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Right Wing Doctors Audio Clips To Distort Al Gore’s Comments About Cyclone Nargis

By Brad Johnson on May 9, 2008 at 4:37 pm

Drudge Gore Cyclone headlines

One week ago, Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck Burma, tracing an unprecedented path of devastation across this poor nation of 55 million, called Myanmar by its military dictatorship. On May 6, Jeff Poor wrote for the Business & Media Institute (BMI) a story entitled, “Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming,” which was subsequently linked on the Drudge Report. Poor claims:

Using tragedy to advance an agenda has been a strategy for many global warming activists, and it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to tie the recent Myanmar cyclone to global warming.

Poor wrote that Gore said in an interview on National Public Radio, “The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.” (Listen here.)

In fact, the audio clip has been doctored and the conclusion that “Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming” is false:

Gore Says Myanmar Cyclone Not A Consequence Of Global Warming. The BMI headline ignores that Gore says in the interview that “any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming – we’ve always had hurricanes.”

Gore Properly Described Relationship Between Storms And Global Warming. In the interview, Gore discussed Nargis and the devastating storms that struck China in 2006 (Typhoon Saomai) and Bangladesh in 2007 (Cyclone Sidr). He goes on to say that “the emerging consensus” among climate scientists is that the “the trend toward stronger and more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming, and specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful.”

Story Presents False Clip Of Interview. The audio clip included with the online story includes two segments that have been spliced together, out of order, to mislead the listener as to Gore’s actual meaning. The actual transcript (see below) makes it clear Gore was saying that the “consequences” of global warming we’re seeing was the melting of the polar ice cap, which is unequivocally due to anthropogenic climate change.

Business & Media Institute Is Part Of Right-Wing Message Machine. BMI is a right-wing “free-enterprise” front group that is part of Brent Bozell’s conservative media machine, the Media Research Center. Poor describes himself on his Facebook page as a “professional jerk” with “very conservative” political views.

The actual transcript reveals that Gore was speaking in response to a question about conservative pastor John Hagee’s claim in a 2006 interview with Terry Gross that “Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

Poor’s story is being amplified and further distorted by the right-wing media machine. This morning, the Fox News “Fox and Friends” team covered the devastation of Nargis by attacking Gore’s “ill-advised” comments, claiming he is “in hot water again with climatologists.” Steve Doocy hosted Dr. William Gray, who has claimed that manmade global warming is “a big scam.” Here are Doocy’s two questions to Dr. Gray:

Al Gore says that the cyclone that’s killed a lot of people linked to global warming. Is that accurate?

When Al Gore says the big cyclone has killed all those people because of global warming, that’s, according to you, just wrong.

Watch it:

The people truly guilty of “using tragedy to advance an agenda” are Pastor Hagee, Jeff Poor, Matt Drudge, Steve Doocy, and their conservative ilk.

Digg It!

UPDATE: HT Dr. Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground Wunder Blog: Sea surface temperatures were over a full degree Celsius above average in the region where Nargis intensified before landfall, as can be seen from this May 1 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration satellite map:

UPDATE II: Glenn Beck pushed the false story on his CNN show on May 7, and Media Matters exposes that Brett Baier claimed on the May 8 edition of Fox News Special Report: “Former Vice President Al Gore says global warming is to blame for the cyclone in Myanmar.”

UPDATE III: From ConWebBlog:

Poor’s BMI article now notes a “clarification” that “The original audio for this story included two accurate audio clips but placed in the incorrect order. They are now included on this story as separate clips.” Poor posted a version of his article at NewsBusters, but it doesn’t mention that Gore said that “any individual storm can’t be linked singularly to global warming,” it contains the original misleading out-of-order audio clip, and it contains no “clarification.”

Actual Transcript of Al Gore’s Interview with Terry Gross: Read more

Politics

Anti-Pork McCain Speaks At New Jersey Museum Funded By Nearly $1 Million In Earmarks

By Satyam Khanna on May 9, 2008 at 4:27 pm

mccain382.jpgOne of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) signature campaign pledges is to “do away” with the “pork-barrel-laden bills” from the past few years. Today, McCain held an event at Liberty Science Center, the “most visited museum in New Jersey and one of the most intensively used in the country,” to discuss his environmental agenda.

