Saturday, April 03, 2010

Fox News Falls for Global Warming Hoax

There is a hoax news story doing the rounds:

Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death in Antarctica

Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing", recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. "There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, 'HELP-COLD'."

One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His wife, Linda, said that she had heard him discussing the trip with his environmental activist friends, but she assumed that he was talking about the Greenland ice sheet, a much smaller ice sheet than Antarctica.

Yes it is quite funny. But even more fun the the deluge of joy the death of a person set off in the denialoshpere... They simply could not contain their joy. Here's a couple of samples from the amateur comedy session it set off:

Or maybe they thought that South Pole polar bears would snuggle up to them and keep them warm.

There ain't no loon, like a Global Warming loon.

I GUESS THESE BRILLIANT SCIENTISTS DIDNT HAVE BIG NANNY TO TELL THEM TO PUT ON A COAT


Ho ho! Death! Funny! Ha ha!

Anyhow, that bastion of error-checking and accuracy Fox News fell for this one hook-line-and-sinker, but they have deleted the post how, however the all-seeing Google cache has still caught it.

As for spotting a hum-dinger of a hoax story - c'mon 2 seconds Googling the famed guy's name tells you all you need to know - plus the details of the story are very silly. Oh yeah - that and the date the story was timed to the the internet - the 1st April.

Hmmm; it's almost as if these news outlets and bloggers are ready to believe any old shit provided it appears to validate their political ideology??

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You see, freedom is truth, truth is freedom, the truth shall set you free (veritas liberabit vos), and all that. With their freedom the inactivists have decided that global warming is a hoax, and since it was decided by their freedom, it must therefore be true, ergo any 'story' that appears to show global warming as a hoax must be true, because it is freedom.

Fact-checking? Sounds like a mind control plot.

Richard Mercer said...

I wonder how many viewers of Fox news realize that their favorite "climate expert", Steve Milloy, is a professional PR man and a registered and paid lobbyist for fossil fuel interests. No scientific background whatsoever.