Media Matters:

While discussing the purported “Climategate” emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, Steve Doocy claimed that Jon Stewart “really took a shot at Al Gore,” then aired a clip of Stewart stating, “Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented.” But Doocy — in a possible violation of a recent Fox News memo on “Quality Control” — did not air Stewart’s subsequent statement in which he said the emails don’t “disprove global warming,” but do offer ammunition to global warming deniers.

Here is the video:

While gloating that a House Committee will hold a hearing on geoengineering next week, Dubner let this one slip:

While there is a lot of room for a lot of legitimate debate about many aspects of global warming, let us say one thing here: we believe that anyone who reads our chapter without an agenda wouldn’t even find it particularly controversial. They will see that we routinely address the concerns that critics accuse us of ignoring (the problem of ocean acidification, e.g., — touched upon in the previous chapter — and the “excuse to pollute” that geoengineering solutions might afford), and that we neither “misrepresent” climate scientists nor flub the facts.

Tim Lambert over at Deltoid bats this one down by quoting the entirety of what chapter 5 of Superfreakonomics says about ocean acidification:

[Caldeira] and a co-author coined the phrase ‘ocean acidification.’ the process by which the seas absorb so much carbon dioxide that corals and other shallow-water organisms are threatened.

Lambert also notes that those defending Superfreakonomics are almost all either GW deniers or completely clueless:

While Dubner has studiously avoided linking to any of the “attacks” he links to defences. Trouble is, the only defenders he has are global warming deniers like Bret “It’s a Mass Neurosis!” Stevens and Jonah “It’s the sun!” Goldberg, or people like Jon Stewart who admit that they don’t know anything about the subject.

Super-Freaking-Silly, if you ask me.

And while it is bad enough having respected economists, scientists and journalists tearing your work to shreds, having members of Congress do so is that much worse. Via Brad Johnson, here is a clip of Rep. Inslee doing so yesterday:

Here is the best part of that clip:

The second thing I want to note is this is not the only continuing effort to deceive the American public. I want to note a book called Freakonomics, or SuperFreakonomics, that some authors wrote, that basically said or asserted we don’t have to control CO2, we’ll just pump sulfur dioxide up into the atmosphere and that will solve the problem. They purported to quote a scientist named Ken Caldeira from Stanford who’s one of the predominant researchers in ocean acidification to suggest that Dr. Caldeira didn’t think we should control CO2. Which is an absolute deception. Dr. Caldeira I’ve spoken to personally. He’s told me we have to solve ocean acidification. You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.

Meanwhile, Things Break and Left as an Exercise continue documenting the atrocities as they unfold.

Not cool, funny man, not cool:

On last night’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart heaped praise on the contrarian approach to global warming taken by SuperFreakonomics author Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economist. Stewart was dismissive of the widespread criticism of Levitt and co-author Stephen Dubner, asking, “Have you stepped on a secular religion?” Stewart, often a tough interviewer, coddled Levitt, saying, “I’m sorry you’ve taken so much s**t for it.” He blamed the uproar over SuperFreakonomics on people who “feel you are betraying environmentalism.”

Here is the clip:

Stewart rightly concluded, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?” However, he failed to understand his mistake when he added that he had “apparently frightened our audience by suggesting that conservation isn’t the only way out of any of our problems.”

Stewart has excoriated other media darlings for their laissez-faire approach to serious issues, from Tucker Carlson to Jim Cramer, and just last week skewered CNN for its failure to do even basic fact-checking of its guests. Unfortunately, in this instance, there was nothing funny about Stewart’s inaccuracy.

This was honestly the worst interview I’ve ever seen Jon Stewart conduct. Very disappointing.

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