But McCain’s event at Liberty Science Center conflicts with his promise to abolish earmarks from the federal budget. The museum, in fact, has been the beneficiary of multiple federal earmarks. For example, the Office of Management and Budget reported that in FY2005, the museum received $500,000 from a NASA earmark request:

An increase of $500,000 to the Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey for the Hudson Harbor and Estuary Ecological Learning Center.

In FY2006, Liberty received another earmark, this time at $250,000, according to Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).

Several of McCain’s campaign events have been set at places funded by “pork.” Last month, on the same day he called earmarks “an egregious process,” McCain spoke at a Florida air field that had received almost $10 million in earmarked funds between 2001 and 2005. He also rode on the ferry in Gee’s Bend, AL, a project funded by a federal earmark in the 2005 Transportation/Treasury Appropriations Act.

On May 1, McCain held a health care event at the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, PA. There, he met a woman with ovarian cancer who was treated “in a $80 million clinical trial program funded by an earmark.” McCain then backtracked from his anti-earmark crusade, simply stating, “It’s the process I object to.”

But that excuse doesn’t hold up for the Liberty Science Center. CAGW reported that in 2006, NASA “added $273 million in earmarks, in conference, without a budget request from the agency.” These regular appearances at earmark-funded projects reflect the lack of thought in McCain’s plan to wholly abolish federal earmarking.

Yglesias

It Takes Two

By ThinkProgress on May 9, 2008 at 4:24 pm

David Brooks has an interesting column about David Cameron and his successful repositioning of the Tory Party in the UK. He concludes:

Cameron describes a new global movement, with rising center-right parties in Sweden, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, California and New York (he admires Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg). American conservatives won’t simply import this model. But there’s a lot to learn from it. The only question is whether Republicans will learn those lessons sooner, or whether they will learn them later, after a decade or so in the wilderness.

Ultimately, my hope would be to see the GOP reposition sooner rather than later. The way American political institutions work, it’s very difficult to govern on a pure party line basis. I would prefer European-style institutions, but we don’t have them. Consequently, a hard-right GOP — even a hard-right GOP minority — can make progressive change extremely difficult, whereas a more moderate GOP would make it easier to do things, even if that more moderate GOP were more electorally successful. Many conservatives will, I assume, agree with me about this and therefore want to resist the sort of changes Brooks favors.

Climate Progress

Hadley Center to deniers: We are STILL warming

By Joe Romm on May 9, 2008 at 4:03 pm

The top climate scientists at the UK’s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction get no respect. No matter how many times they try to explain that their data clearly shows the world is warming (see “Hadley Center to delayers: We’re warming, not cooling“), people, including those commenting on this very blog, keep insisting their data shows otherwise (see here).

As I wrote before, the 8 warmest years in the 150 global temperature record are, according to the Hadley Center, in order, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007. After the Hadley folk wrote a bunch of essays debunking standard denier myths (see here and below), they actually felt compelled to publish another piece on April 29 (here), pointing out again:

The global climate is currently being influenced by the cold phase of this oscillation, known as La Ni±a (see Expert speaks on La Ni±a). The current La Ni±a began to develop in early 2007, having a significant cooling effect on the global average temperature. Despite this, 2007 was one of the ten warmest years since global records began in 1850 with a temperature some 0.4 °C above average. Indeed, the years 2001-2007 recorded an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average, which is 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the years 1991-2000.

Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far as the cooling effects of La Ni±a are concerned. The global temperature in 1999 was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 was 0.37 °C above this average – 0.11 °C warmer than 1999.

[Hadley doesn't even mention we are at a temporary solar irradiance minimum, which subtracts "no more than about 0.1°C," according to NASA (see "Hansen throws cold water on cooling climate claim.")]

hadley3.gif

And the Hadley folk predicted last year in Science (see here) that short-term warming is about to accelerate (just as the recent Nature article did, see here), and they reiterated that prediction in their April 29 post:

Read more

Politics

Starbucks dubbed ‘Slutbucks’ by Christian group because of new logo.

By Ben Armbruster on May 9, 2008 at 3:45 pm

In order to compete with less expensive varieties of coffee, Starbucks recently introduced a new roast in order “to shift toward emphasizing brewed coffee.” As part of the campaign, the Seattle-based company re-introduced its 1971 brown-and-white logo that features a two-tailed mermaid. Apparently, the mermaid has caused an uproar because one Christian group has now called for a Starbucks boycott:

starbucksweb3.jpg“The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” explains alarmist Mark Dice, of a Christian group called The Resistance. “Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.“

Jen Phillips at MoJo blog notes, “The fact that Dice doesn’t get the difference between a fin and a foot may be an example of what abstinence-only funding does to education.”

