H.S. For Sunday 051108

Answer is in the question.

Hey folks,

This is interesting. In the Health and Science segment this week, we have a question posed by Meredith Small. That question is “Why Doesn't Evolution Discourage Suicide?” Well, the answer is really in the question. The answer is the THEORY of evolution does NOT discourage suicide because we did not EVOLVE. We were created complete with free will. It is that very free will that separates us from any other animal.

But here is her take. According to Live Science - Why Doesn't Evolution Discourage Suicide?

Suicide is ubiquitous.

Around the world, in just about every culture, some people decide to take their own lives. It happens far more often than most people realize, making news only in prominent cases, as with Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “D.C. Madam,” who apparently chose to kill herself last week rather than face up to 55 years in prison.

There it is. People DECIDE.

More interesting, just about everyone can imagine the urge to end it all, although most of us never get remotely close to acting on that thought.

And yet, suicide, even thoughts of suicide, makes no sense, at least from an evolutionary point of view.

That is because we didn’t evolve. But then again, there are a lot of things that do not make sense as far as the THEORY of evolution goes. Something came from nothing. {Scientifically impossible} EVERYTHING came from one signal cell organism that came from nothing. Warm blooded, cold blooded, people, trees, flowers, mosquitos, cats, dogs, lizards, fish, ETC. EVERYTHING from one single cell organism. {Again, scientifically impossible. DNA tells us that.} But sticking with this story.

Humans, like all animals, are designed to pass along genes to the next generation. But ending your own life means, in stark evolutionary terms, cutting off, or harming your future reproductive success.

Wait? We are designed? Well that IS true. I thought we were nothing but an accident.

When young people kill themselves, their genes are eliminated from the gene pool; when adults kill themselves they can no longer care for dependent children; when elderly people kill themselves, they, too, abdicate the role of caring parent for the next generations.

Why would such a negative behavior be part of human nature?

Because we have been told that it is OK. That there is nothing out there. Nothing after. When you die you simply cease to exist. Therefore, if you do not exist, you do not care.

The answer is complicated by the fact that any number of emotions and experiences can push a person toward suicide. It might be loss, or loss of hope, or a change in life that makes life not worth living. Or it might be a lifetime of hardship topped by some final misery that makes suicide look more appealing than carrying on.

How does understanding why suicide happens help us to answer the question posed? I think we can all agree that it does happen. I think we can all agree that happy people do not off themselves. But how does that answer why “Evolution” allows it.

The answer is also complicated by the fact that the human mind is notoriously fickle. What is overwhelming to one person might be a seen as a temporary glitch to another, and our attitude about life changes over a lifetime. For example, we might be easily despondent in our teens, resilient at 20, and then unable to cope at 40.

Negative emotions also have deep evolutionary roots. Primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University has shown that chimpanzees and other primates lead complex emotional lives, ones full of happiness as well as negativity. Chimps not only love and care for others, they also hate and become depressed. Although chimps can't talk about their feelings, researcher say these emotions are easily spotted by body language and behavior that mirrors the same emotions in people. Researchers have even watched as chimps die from what looks like a broken heart.
Let’s leave the speculation of the broken heart thing aside. Sorry, but if you do now, or EVER owned a pet, you tell me this. THEY ALL HAVE EMOTIONS. Sorry, but they do. Chimps, Cats, Dogs, Whatever. I truly believe that. You know when your cat is happy and playful. You know when to leave it alone. It will tell you. Same with a Dog. So this is not hard to accept. But when is the last time you saw a Chimp off himself? When is the last time you saw any animal commit suicide? Is there any documented cases of this?

Obviously, sadness is part of life for animals with big brains. The capacity to feel presumably helps us solve problems and survive, and is essential for group living, and perhaps inconsolable depression is simply emotional baggage that tags along with the good stuff. Or maybe unhappiness and a tendency towards suicide is the product of the uncontrolled nature of our quicksilver minds. We think a lot, and our wondering minds are just as likely to think sad as happy.

It's also possible that deep sadness has, in some way, been selected for. Attempted suicide is much more frequent than “successful” suicide. Commonly called a cry for help, these acts do indeed change the life of a survivor as well as the people around them. In the best case scenario, the attempt is seen as a red flag that all is not well, and loved ones step in and make things right.

In an unexpected twist, the most negative of humans acts can become a life saver, and a way to keep genes where they belong - in the gene pool.

Is it just me or is she saying that attempting suicide is a GOOD thing? As long as you do not actually go through with it? Sure does sound like that, doesn’t it? But regardless if she is promoting attempting suicide or not, she never answered her own question. But that’s OK, I will. We didn’t evolve. That makes us unique. Of course, not always in a good way.

