The bad news is that as a news junkie, I watch Jon Stewart and Colbert who watch, digest, and spit out the best moments from the (un)Fair and (un)Balanced network.
When even the folks at Scientific American begin to write about Faux News, well, we are in very deep shit thanks to Fox Noose:
On the August 6 edition of Fox and Friends Saturday, the hosts interviewed Joe Bastardi—whom they introduced as “chief meteorologist at WeatherBell”—on global warming.
Before introducing Bastardi the hosts said that the global warming debate was heating up “after a new NASA study seems to debunk whether it’s actually manmade.” No further details were provided. Instead, as evidence the hosts provided the results of a poll. But presumably the Fox presenters were referring to a study that has created a lot of controversy and media hype.
The most jarring part however came later, when Bastardi commented that he didn’t believe CO2 emissions could ever affect the climate. Unfortunately, Bastardi’s argument was based on what seemed to be poor understanding of basic physics, including thermodynamics and atmospheric physics.
Hey, if the "lamestream" physics doesn't work, then invent your own, Folks News:
Bastardi claimed that the idea of manmade global warming is incompatible with the laws of physics.
“[Saying that CO2 could affect the climate] contradicts what we call the first law of thermodynamics: energy can never be created nor destroyed,” Bastardi said. “So, to look for an input of energy into the atmosphere you have to come from a foreign source.” His prepared remarks were accompanied by screens that seemed to display an intent from the TV show to be pedagogical.
The first law of thermodynamics does indeed guarantee conservation of energy. And the CO2 injected into the atmosphere does not carry energy with it—or rather, it does, because matter always carries energy, but not in a way that would raise temperatures significantly, if at all. But no one has ever claimed that CO2 would raise temperature by itself. Putting it this way is a grotesque distortion of what climatologists say.
What climate science says is not that CO2 carries energy into the atmosphere or somehow magically generates it out of nowhere. Instead, it says that CO2 and other gases acts as a blanket, keeping heat from escaping into space. This, as Bastardi should know, is called the greenhouse effect.
All in a day's work!
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