Politics

Public Opinion on the Court

By ThinkProgress on May 9, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Via Lang at OpenLeft, here’s a roundup of public opinion on the Supreme Court which shows that a plurality of people like the Court fine as is, but the number of people who think it’s too conservative is substantially larger than the number of people who think it’s too liberal.

Conservatives seem convinced that vacuous posturing against “judicial activism” is a winning issue, but I’m not sure there’s much data to back that up.

Economy

John McCain: Lost In Translation?

By Guest Blogger on May 9, 2008 at 3:03 pm

Our guest blogger is Dan Restrepo, the Director of The Americas Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

John McCain wants English to be the national language, but apparently not until after November.

Not only is he cutting ads in Spanish, he clearly hopes those ads don’t reach too many bilingual Latinos. Otherwise, they might notice he is trying to have it both ways on immigration policy again.

In the English narration of his latest Spanish-language ad, McCain touts “pro-innovation immigration policies” — something far less objectionable to Tancredo-Sensenbrenner conservatives than his pre-flip flop immigration position.

The Spanish text that appears simultaneous to that declaration trumpets “Immigration Policy Innovation” (or under the most generous possible translation, “Innovation in Immigration Policy,”) something that reads a lot like he is still supporting the comprehensive immigration reform he has since turned his back on and which enjoys overwhelming support among Latinos (and the population writ large). Watch the ad:

Either McCain needs Spanish lessons or he needs to stop trying to have it both ways on immigration. You must be either for or against practical, effective immigration reform. You can’t rely on the myth that Spanish-speaking Hispanics don’t understand English to attempt to pull the wool over their eyes while trying not to offend your most extreme base.

Security

New CBO Report Proves McCain Is ‘Full Of It’ In His Opposition To Webb-Hagel GI Bill

By Faiz Shakir on May 9, 2008 at 2:48 pm

ap080228027225.jpg Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and the Pentagon have voiced their opposition to the bipartisan Webb-Hagel GI Bill by spouting fears that “too many will use it,” and it will therefore “harm” the military.

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report analyzing the impact of the GI Bill shows that McCain is indeed “full of it.” While the report explains that troop retention will decline because some troops will take advantage of their new education benefits, the loss in retention will be entirely made up for by increased military recruits:

Literature on the effects of educational benefits on retention suggest that every $10,000 increase in educational benefits yields a reduction in retention of slightly more than 1 percentage point. CBO estimates that S. 22 (as modified) would more than double the present value of educational benefits for servicemembers at the first reenlistment point — from about $40,000 to over $90,000 — implying a 16 percent decline in the reenlistment rate, from about 42 percent to about 36 percent. […]

Educational benefits have been shown to raise the number of military recruits. Based on an analysis of the existing literature, CBO estimates that a 10 percent increase in educational benefits would result in an increase of about 1 percent in high-quality recruits. On that basis, CBO calculates that raising the educational benefits as proposed in S. 22 would result in a 16 percent increase in recruits.

Ignoring the conclusion of the CBO report, the Army Times prints this deceptive headline suggesting that the GI Bill will only harm the military: “CBO: Better GI Bill would cut retention 16%.”

As Sen. John Warner (R-VA) has said, the flip side of the impact on retention is that “putting a big piece of cheese out there will induce more qualified people to join just to get this. It should be a tremendous incentive for recruitment.” If McCain and the Bush administration truly wanted to repair retention problems, they shouldn’t take benefits away from troops but rather — as Jon Soltz has said — “focus on the role of contractors, who continually snatch up troops, offering them up to 10 times their military pay to do a similar job in Iraq.”

Politics

No Disclosure for You

By ThinkProgress on May 9, 2008 at 2:41 pm

I missed the fact that a couple of days ago Cindy McCain reiterated that there would be no disclosure whatsoever of her tax returns, the very same returns on which all of her husband’s wealth has been stashed as well in order to avoid disclosure. Personally, I’m happy with that outcome. Normally, you want to know about the finances of your would-be presidents. But John McCain has such a sterling reputation as a reformer, that I’m sure they’re hiding all this not because they have anything to hide, but purely out of a principled concern for the privacy of their children.

Certainly, I see no reason for the press to keep dogging the McCains about this.

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