Now I knew I knew this name. Meredith F. Small. This is the author of this piece and she also wrote The Evolution of Anxiety, and, What we know and Hate about Consciousness that I have used in previous Health and Science Segments. I will give her credit, she has got me to use her delusions three times. She must be doing something right. {Smile}
Peter

Sources:
Live Science - Why Doesn't Evolution Discourage Suicide?
OPNTalk- Meredith F. Small

How to Solve Toddler Tantrums: Let Daddy Be King Lion

Health and Science for Sunday 032909

Hey folks,

While I was looking for something to talk about in this week's Health and Science Segment, I came across the duh factor of Toddlers do not think like Adults, therefore this is why they do not always do what you want them to. But then I caught this. This is by our friend Meredith F. Small. You know her, you love her. She is wrong 90 percent of the time, but she seems to be a good person. {Smile}

Ms Small actually wrote this last year, but being a Neanderthal, I know from first hand experience that this is actually close to being true. Not exactly, but along the same lines. I know, it does kind of fit in the Duh Category, but some really do not get the concept. This is also something that our good Friend Dr. Laura preaches about all the time. Here is what I'm talking about.

Live Science - How to Solve Toddler Tantrums: Think Like a Neanderthal

By Meredith F. Small

You're in a store, little kid in hand, and then suddenly she tries to pull away. You bend down and whisper quietly in her ear, "Stay with Mommy, honey," knowing full well that this reasonable request is a foolish attempt to dampen the temper tantrum that is rising like a tsunami inside your kid. With a pounding heart, you scoop her up and run from the store before someone shouts, "Bad parent. Dreadful child. Get out!"

You know, just as a side note, notice how Ms Small always talks about Females? I'm not saying anything. Just saying.

No one knows why 2-year-olds have temper tantrums, but most of them do. It starts with mild anger over something simple but then quickly escalates into full blown fury dramatized by screaming, fist pounding, foot-stomping, and screaming. The child also descends psychologically into a place where they can't be reached by words or physical comfort, and parents stand by helpless and confused.

Clearly, the child is distressed, but to the parent, the distress seems way out of proportion to the situation. And it is physically stressful for the child, which suggests that there must be some evolutionary reason why temper tantrums are so universal for little kids.

Uh, no. But we will leave the disturbelution stuff alone for now.

Pediatrician Harvey Karp, author of "The Happiest Toddler on the Block," and an expert in getting babies and toddlers to quiet down, claims that tantrums are an expected product of human development. He sees our little darlings as less-evolved savages driven by instinct and emotion, not thoughtful reasoning, and he suggests it's our job as parents to civilize them into Homo sapiens.

What it actually is folks, is that they have no experience to have learned from. We learn from experience. Do this, that happens. They have not done this yet, therefore they have no idea what that is. Nothing to do with "evolution." It is just the natural life experience or inexperience that causes this.

It goes on about "Evolution" and Dr. Spock type stuff. Leaving the Psychobabble, and disturbelution BS aside. Kids respond better to the Father than they do the Mother. Sorry. That is just simple fact. Here is where I agree with them, in a matter of speaking. The Father is like the King Lion. The Leader of the Pack of Wolves. The Father is the dominate Bear. It is the Father that should be the one to teach discipline, and the way the Child should go. Male and Female.

A Father need not reason, or relate with the Child. I know that when me and Josh are together, he is a prefect child. He plays, laughs, pouts if he does not get his way sometimes, but then refocuses on something else and goes back to learning and playing. When Mommy is with him, he does not get his way, he says "No," throws fits from time to time, and really get's Mommy's anger up. Why?

Because he sees Mommy as the nurturer and a comfortable place. Safety, and security. He sees Mommy as someone to take care of all his needs and a constant source of comfort. When that changes, she says no, he gets angry and doesn't want to listen.

Dad? Daddy is the King. The final authority. He sees Dad as the one that will protect him, and one that knows better than he. He actually fears, in a way, The King. He does not want to make the King mad. Therefore, when Dad says no, he may pout, but in the end, he will KNOW that no is no. Therefore move on.

My job as Dad, is to teach Josh the way to be a Man. How to treat Women, and others when he gets older. My job is not to kiss the boo boo, or say, that's OK, Oh my little snooky, whatever. My job is to teach him that stuff happens and you deal with it.

