Michael Ryan regurgitates Conservative Bloggers' Lies about Global Warming

Re: "Today's forecast: Increased doubt," from the February 16th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I can't find the original source of these lies. There are many conservative bloggers in addition to Fox News pundits who have been giving misleading interpetations of some comments made by Phil Jones, a British climate scientist. Nevertheless, this column is potentially another example of Mr. Ryan's plagiarism. I'm 100% sure he didn't come up with the idea to intentionally mislead people about what Dr. Jones said. Here are the facts:

Mr. Ryan (repeating what many other conservative bloggers and Fox News pundits said and wrote) claimed that Dr. Jones said that there has been no significant warming since 1995 and that the earth may have been warmer in medieval times.

According to www.realclimate.org, this is what Dr. Jones actually said. "While the globe has nominally warmed since 1995, it is difficult to establish the statistical significance of that warming given the short nature of the time interval (1995-present)."

That's a big difference from what conservative bloggers are claiming. In other words Dr. Jones is merely stating that the time interval wasn't long enough to determine whether the warming (which is occurring) is of statistical significance. Conservatives try to make it sound like no warming is occurring. Furthermore, Dr. Jones said there isn't enough data to determine whether the earth may have been warmer in medieval times, not as conservatives claim, he was saying it may have been warmer. BTW, that the earth was warmer during medieval times is fed into climate scientists' models, so this isn't some big gotcha point.

Mr. Ryan's column cites a poll showing that 29% of meteorologists think global warming is a scam, and he comes to the conclusion that the science is in doubt. This is another sample of Mr. Ryan's stupidity. Meteorologists are not climate scientists. Most are not even college graduates. Meteorologists are basically pretty people trained to forecast short term weather. Their main attribute is to look good in front of the camera.

Mr. Ryan notes, as further evidence casting doubt on global warming, some typos in the IPCC report. A few typos in a scientific report don't disprove greenhouse gas theory. This is a pretty asinine claim.

And finally, Mr. Ryan states, "Now that there is considerable doubt about the data being relied upon to push such policies (cap and trade, etc.)..."

This last statement is just wrong. There is no debate within the scientific community that man is contributing to global warming. The debate is entirely political with conservatives taking the anti-science side. The best proof of this is that Mr. Ryan's column is on the political opinion page--not a scientific journal.

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Re: "Don't cry for Bayh," from the February 18th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I don't take issue with the main point of this editorial--that Bayh really quit because he was being more seriously challenged than the media reported. I take issue with Mr. Ryan's statement that "Bayh bows out after a year of consistent votes for the far left and wildly unpopular Obama agenda."

What far left agenda could that be? Does Mr. Ryan mean the tax cuts for 95% of Americans, the increase in troops sent to Afghanistan, or the approval of two nuclear power plants in Burke County that the Mr. Ryan supported in the column above this one. Oh yeah, that sounds like a real far-left agenda.

And if Obama's agenda is so unpopular, how did he get elected just last year?

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I guess Mr. Ryan thinks he needs support. The guest editorial written by James Sanderson is merely a regurgitation of Mr. Ryan's lies about cap and trade causing job losses. The biggest lie in this column is when Mr. Sanderson wrote that democrats are raising taxes on people. No they aren't. They reduced taxes on 95% of us.

I happen to disagree with tax cuts at the current time. I think taxes should be increased on everybody too, but especially the rich. I know that's unpopular, but taxes are always unpopular. That doesn't make them unnecessary.

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Star Parker's column ("Social Security reform cooking again after years on the back burner.")from February 16th is just stupid. In this column she demonstrates her ignorance over where payroll taxes go. She writes as if it goes into the Social Security fund. There is no Social Security fund--payroll taxes go into the general tax fund along with income taxes.

She remarks how Social Security and Medicare "reflects the inevitable failure of social engineering." She needs to study census statistics on poverty rates which have dropped decisively since these programs have been implemented.

Star Parker is just an idiot hypocrite as I've noted on earlier blogs. She's alive today, thanks to the social programs she's so critical of. Without them, she would've likely starved to death long ago.