Global warming debunked! As you were...

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I don't mean to harp on Matt Drudge. Wait, yes I do. Anyway, it's no secret that he's merely an extension of the RNC, but of course he paints himself as objective, saying, "he just goes where the stories are."

Sure.

His gossip blog is visited by millions every day, so I drop by at least once a day to see what the Right is reporting.

Anyway, this is what I woke to this morning.

Of course, John McCain using the f-bomb is the most important story of the day. I also got a kick out of the fact that Fox News labels Michael Moore's latest movie, SiCKO, which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, "brilliant and uplifting." (More on that later.)

But, what I found particularly amusing was the headline, "Climate expert says 'it's time to attack the myth of global warming.'"

I wonder just how many people see that headline, store it away as fact, and move on without even clicking on the story to see the exact source of this blarney.

I clicked the link, and I was taken to a Website called the Timaru Herald. It took some clicking, but I soon found out that this "expert" is merely a meteorologist, and the newspaper is based in New Zealand.

I don't know much about the newspaper, but something tells me it resembles The Washington Times here in the U.S. - a thoroughly irrelevant right-wing tip sheet that is merely the laughingstock of journalism in our nation's capital.

I don't like to copy/paste whole articles, but this is a relatively short article, so it's worth it (the original article can be found Here):

Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.

Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried, he maintained.

"We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.

A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it.

"It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.

"We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."

Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as "The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2" and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.

"The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?

"It's become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt," he said.

So, a weatherman has debunked global warming, huh?

One can picture Drudge (or a team of crack researchers) hunched over computers looked for the most mundane, obscure article which contains someone, ANYONE who says that global warming is a myth.

When he finds one (like the article above), he links it to his Website, and viola! Global warming is a myth. In the last 24 hours, 13,220,669 people (as of 12:43 this afternoon) have visited his Website. (According to him - I have no way in verifying this fact.) Even if half that number have actually visited, it's a big number.

So, conceivably, 13 million people potentially have it in their minds that global warming is a myth. Nah - let's say that 1/4 actually believe that.

It just strikes me as absurd.

It's not a stretch to say that Drudge is the Fox News of the Internet. It's altogether startling, amazing and amusing that people read this stuff and could actually believe it.

Drudge's job (aided by frequent conversations with the RNC) is to just place doubt about issues like global warming. If he can just plant the seeds of doubt, he'll have accomplished his mission.