A Father is the one that teaches his Daughter how men should treat her. Not by saying this or that, but by how he treats her, Mom, and other Women in her life. Why do you think that she will seek out and find "Daddy" to marry? If Dad is a Drug Addicted Abuser, more times than not, that is what she will seek out and find.

Kids learn A LOT from Dad. Social things, work ethics, self discipline, and pretty much life in general. This is why it is so vitally important that a single Mother should have a positive Male role model as a friend, or family member for the kids to learn from. It is this way in nearly all species. The Male is the leader. It is just the natural way of things. So in this one aspect, I agree. Josh just knows instinctively, even if I say nothing, just a look, that he is in need of correcting his behaviour. Then he does.

Do not get me wrong here folks, Mom is just as important. This is why it is the best case scenario to have children in a loving home with BOTH Mom and Dad. They need to learn from both to be a well rounded person.
Peter

Sources:
Live Science - How to Solve Toddler Tantrums: Think Like a Neanderthal

The Inexorable March Of Tyranny

As I have been warning you about for the past Few YEARS.

Hey folks,

That's right. I have been telling you, warning you, and talking about the New Liberalism. The fact that the New Liberalism is nothing more than a Quest for Tyranny. I defined the distinct difference between New and Old Liberalism. Old Liberalism is what Conservatism should be all about. It is actually CLOSER to Conservatism than today's Republicanism, in a lot of areas.

I have been using their own words and actions, leading up to the 2008 Election and beyond, to point out CLEAR Examples of what the Quest for Tyranny is all about. What it means is the Death of Freedom, and the whole reason this Country was founded to begin with. Some of you thought, "Never. Not here. This is America." Some of you thought I was nuts. Some of you STILL have some difficulty, even thought it is happening right in front of your eyes, seeing your Country being stolen away from you. Some still can not bring themselves to accepting that we have a President that HATES America, and wants to change it into a Centralized Controlling Government Run, Socialistic, Dictatorship. But just because you are having difficulty grasping that, doesn't change the fact it is what it is.

So when an OPNer out there sent this in, I knew I couldn't wait until Friday. So here it is. It's by Bob Livingston, and it is entitled The Inexorable March Of Tyranny, December 27, 2010

Americans hoped the midterm elections in November would put the brakes on the overreach of the current administration and Congress. However, as I expected, the hubristic arrogant bunch of elected elites that currently contaminate our nation’s capitol have refused to hear the message voters sent them.

To be fair, crying Speaker-to-be — aka Weeper of the House — John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the Republicans have not yet assumed control of Congress, but it’s not going to matter. Government is going to continue to take away what is rightfully yours, regardless of who is “in charge.”

You want evidence? S510, also known at the Food Safety Modernization Act, passed Dec. 19, late on a Sunday, night by unanimous consent. That means that not one Senator — Democrat or Republican — opposed it.

This bill gives unbridled authority of government over our food. Big Brother can now determine who can and who cannot grow, distribute or sell fresh vegetables or meats. It can shut food producers down on a whim, or force them into extinction through over-burdensome paperwork. It will mean the death of small farmers, all to benefit Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and other large producers.

It is so over-reaching that it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that government inspectors will be tramping about in your back yard, checking to see what you’re growing and preventing you from canning your own produce.

The bill seemed to die a technical death a couple of weeks ago. But I cautioned then that the bill would be back. That it would be brought back so quickly and so sneakily was a surprise, and a tragic betrayal by Republicans who proved once again that they are not to be trusted with protecting our freedoms.

And the lawless regime of President Barack Obama continues unchecked as well. First, the Federal Communications Commission defied a court order and passed a new set of net neutrality regulations last Tuesday. With these regulations — under the guise of making the sure the Internet is free — the FCC gained control of Internet content.
Obviously, this is what Obama wanted, as the new regulations were proposed by Obama’s FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski.

Never mind that a Federal court earlier this year told the FCC it had no business regulating the Internet. Never mind that Article 1, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution grants all legislative powers to the Congress. Genachowski — dubbed Julius Seizure by The Drudge Report — and two Democrat members of the FCC decided they had authority over the courts and Congress.

These new regulations will have a chilling effect on free speech. The Internet is the last bastion of freedom, and has grown beyond anyone’s imagination since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Since then, billions of dollars have been made and untold thousands of jobs created in the Internet industry — because the government did not interfere with it.

Internet journalists and bloggers have successfully defeated the government’s control over the flow of information. And that is what irks Big Government proponents like Obama… and like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez… and China’s Hu Jintao… and One Worlders like the bigwigs at the United Nations.

The furor over the WikiLeaks revelations demonstrate just how much the elected elites fear the truth and want to control the flow of information. The truth is always one of the first victims of totalitarianism.

