Cavuto’s Climate Change Denying Guest Pelted With Vegetable
Reported by Guest Blogger - December 18, 2009 -
Guest blogged by Brian
Wednesday's (12/16/09) Your World featured the climate-change denier and Michael Moore wannabe (but never will be) Phelim McAleer dressed as a polar bear at the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen. He wore a big sign on his chest asking, “Where is Phil,” referring to Phil Jones, of the Climategate leaked emails. Not surprisingly, McAleer told Cavuto that the reaction to him was "very negative."
"I’m looking for Professor Phil Jones… the man at the center of Climategate, of the leaked e-mails. So I'm here looking for this professor who told his colleagues to delete data, delete e-mails… I'm getting… a lot of boos… They’re trying to interrupt this interview. They don't like me mentioning Phil Jones. …I think the true deniers are the people here at this conference. They’re denying that the Climategate exists."
Cavuto asked, "Do you have any security or at least anyone with you who's big?"
"They wouldn't attack a polar bear would they?" McAleer joked. A chorus of boos was heard.
"You know what's amazing?” Cavuto asked. “…If you were to turn the tables and they were to be shouted down in a similar conference, they would be all over the other news channels. ‘Look at how they're being treated,’ but it's OK, you're fair game. It's kind of funny, you know?"
McAleer replied, "In the environmental world… you have to suspend your normal journalistic principles and not ask hard questions… When I ask people if they’d like to talk to me they say ‘of course,’ and then I say I'd like to talk about Climategate, and they walk away or they boo or they react in this way." As he spoke, people were chanting, singing and jeering in the background.
"Clearly all CNN viewers," Cavuto quipped. Comment: Neil likes to take cheap shots at CNN. Then he played a Fox fave clip of McAleer confronting Al Gore and, rather than discuss actual climate change data (such as rising seas, melting ice sheets, droughts and wildfires), attacked Al Gore. First Cavuto complained that Gore would not debate McAleer and then said, “He’s also not really answered any of your questions whether the data’s supporting anything he’s saying.” As has become the norm on Fox, the data was never discussed. But Cavuto made sure to note “one big blooper” in which Gore said, according to Cavuto, “The earth’s core was heating up real fast and furious.” Cavuto seems to have been referring to Gore’s mistake about how hot the earth’s core is, but he was referring to geothermal energy, not global warming.
Nevertheless, that was enough for McAleer to allege, without a request for further examles from Cavuto, "It seems like in any interview that Al Gore gives, he drops a large scientific error… He's a serial, accident-prone speaker.”
As McAleer continued, saying that a climate change agreement would result “in one of the biggest tax hikes in American history, in world history,” he got hit in the head with a vegetable.
Cavuto stopped the interview “because I don’t want anything else to happen to you. You’re a gutsy guy.” Cavuto asked jokingly, “Are the teeth in the head of the polar bear, are they real? ‘Cause maybe you could use that (against his hecklers).”
Cavuto continued, “Seriously, I want you to be safe. Get away from there… These guys are priceless… They can continue watching CNN.”
Comment: If Gore is so inaccurate, how did he win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his work to fight global warming?
