world's climate needs no help from worried humans.
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* The X Factor creator and judge Simon Cowell described last week's mix tape of a little bit of baseball, a little bit of rain-delay-filling sitcom reruns and an hour of X Factor that inadvertently ran at the same time on both coasts as, and I quote, "A total F-up." Rain in October -- who would've guessed? Chalk up another one to climate change.
Scientists Denounce Dubious Climate Study By Insurer Munich Re - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Whether it's hurricanes, thunderstorms or tornadoes, extreme weather is big business for insurers. Now German re-insurer Munich Re claims to have found proof that man-made climate change is causing more weather catastrophes in North America. Scientists are outraged.
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"Well over half of the natural disaster premiums come from the USA," says Munich Re board member Peter Röder, who is responsible for the North American market.
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Röder said the company is "highly exposed" in the US, particularly in the area of hurricane insurance. At a recent talk with journalists in Munich, Röder said the company is "very satisfied" with its premiums covering weather disasters in the United States. He said the company had already factored in expectations for more intense hurricanes.
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Pielke criticizes Munich Re for its approach. "If Munich Re believes it has found the footprint of human-caused climate change in disaster data, then they should prepare a scientific paper and send it to Science or Nature, where it would be a major finding," he says. "Releasing such claims via promotional press release suggests otherwise."

Atmospheric researcher Mass agrees. "Climate change is serious, but hyping and distorting past trends is not the responsible way to deal with it."
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So far, Pielke says, scientists have been unable to identify man-made climate change in catastrophe damage data. There also doesn't seem to be a trend toward stronger heatwaves in the US, despite this summer's drought. Indeed, the data shows that droughts in the US have become shorter and less frequent in the last decades.

The scientific journal Nature recently underlined the weather problem in an editorial. Given the technical difficulties, perhaps it doesn't make sense to automatically lump these problems together with climate change, it says. "Especially in poor countries, the losses arising from extreme weather have often as much to do with poverty, poor health and government corruption as with a change in climate."

Meanwhile, leading politicians repeatedly attempt to use natural disasters as evidence for man-made climate change. More intense weather extremes have become a "new reality," European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard said in September. Climate change is the "new normal," she added.

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