The new FCC regulations “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist. As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, just after the FCC acted, “The FCC’s action ‘is not motivated by a tangible competitive harm or market failure,’ said Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican, who said she couldn’t support the rule because the agency was intervening to regulate the Internet ‘because it wants to, not because it needs to.’”

Likewise, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency — yet another unConstitutional arm of the government — now says it will regulate emissions from fossil fuel power plants by 2011 and petroleum refineries by 2012 since a climate bill failed in the Congress. This is yet another unConstitutional act by an agency populated with radical Leftist progressives.

The Transportation Security Administration continues its power grab — sexually assaulting our wives and children and ogling their naked pictures in the name of safety. But now, not only are airline passengers considered terrorists until they are squeezed, groped and irradiated to the satisfaction of an overpaid TSA dolt, now bus and train passengers are being victimized.

And the Department of Homeland Security has many more plans for Americans in the name of safety — plans that strip us of our rights supposedly guaranteed under the Constitution.

In Oklahoma, regulators from the Federal Reserve ordered a bank to remove a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say “Merry Christmas, God With Us,” saying they were inappropriate.

This is not a public building, mind you, but a privately-owned bank. The order by the Fed, which of course is not a Federal institution, is a clear violation of the bank owner’s and the tellers’ 1st Amendment rights.

Americans are coming to realize that their greatest enemy is not al-Qaida, a manufactured and U.S. government-inspired and funded enemy. The greatest enemy they face resides in Washington, walking the halls of Congress, the White House and Federal buildings across the country.

There are those who lean Right who blame the Left. There are those who lean Left who blame the Right. The blame rightfully falls on both, for it is both sides that answer to Big Brother and do his bidding. It is both sides that have supported Orwellian laws and regulations that steal your property, your wealth your personhood and your ability to choose.

It is both sides that bow to the altar of Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Food and Big Union, all to the detriment of the populace. It is both sides that are supporting and even proposing policies and regulations that destroy the middle class and small business and drive jobs overseas.

And it is Americans themselves who are to blame. They slept while Congress, Presidents and the Federal judiciary acted contrary to the interests of the American people. And when they finally awoke they asked that Congress work together — compromise — and reach a bi-partisan agreement; never realizing that when liberty and tyranny compromise, more liberty is lost.

Brilliant. Just Brilliant. Yet even more evidence that the Left ARE on a quest for Tyranny. I know, I know, Bush opened the door. I've said that many times. Homeland Security is expanding into a tool for the Regime. Where are all those upset back when they were just Wiretapping? The Bush Bailouts? Obama took that one and ran with it. This 111 Congress has spent more than the first 100 combined. We have no new use of our Natural Resources, which DOES effect the Economy. Oppressive Taxation and Regulation all over the place, with more promised to come. Take over of Private Industries and the intentional driving out of Business, Private Industries. Look around folks. The USSA is on the way. Time to change directions, and FAST.

Now a message to those who have yet to take control. LISTEN to the PEOPLE. HEAR what we are saying. STOP the Liberal agenda, in ANY form it takes, by ANY means necessary. We do not want Bipartisanship if Bipartisanship means helping those to destroy the Country we so dearly love. We want them STOPPED. Not met half way. Stop THINKING you know what the People want, and start LISTENING to the People. You have the ability to STOP this quest for Tyranny in it's tracks. Do the RIGHT thing, and I assure you, help is on the way in 2012. Do the wrong thing, and I guess we will have to start all over, after we throw YOU out.
Peter

Sources:
Personal Liberty.com - The Inexorable March Of Tyranny
CNS News - 111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined: $10,429 Per Person in U.S.

Note: From The Emails is a weekly Segment every Friday, or occasionally anytime, that appears here at the OPNTalk Blog. Please feel free to Email any Articles, Comments, Thoughts, Whatever, that you may like to share to opntalk@gmail.com As always, you never know what you may see here.

H. S. For Sunday 050408

Do We Hate Who We Are?

Hey folks,

In the Health and Science segment this week, we learn that we know who we are and we do not like it. Also, we seem to be no better than Apes. This is from Live Science - What We Know (and Hate) About Consciousness

Meredith F. Small
LiveScience's Human Nature Columnist
LiveScience.com
Fri May 2, 12:05 PM ET

I know who I am and I know that I know who I am.

Well Some of us do that is. {Smile}

In the language of psychology, this means I am a conscious being, someone who thinks rather than reacts. Someone who takes in her surroundings and processes that information, milling it over in the mind, thinking about it.

