Recently in Duh Winning Category

Joannenova.com

I kid you not. Chris Mooney at Desmog has got the data that shows skeptics were more literate and numerate than believers, and he wants to share it.

Last week, an intriguing study emerged from Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale and elsewhere-finding that knowing more about science, and being better at mathematical reasoning, was related to more climate science skepticism and denial-rather than less.

When faced with the news that smarter more mathematical people were skeptical of man-made global warming, it's a sure bet that as a Desmogger, he would fail to reach the obvious conclusion. Are believers gullible fools who can't see the flaws in the reasoning? No. Skeptics are more literate and numerate about everything else, except for climate science, when they become dangerously overconfident and seek only to use their intellect to punch holes in the theory. Its not like these bright types have anything else to do is it? Of course.

Read the rest of the article here.

By Juan Williams, thehill.com

Even after they fired me, called me a bigot and publicly advised me to only share my thoughts with a psychiatrist, I did not call for defunding NPR. I am a journalist, and NPR is an important platform for journalism.

But last week my line of defense for NPR ran into harsh political realities. Rep. Steve Israel (D- N.Y.) chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising letter with the following argument for maintaining public funding of NPR:

"They [Republicans] know NPR plays a vital role in providing quality news programming -- from rural radio stations to in-depth coverage of foreign affairs. If the Republicans had their way, we'd only be left with the likes of Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to dominate the airwaves."

With that statement, Congressman Israel made the case better than any Republican critic that NPR is radio by and for liberal Democrats. He is openly asking liberal Democrats to give money to liberal Democrats in Congress so they can funnel federal dollars into news radio programs designed to counter and defeat conservative Republican voices.

The rest of the article.

By Glen Hodgson, CottageCountryCow.ca Eccocentric

It has been a pet peeve of mine that ever since the debate began about the potential catastrophic effects of excessive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, people have dubbed the problem with the misleading misnomer of "Global Warming".

While we shiver through another -20°C day, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who feels at this stage of the year that a little planetary warming would be a bad thing. With the exception of those that really enjoy snowmobiling and ice-fishing, a shorter winter would probably be seen as a good thing by many.

I have also heard the argument that global warming will be beneficial to Canada since it will open much more land to agriculture since only a small part of this country has temperatures warm enough to sustain a solid growing season for most crops. Indeed, if we really were lucky, we may be able to start growing our own oranges and bananas and could avoid costly imports from other countries.

This is what makes me cringe and why I take great pains in every conversation I have to correct the terminology and replace the term "global warming" with "climate change", a more accurate descriptor of what is really happening.

TGDaily

Frequent periods of intense global warming took place in the distant past, say researchers at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Professor of geology Richard Norris said that these 'hyperthermal' events were probably triggered by releases of carbon dioxide sequestered in the deep oceans. Most raised average global temperatures between 3.6 and 5.4 degrees Farenheit - comparable to conservative estimates of temperature rises over the next few years from manmade global warming.

Most hyperthermals lasted about 40,000 years before temperatures returned to normal. They took place roughly every 400,000 years during a warm period of Earth history around 50 million years ago.

The strongest coincided with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, in which global temperatures rose between 7.2 and 12.6 degrees Farenheit. It took 200,000 years to return to normal.

CBSNews.com

Maybe it's the condition of the economy. Or our fascination with the latest exploits of Charlie Sheen. But this much is certain: when it comes to concerns about global warming, the American people aren't especially concerned. And when they are asked for their opinion, a big divide shows up based upon their political affiliation.

In the most recent Gallup poll, Democrats were found to be 40 percentage points more likely to register concern about global warming than Republicans. They were also 35 percentage points more likely to agree that global warming was caused by humans.

On the whole, Gallup found that 51% of Americans said that they "worry a great deal or fair amount" about global warming, compared with 66% just three years ago.