Yesterday, Fox’s Your World discussed the People’s Climate March with a “ fair and balanced” lineup of two climate deniers and one march supporter. Host Neil Cavuto made it three-on-one.
In case you couldn’t have already guessed where the host’s sympathies would lie, Cavuto asked the lone march supporter, New York State Assemblyperson Brian Kavanagh, “Do you think with everything else going on in the world, Assemblyman, you know, ISIS, you know, chopping off Americans heads and our own budget nightmare and debt and piling up unfunded liabilities. Is this now the time to make this the number one concern? With all those other concerns?”
Kavanagh said, “We need to be a country that can walk and chew gum at the same time. This is a crisis.” Noting that we also need to deal with global terrorism, he added, “The simple fact is that there is a very broad consensus that the globe is warming, and it’s warming at a rapid rate.”
“No, science actually doesn’t show that,” interrupted Ashley Pratte, of the Young Americas Foundation. It's worth noting what Cavuto did not: Pratte is a political operative without any apparent science background.
Global-warming denier Marc Morano was the other guest. Morano, also without a scientific background, is a former producer for Rush Limbaugh whose current organization is funded by the carbon-emitting industry. He added, “The satellite data shows very clear there’s been no global warming for almost 18 years. …This is about an agenda, it’s not about the science. …They’re creating a climate crisis.”
Kavanagh broke in. “Virtually every country in the world has signed on to the climate panel of the U.N.”
Pratte insisted, “Scientists are coming out and saying it’s not on their side, and as Marc was pointing out, you know for the past 17 years, we haven’t actually seen anything that proves that global warming is increasing. What we have seen, yes, carbon emission has gone up but that has had no correlation to global warming.” For extra maliciousness, she said she wanted to know if Kavanah sent out direct mail that “could also be leaving a carbon footprint.”
Kavanagh replied, “I doubt we’re going to resolve the science here on this program today. …The temperature of the globe is warming, the sea level is rising, the ice caps are melting.”
“How?” Pratte demanded. “Do you have science that shows that Assemblyman?”
“The level of the water around Manhattan is higher than it was a number of years ago,” Kavanagh cited.
So Cavuto added his own denying-two cents: “When I was a kid in College, the big thing then was the global freeze …and that was the consensus view at the time.”
Kavanagh said. “If you were ill and 98 doctors told you you needed surgery in order to prevent terrible things from happening and two told you they weren’t sure, you’d probably have the surgery.”
Cavuto wouldn’t go there. “Would I commit myself to expensive chemotherapy to addressing cancer that may not be there?” He “asked.”
“These are scientists and you mentioned the IPCC,” Morano said. “They’re handpicked by governments because they’ll agree with the conclusion. It’s pure politics masquerading as science.”
Kavanagh said he wants us to start “investing in more efficiency, on cheaper and better ways of doing things. …We are seeking a global agreement to take some reasonable steps that will spur the economy, that will increase jobs and rather than reducing them, these are smart investments in the future.”
Morano and Pratte threw out jeers such as “so, throwing away government money” and “stepping in the gum.”
Morano claimed, “Even the U.N. treaties fully implemented would not have a detectable impact on temperature. …It’s nonsense.”
Kavanagh nicely maintained his composure without giving up an inch during all this. “I’m proposing more aggressive efforts to incentivize investment… in things that would reduce greenhouse gases,” He said. “We need to shift away from fossil fuels over time and we need to do it more rapidly than we’re doing it now.”
Cavuto closed by saying, “We solved that whole climate change nonsense right here.”
But as Kavanagh hinted, global warming has already been settled. As USA Today reports, “A vast majority of climate scientists — generally pegged at 97% — and practically all published studies concur with the basics of the science behind climate change.” And those scientists find that climate change is getting worse.
Not only did host Cavuto fail to mention that, he presented his science-challenging guests as credible experts when they are not.
Watch Fox News deliberately undercut science below.