It also means I am self-aware. I know myself, know I exist and know I am a separate from others.

According to anthropologists, many animals have a kind of consciousness, but only humans and the great apes are self-conscious. Apparently, the big and complex brains of humans and apes, which may have evolved for other tasks, blossomed with an added sense of self.

Or some could say that we were CREATED that way.

We know that humans are self-conscious because we can talk to our inner selves, but how do researchers know apes are also self-conscious?

In a series of experiments, researchers placed a mirror into the cage of an adult chimpanzee. They let the chimp spend some time looking at himself, which he did with great curiosity. And then one afternoon, when the ape was snoozing, a researcher sneaked in and painted a large swatch of red paint on the animal's forehead.

When the chimp woke up, he looked in the mirror and immediately tried to wipe the red patch from his face. Gorillas have also responded to the mirror test in the same way, which means both apes really know that the image in the mirror is them. In contrast, macaque monkeys just leaped at the mirror and screamed at the image which they saw as another monkey, not themselves.

In an existential way, apes seem to be aware of their existence, like people.

Consciousness and self-awareness might be special gifts in apes and human, but people seem to have a hard time accepting these gifts.

Enter psychobabble. But this is interesting.

In fact, we spend most of the day trying to get away from all that consciousness and self-awareness. We cloud our minds with memories of the past or fantasies of the future. We focus not on what is right in front of our faces, but fritter those thoughts away.

"Never his mind on where he is, on what he is doing. Hmm." Yoda.

We daydream while making dinner. We listen to the radio while stuck in traffic. We drink, take drugs, read books and watch movies, all ways to push consciousness and self-awareness to the side.

OK.

Our species likes best to be dizzy, distracted, buzzed and totally out of our minds.

Speak for yourself.

We know that we know, but I guess we'd rather not know.

So there you have it folks. If you are listening to the radio while stuck in traffic, it's not because you are bored, it's because you do not like yourself. If you take drugs and drink, it's because you want to be "dizzy, distracted, buzzed and totally out of your minds." Well, OK, that is true. But read a book, watch a movie, you are just miserable and hate yourselves. But hey, I guess Apes do too, and of course, you are no better than they.
Peter

Sources:
Live Science - What We Know (and Hate) About Consciousness

H.S. For Sunday 081907

Hey folks,

Happy Sunday to you. This one is just too funny. I had to share this. I figure starting the day with a good laugh is therapeutic, so here you go.

Turns out that according to this Dr. Randolph Nesse, there is a very good reason for you having fear in your life. If you are down, or feeling anxiety, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. Going against the common psychobabble popular opinion, he will tell you that these are simply adaptations you have gone through during Evolution. Listen to this “story” and the solution. This is too funny.

According to Live Science -The Evolution of Anxiety

I’m standing frozen in terror at the entrance of an amusement park, holding the hand of an excited child, and thinking, “No. No, No. I can’t go in here.”

My kid unhooks her hand, wipes the sweat on her skirt, and says sweetly, “It will be OK, Mommy. You can pick the first ride because you’re so scared,”

Alert as a rabbit in a hunter’s field, I scan a few rides and choose one designed to delight a 5-year-old. It’s called Starship America, a ring of tiny rockets built for two. It goes around and around and then each rocket goes up and down.

Piece of cake, I think.

But as we climb aboard one of those rockets-of-death, my anxiety rises up like bubbling magma and takes over my body. My heart races, my breathing grows shallow, and I want to jump out of that steel air-coffin and run run run away.

I am ashamed of my fear until I think about the work of Randolph Nesse, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan.

Nesse is a Darwinian psychiatrist interested in applying evolutionary theory to traditional views of mental illness. Instead of calling mood disorders such as anxiety or depression “illnesses,” he believes there might be good evolutionary reasons for feeling blue or scared; these feelings are not necessarily diseases or disorders, but adaptations.

For example, successful, competent people with seemingly great lives present at Nesse’s clinic feeling depressed, but not knowing why. Nesse asks the usual psychiatric questions, but he also asks broader questions about their lives. Was there a goal not achieved? What’s going on with the path of their lives? Embedded in those questions can be major issues that explain why someone has lost hope, despite the trappings of a “perfect life.”

Who says what is a perfect life? Just curious.

Retreating into depression in the face of perceived failure makes evolutionary sense, Nesse points out, and his job is to help patients find hope again.

It’s not your fault.

Fear in a space ship also has evolutionary roots. Anxiety is an extended version of the fight–or-flight response which evolved to keep us alive; an animal without fear is a dead animal. But humans have a penchant for dragging the fight-or-flight response into every situation and holding onto it until we are sick.

