Last week, Weather Channel founder and global warming denier John Coleman penned an article claiming global warming is a “scam.” Yesterday, CNN’s Glenn Beck hosted Coleman to discuss the “bullcrap” behind global warming. In the segment, Coleman claimed that global warming is “myth” and “bogus science”:

When I looked at the hockey stick graph…it showed a steady lying temperature throughout the millenium and then a sudden rise, I knew that that was incorrect. I knew it couldn’t possibly be. … And I found out it was bogus science. It wasn’t real. The numbers had been massaged. The whole thing had been created.

Watch it:

The right wing has been touting Coleman’s claims as refutation of global warming. On Friday, Newsbusters attacked ThinkProgress for criticizing Coleman, claiming we had taken “climate alarmism to absurd degrees.” ThinkProgress, Newsbusters said, should treat Coleman as a “high profile member of the weather reporting community” with legitimate views on climate change.

In reality, Coleman’s views place him in the discredited fringe of global warming deniers — the modern day equivalent of those who believe the Earth is flat. As Science Magazine noted, in addition to the IPCC and National Academy of Sciences, there is overwhelming agreement about the causes of global warming:

In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. … The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.

Coleman, a meteorologist, has been rebuked by his parent association, the American Meteorological Association, as well as his “baby,” The Weather Channel.

Coleman cites no scientific evidence for his claims in his original article. “I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct,” he says to prove his point. If Coleman believes global warming is a “scam,” then he should bring peer-reviewed scientific proof to the table.

Newbusters and the right wing, however, are satisfied in relying on Coleman’s resume as a weatherman, insisting that his fringe views be given equal consideration with the world’s established scientific consensus.

Today, President Bush sat down for an approximately 30-minute interview with Fox Business Channel. Toward the end of the interview, host David Asman asked Bush, “What do you think, looking back, your greatest hit was? Where you really hit one out of the park. And what do you think your greatest error was?”

Bush replied, “Success, there’s been a lot.” But he refused to reveal his greatest error, instead saying that he was disappointed Congress blocked his Social Security plan:

BUSH: Well, I would rather go disappointments, rather than errors. The disappointment is not getting a Social Security package, Social Security reform, because that truly is the big deficit issue. I’m sorry it didn’t happen. I laid out a plan to make it happen — to enable it to happen. I was the first president to have addressed it as specifically as I did. I wish Congress wasn’t so risk-averse on the issue.

Watch it:

Self-reflection and admitting mistakes aren’t strengths of Bush administration officials. In April 2004, Bush famously froze when asked to name the biggest mistake of his presidency. “I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it,” he told the reporter. “Maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.”

Others in his administration haven’t fared any better in answering the same question. In Nov 2006, Alberto Gonzales said that he couldn’t think of a single mistake he’d made while serving Bush during the last six years. “I think that you and I would — I’d have to spend some time thinking about that,” he said. In March, when asked about the administration’s biggest mistake in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice replied, “I don’t know. When we look back over time we will know the answer to that question.”

Bush may be unsure about where he will stand in history, but historians are already debating his legacy. As Rolling Stone recently noted, “Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.”

Transcript: Read more

A new American Research Group poll finds that 55 percent of voters believe President Bush has “abused his powers” in a manner that rises “to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution,” yet just 34 percent believe he should actually be impeached. Fifty-two percent say that Vice President Cheney has similarly abused his powers, with 43 percent supporting impeachment.

Digg It!

President Bush’s controversial Surgeon General nominee, Dr. James Holsinger, has resigned from the board of trustees of the Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY. From a seminary e-mail:

From: Communication Office [at Asbury Seminary]
To: ATS Info, Staff News, Faculty News
Subject: Announcement from the Board of Trustees
November 12, 2007 3:53PM

The Asbury Theological Seminary Board of Trustees met on November 12, 2007. The board discussed the resignation letters submitted by Dr. James Holsinger and Mr. Phillip Connolly. Following this discussion and prayer, the board voted unanimously to receive these resignation letters with regret.

We realize from time to time board members resign before the end of a their term, however we have a deep appreciation for the many years of service, dedication and commitment of Dr. Holsinger and Mr. Connolly. The board of trustees wishes them both all the best in their future endeavors.

The Board of Trustees

Holsinger is resigning before the end of his term. A source in Wilmore tells Bible Belt Blogger that Holsinger is resigning because he expects to be recess appointed as Surgeon General:

Holsinger’s nomination, opposed by several leading Democrats, has stalled in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. But Holsinger is telling people the president plans to appoint him to the post anyway once the Congress goes into its holiday recess.

Holsinger has come under intense criticism for his long history of prejudice toward gays and lesbians. He founded a church that “ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian” and “opposed a decision to allow a practicing lesbian to be an associate pastor” in the United Methodist Church. In 1991, he also authored a graphic document arguing that gay sex is “intuitively” unnatural and can lead to “lacerations, perforations and deaths.”

Last month, ThinkProgress noted that three months after his July hearing, Holsinger has still not responded to a Senate health committee follow-up questionnaire. Without his answers, the committee has not scheduled a vote on his nomination. Looks like the committee might never receive a response from Holsinger now.

Newsweek has announced that DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas “will become a Newsweek contributor for the 2008 presidential campaign, offering occasional opinion pieces to the pages of the magazine and to Newsweek.com.” Kos also reports that Newsweek plans to “balance” his contributions with a conservative.

Speaking of New York Times columnists, I like that Bob Herbert today goes beyond questions of signaling and dog whistles to look at the policies:

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Congress overrode the veto.

Reagan also vetoed the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Congress overrode that veto, too.

Now whether Reagan pursued these policies inimical to the interests of black people because he didn’t like black people or because he simply adhered to free market principles whose policy upshot was inimical to the interests of black people, I couldn’t say. These days, I think a politician whose sincere views about the sanctity of the market led him to the conclusion that landmark civil rights legislation was a serious violation of the demands of political justice would just lie about it, much as Ronald Reagan never proposed eliminating Medicare though surely whatever principles drove his push to reduce anti-poverty spending (and if you look at the poverty numbers, you’ll see that poverty in the Reagan-Bush years was consistently worse than under Nixon-Ford-Carter or Clinton-Bush) would also have indicated that Medicare should be gotten rid of.