As IF Times

link Climate Scientists Warn Opportunity to Prevent Dangerous Warming Is Dwindling | PBS NewsHour | Sept. 27, 2013 | PBS.

And in other news, Harold Camping, the broadcast preacher who famously predicted the end of the world in 2011 has died.  From CNN:

“…When his May 21 prediction failed to pan out, Camping took the radio airwaves to say that he had misinterpreted the nature of the rapture but that the world would still end on October 21.  The following year, Camping admitted he was wrong and said he was getting out of the forecasting business.

“We humbly acknowledge we were wrong,” Camping and his staff members wrote in a letter to supporters posted on Family Radio’s website in March 2012.

“We must also openly acknowledge that we have no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world. Though many dates are circulating, Family Radio has no interest in even considering another date.”

Camping founded Family Radio, a nonprofit Christian radio network with about 65 stations across the country, in 1958. It received $80 million in contributions between 2005 and 2009.He first inaccurately predicted the world would end in 1994. Despite his poor track record, he had gathered many followers. Some gave up their homes, entire life savings and jobs because they believed the world was ending…”

Ironically, Camping attempted to predict the world’s end but could not pinpoint his own demise.  Business strategists will note some fatal flaws in his model.  While many elements of his prognostications were sound, including the ability to raise money off of gullible peoples’ irrational fears, a fatal flaw was that there was a specific date (actually 2 specific dates ) attached to his forecasts.  This instantly kiboshed the program once the date came and went.  The other fatal flaw was the inability to rope the government into supporting his cause.  It’s one thing to preach fear as an individual, it’s much more effective if it’s state sponsored.

The Climate Change, nee Global Warming crowd have been much shrewder in their campaign.  While at the beginning, the timeline for the end was stated as “about” 20 years, the more common technique is to now invoke the classic “time is running out” schedule.  They perhaps learned from Camping that predicting the world’s end is a somewhat imprecise science.  In fact, the very reality that global temperatures have not been warming, but apparently cooling have allowed the loonies to now spin this as Climate Change.   Whereas the fanatics try to fix the image of an hourglass with dwindling sand grains in the public’s eyes, the real model they work on is the infinite loop…there is never an end.  This is pure business gold.  Any scenario can be taken as proof of Climate Change.  Snow in Cairo? AH HA!

I have to say, the longevity of the perpetration of this obvious fraud is truly amazing.  Much has to do with the way that stories are presented to the naïve public.  In the linked article for example, it says “scientists” as if to imply solidarity within the scientific community, when actually it means 3 guys: Michael Oppenheimer, the guy interviewed in the article,  Professor Plum and Dr. Irwin Corey, he of the Cadbury caramilk bar secret fame.

It’s also common to refer to observed “changes” in ocean levels, to depletion of arctic ice, to bees counted, to penguins missing etc etc in support of their dire views.  Al Gore doesn’t even rely on those bits of spurious evidence.  He confidently states that global warming is like gravity, it just is.

A guy like Harold Camping passes and the hysteria dies with him.  Sadly this virus of stupidity will not die with the passing of Al Gore or any of his acolytes.  The infection as been spread throughout the education system so that at a very young age, the cult of Climate Change has already lodged itself into the psyches of the next generation.   Years from now, 4 sunny days in a row will cause massive weeping and moaning in schoolyards.  It will be a full generation at least before this sickness gets flushed from the system.

link More than half of Americans back Obamas Koran apology | Reuters.

When you first read this headline, the natural response is, HUH??  That is until you read further into the article and find out that sample size is a whopping 1143 people…online.  That’s not even a population size large enough to cover Sandra Fluke’s activities at Georgetown.  The average person will not figure this out.  The headline will stick with them and before you know it, the narrative is that half of the population of over 300 million people in the U.S. are supportive of Obama’s apology for the burning of someone’s religious books.   This is the same crazed logic that brought us Climate Change, (nee Global Warming) because someone thought some penguins were missing.

Reuters has not historically been a dubious news source, but when they print outright laughers like this story, it casts skepticism on all of their news stories.  It is unclear when they made the decision to move into the tabloid business.  I guess this particular headline sells more than “Insignificant sample of online geeks think Obama apology is a good idea”.   This headline is the political equivalent of a “Lindsay Lohan Goes Wild” story in the entertainment hype pages.  This so called conclusion cannot even be characterized as a leap of logic, it more closely resembles someone being fired from a cannon into the next county logic.

If statistics are to be deployed in support of some conclusion, then the authors should at least be bright enough to use some valid ones.   Or at least have more respect for the intelligence of their readers.   Interestingly enough, during the 2008 Presidential election, a convincing 96% of Black voters pulled the lever for Obama according to Politico.   This same survey showed that 54% of young white voters also voted for Obama.  To this day, many will deny that these statistics are any indication of racially influenced voting.  I suppose there’s always that 4%.  This same leap of logic is being used to characterize the Occupy Wall Street crowd as the “99%”, a narrative that some math challenged people actually buy.

We conclude then, that journalism schools do not have a mandatory introductory course on statistics as part of their curriculum.   If ‘journalists’ insist on quoting statistics to support their arguments, this should be a minimum requirement.  Otherwise, just stick to telling stories using creative writing skills.  At the very least, there should be disclaimers at the end of stories similar to what you see attached to the end of pharmaceutical commercials wherein all the possible risks are listed.  In the case of news stories, they can say something like, ” statistics quoted may or may not have any connection to the intended conclusion, they are only added to imply validity”.