What helps, Nesse claims, is realizing anxiety is not necessarily a bad thing but a good thing, because anxiety attacks often keeps us from certain unpleasant situations.

I know someone who get Anxiety attacks on a semi normal bases. I guess I should just tell my friend that it’s a good thing.

I could imagine Nesse sitting in the next rocket, talking to me above the happy screams of those around me.

“Look,” he might say, “You’re whizzing around in the air in a capsule and humans didn’t evolve to be in this situation. It is indeed scary. You have your child in that rocket and you are appropriately terrified she will fall out. It makes sense, and it will be over soon.”

What a complete bunch of bunk. OK, leaving aside that even Dr. Nesse cannot prove Evolution to begin with. If nothing added to nothing is nothing, nothing taken from nothing is nothing, where did the first something come from? Why would we not be in rocket ships? We can do whatever we put our minds to. We are not mindless and soulless animals. We have gone from horse and carriage, and candle light, since the beginning of mankind, to laser beams and space travel, in about the last 100 years.

This is simply one psychobabblist hyping another. Meredith F. Small is an anthropologist at Cornell University.

So to all of you out there that feel that you are in need of this type of “help,” remember, your anxiety is normal. There is nothing wrong with you. You are fine. You are just feeling the adaptations of Evolution. All is well.

Amazing.
Peter

Media Pushing One Side Of Global Warming

"OK, guess you were right."

Hey folks,

Happy Friday to you. Since it is Friday, TIME to go to the Emails.

"OK, guess you were right."

Why would you ever doubt me? {Smile} I have been telling you about the GWBS Chicken Little Crowd for YEARS.

"I didn't believe you, but now I see it. The 'Chicken Little' Crowd are being exposed."

Here it is. I could spend all day on saying, "I told you so." and "I said that in blah blah blah." But the archives can show you what I have been saying about the SCAM that is Global Warming, the press being bought and paid for, and, well, just check this out.

Media Reality Check:

Twenty Years of Advocacy, Not Journalism, on Global Warming
Even After ClimateGate Scandal, Reporters Have Pushed a One-Sided "Sky Is Falling" Mantra on Climate Change

For more than two decades, the so-called mainstream media have preached the dangers of manmade global warming, insisting American businesses and consumers must make massive economic sacrifices to ward off a global climate catastrophe. Not even last November’s exposure of e-mails from leading scientists on the alarmist side of the debate — showing them conniving to fudge or suppress data, discredit critics and distort the peer review process — has caused journalists to finally take a skeptical approach to radical environmentalists’ doomsaying.

A new study {Special Report: Networks Hide the Decline in Credibility of Climate Change Science} from the MRC’s Business & Media Institute documents how ABC, CBS and NBC have been just as strident in their advocacy in the months following “ClimateGate” as they were in the 20 years that preceded the scandal. At the same time, a review of the Media Research Center’s archives going back to the late 1980s shows just how strongly reporters have pushed the liberal line on global warming. Here are just some of the many examples:

# “Global warming could mean economic upheaval. It could bring suffering. It could bring starvation....The causes of global warming are no mystery. The biggest culprit is carbon dioxide, or CO2, a bi-product when man burns fossil fuels to run cars or generate electricity....If we fail to act, there may be hell to pay in a hotter world....Global warming is not a fact, just a widely-held theory. The problem is, if man waits for proof, it may be too late.”
— Host Don Harrison narrating CNN’s primetime Climate In Crisis special, August 1, 1989.

# “As the science editor at Time, I would freely admit that on this issue we have crossed the boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”
— Time’s Charles Alexander at a September 16, 1989 global warming conference at the Smithsonian Institute, as quoted in the October 5 Wall Street Journal.

# “If the world is to head off the risk of global warming, with its danger of massive crop failure, or rising sea levels, or spreading starvation in the poorest countries, then America — the largest producer of the gases that cause global warming — is in the spotlight.”
— ABC reporter Ned Potter on World News Tonight, April 7, 1992.

# “Environmentalists see catastrophes of biblical proportions, from droughts to melting ice caps that send sea levels rising.”
— Correspondent Barry Petersen on the CBS Evening News, December 1, 1997.

# Karen Kerrigan, Small Business Survival Committee: “To say that the science is conclusive...is actually bunk.”
Host Ted Koppel: “I was just going to make the observation that there are still some people who believe in the Flat Earth Society, too, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.”
— Exchange on the December 9, 1997 Nightline.

