Re: [asa] Rush Falls for Global Warming Denier Hoax

On 11/12/07, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> At 09:59 AM 11/12/2007, Rich Blinne wrote:
>
> <Gomer Pile voice> Surprise, surprise, surprise </Gomer Pile voice>, Rush
> fell into a global warming denier hoax on November 8. Even his fellow
> skeptics quickly smelled a rat (by the name of David Thorpe). The hoaxer's
> classification of two kinds of climate skeptics is a good one and why we
> should not be reposting freepers because many of them do not have a "good
> and transparent understanding of science and economics". <Gomer Pile
> voice> Surprise, surprise, surprise </Gomer Pile voice> FROM: Roy W.
> Spencer I sent an e-mail to Rush about the issue regarding the hoax, with a
> copy of the "research study". Unfortunately, *my very brief note to Rush
> was not very clear, and he thought that I was calling global warming a hoax,
> rather than the study. - I feel that better wording on my part would have
> prevented this from happening. -Roy W. Spencer *
>
>
Spencer was being kind. Here's an example from Rush where he shows he gets
the science mixed up real quickly:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_071807/content/01125110.guest.html

> RUSH: Nate in Buffalo, I'm glad you called, sir. Welcome to the EIB
> Network.
>
> CALLER: Hey, Rush, pleasure to talk with you.
>
> RUSH: Thank you, sir.
>
> CALLER: We disagree on a lot of things. I know this study came out
> saying that the sun was not the cause of global warming. I know you
> disagreed with that. But I was just wondering, do you know what the first
> two planets were closest to the sun?
>
> RUSH: The closest planets to the sun are Mercury and Venus.
>
> CALLER: Yeah. Well, Venus is much warmer than mercury even though it's
> farther away from the sun and I guess that wouldn't make much sense, but
> it's because of the gases that are in the atmosphere.
>
> RUSH: Well, but there are geophysical reasons that we can learn from the
> first glacial age on our own planet to explain this.
>
> CALLER: What is that?
>
> RUSH: Well, one thing, you can't compare the atmospheres of the earth to
> especially Venus, nor Mercury. And, by the way, *I'm not willing to
> concede that Venus is hotter*, *but if it is, then it has things to do
> with circumstances that do not exist on this planet at all. * [Emphasis
> mine]

The reason why Venus is hotter than Mercury even though it is farther away
from the Sun is because of the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere. Because Rush
doesn't understand the (undergraduate if not high school) physics here it
makes him prone to fall for such hoaxes and confuse real hoaxes with
imaginary ones.

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Received on Mon Nov 12 14:19:12 2007