# “After decades of rancorous debate, only a handful of the most doctrinaire die-hards still dispute the idea that human activity is heating up the planet.”
— Time’s Michael Lemonick in a special edition for Earth Day, 2000.

# “Despite the danger that climate change poses, the resources currently devoted to studying this problem — and combating it — are inconsequential compared with the trillions spent during the Cold War. Twenty years from now, we may wonder how we could have miscalculated which threat represented the greater peril.”
— Time contributor Eugene Linden, September 4, 2000.

# “Around the world, the anger runs as deep as the flood waters being blamed on the global warming the Kyoto treaty was supposed to fight. President Bush says he’s putting American economic interests first in rejecting Kyoto, and in Britain, where they’re having their wettest winter ever, they sadly agree....Others point to severe weather conditions around the planet — flooding for the second consecutive year in Mozambique, drought and famine in the Sudan — and they say the U.S. is substantially to blame.”
— Mark Phillips on the March 29, 2001 CBS Evening News.

# “Frankly, this notion that there isn’t enough science, I mean that’s right up there with does smoking cause lung cancer.”
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift discussing global warming on the McLaughlin Group, June 16, 2001.

# “Glaciers are receding. Oceans are rising. Alaska is thawing. As officials from nearly 180 nations start to gather Monday in Bonn, Germany, to confront the vexing problem of global warming, the issue is no longer whether it is real, but what should be done about it.”
— Opening of July 16, 2001 USA Today front-page article, “Six ways to combat global warming,” by Traci Watson and Jonathan Weisman.

# Weatherman Mark McEwen: “Up and down the East Coast, it’s coming our way, but we will probably see just rain in the big cities.”
Co-host Bryant Gumbel: “We never get any snow.”
McEwen: “Do you think it’s global warming?”
Gumbel: “Yes, yes.”
McEwen: “Do you, Jane?”
Co-host Jane Clayson: “Yeah.”
McEwen: “We’re unanimous....It’s global warming.”
— Exchange on CBS’s Early Show, February 6, 2002.

# “ExxonMobil — I think this is a real group of bad guys, considering that they have funded all the anti-global-warming propaganda out there in the world. And Bush is just not going to go against guys like that. They are bad, bad guys, because of what they are doing in fighting the science of global warming.”
— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in an interview published in Rolling Stone, October 17, 2002.

# Peter Jennings: “We’re going to take ‘A Closer Look’ tonight at why the temperature matters to all of us when it is affected by global warming. And just to be clear again, global warming is the gradual increase of the temperature of the Earth’s lower atmosphere as a result of the increase in manmade gases since the industrial revolution....”
Reporter Bill Blakemore: “Severe climate change is accelerating....Polar bears are starving as the ice they hunt on vanishes, along with the seals they eat. Millions of birds are affected as spring comes too early and the fish they eat [have] gone to seek cooler waters.”
— ABC’s World News Tonight, November 8, 2004.

# “The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming....Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue....As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.”
— Former Washington Post and Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan in an August 30, 2005 Boston Globe op-ed.

# “No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth....Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us....Something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.”
— Time’s Jeffrey Kluger in the magazine’s April 3, 2006 global warming cover story: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”

# “It is getting hot here on Earth. How hot? Well, maybe hotter than it has been in 2,000 years and it is our fault. Humans, that is.”
— Anchor Bob Schieffer on the CBS Evening News, June 22, 2006.

# Tom Brokaw: “About 10 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by ice, most of that in the polar regions. But if enough of that ice melts, the seas will rise dramatically and the results will be calamitous....If this worst-case scenario should occur, in the coming centuries New York could be abandoned, its famous landmarks lost to the sea.”
Dr. James Hansen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies: “Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami — they would all be under water.”
— From Brokaw’s two-hour Discovery Channel special, Global Warming: What You Need to Know, excerpt shown on the July 15, 2006 NBC Nightly News.

# “Scientists are more certain than ever that humans are heating the globe very quickly with potentially severe consequences.”
— NBC’s Robert Bazell, Dec. 16, 2006 Nightly News.

# “So I’m running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this [warm weather] is great, but are we all gonna die? You know? I can’t, I can’t figure this out.”
— Co-host Meredith Vieira talking about global warming on NBC’s Today, January 8, 2007.

# “It seems like we’re reaching critical mass when it comes to this issue. And all the experts agree. Well, almost every expert. (There are a handful of scientists — many of them on the payroll of big oil companies — who wonder if global warming is a reality.) But my fervent hope is that Hollywood’s embrace of Al Gore doesn’t give people an excuse to condemn and mock the effort — and oppose taking steps that we as a society need to take to deal with the issue of climate change.”
— Anchor Katie Couric writing about the Oscars on her CBSNews.com blog, “Couric & Co.,” February 26, 2007.

# “I really don’t think climate change is a political issue.... Everyone agrees it’s happening. If it’s a political issue, it’s whether the political will exists to address that change. We know we need to do something, and this is a way to heighten awareness.”
— NBC Senior Vice President Dan Harrison quoted in the July 9, 2007 Washington Post defending NBC Universal’s 75-hour multi-network coverage of Gore’s “Live Earth.”

# “Global Warming is a Hoax* Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change. Inside the denial machine.”
— Cover of the August 13, 2007 Newsweek.

# “Climate experts say whether hired guns or honest dissenters, deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions....The scientific debate is no longer over society’s role in global warming. It is now a matter of degrees.”
— NBC’s Anne Thompson on the August 16, 2007 Nightly News.

# “There are a few, I guess you could call them dead enders out there. There are a few that are still holding true to the notion that maybe this is some sort of natural cycle....It is a tiny fraction of a minority of scientists out there. And when you look at those scientists and trace their funding, frequently you are led to the fossil fuel industry. So, really, it’s not a scientific debate anymore.”
— CNN environment correspondent Miles O’Brien talking about scientists who dispute Al Gore’s premise of a coming climate catastrophe, during CNN Newsroom, October 12, 2007.

# “The verdict from the Nobel committee must be sweet vindication....[But] even the Nobel Prize is not going to be enough to silence the naysayers, some of whom still believe that man is not responsible for global warming.”
— ABC’s David Wright on Al Gore’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, World News, October 12, 2007.

# “The President of the U.S. can better shape the response to climate change than any other person in the world. Given the importance of this issue and the fact that you have emerged as its global spokesman, don’t you have a moral obligation to put yourself forward for the presidency?”
— Time’s Bryan Walsh in an interview with former Vice President Al Gore, who was runner-up in the magazine’s December 31, 2007 “Person of the Year” edition.

# “Could global warming one day force us into space to live?”
— ABC’s Sam Champion, Good Morning America, February 8, 2008.

# “Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in 10, not 10 but in 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down.”
— CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1, 2008.

# “Global warming naysayers are claiming that e-mails stolen from this research university show climate scientists discussing how to fudge results to promote the idea that humans are altering the planet....[But] the science is solid, according to a vast majority of researchers, with hotter temperatures, melting glaciers, and rising sea level providing the proof.”
— ABC correspondent Clayton Sandell talking about the ClimateGate scandal on World News, December 6, 2009.

# “Does this controversy change the science? A team of explorers will present findings on Arctic ice melt in Copenhagen, findings that have nothing to do with the e-mails....Beyond just the lack of summer sea ice, scientists also point to some other things happening around the planet. The increased melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, earlier springs....All of those things are certain things that are happening, that they say it doesn’t matter what’s in those e-mails — the Earth is changing.”
— NBC’s Anne Thompson on NBC’s Today, December 7, 2009.

# Correspondent Wyatt Andrews: “To many Republicans, Climategate proves that global warming is a deception....But if that’s true, it’s a fraud adopted by most of the world’s leading scientists, along with NASA, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and the National Academies of Science of 32 countries, including the United States. To most of them, ClimateGate is a sideshow compared to one overwhelming fact:”
Professor Michael Mann: “The last decade is the warmest decade on record.”
— CBS Evening News, December 9, 2009.

END of Media Reality Check

To read it online, posted with five videos: HERE.

Problem is, the "Scientists" that are still out there claiming that Man-Made Global Warming is real, and we are destroying the planet, are starting to be outnumbered by those saying "Uh, no." Even Al Gore's own Scientists are starting to come out and say, "No, wait, we didn't say that."

More and more Scientists are NOW telling you the truth. CO2 is NOT a pollutant. It IS a natural part of the Life Cycle. Warming and cooling are NATURAL CYCLES. We are NOT warming. Haven't since 1998. There is no impending, immediate threat to the Earth.

I know, I know. Some of my more Liberal Friends have bought into the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. As I also pointed out to you before, Global Warming has become a Religion to some. And we all know how hard it is to attempt to persuade a Religious person to question their Religious tenets. Not to forgo them, but merely question them. Look into what they say, and apply logic and reason. Most will NEVER do that. Most just follow blindly along.

When we have the Media reporting only half the story, to push an agenda, they cease being a News Agency, and become an Advocacy Group. Nothing more. Nothing less. But then again, that IS who they are.
Peter

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