50,000 Watts of Hate: Santa vs. global-warming deniers

Mike Rosen may think he has a friend in Santa and the polar bears, but climate scientists? Eh, not so much.

From our friends at Colorado Media Matters, Newsradio 850 KOA talker Mike Rosen’s gone off a polar ice cap once again when it comes to global warming.

From the Dec. 18 broadcast of The Mike Rosen Show discussing a Denver Post opinion piece citing the human causes of global warming by Waleed Abdalati, head of NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Branch at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md.:

ROSEN: And the argument, of course, is wholly problematic as to how much of human activity contributes to global warming, and I find much more credible the arguments of qualified scientists who say “pooh-pooh” to that. That we’re a flea — that is, all of human activity on this planet as compared to the influence of the sun and other factors completely outside of our control through the history of this planet long before there were humans walking the Earth and before they were driving around in SUVs, the climate was changing by huge increments over time, so I just don’t buy it.

So who are these credible scientists who claim — against hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies — that global warming is not man-made?

Try conservative policy think tanks funded by the fossil fuel-based energy sector:

* Christopher C. Horner: Rosen hosted this senior fellow from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute on his Nov. 11 broadcast, during which Horner falsely claimed, regarding a British judge’s 2007 ruling on the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” that “not one statement in the movie was supported by the U.K. high court.” The judge did rule that the film contained nine inaccuracies, but Rosen and Horner failed to point out that the ruling also stated the film, featuring former Vice President Al Gore, is “substantially founded upon scientific research and fact.”

* Lawrence Solomon: The executive director of the Urban Renaissance Institute appeared on Rosen’s April 22 program. Solomon responded to a caller’s question regarding global warming in light of a National Geographic article “about how the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is disappearing” by stating that in Antarctica some regions experience melting, and claiming, “The satellite data shows that, on balance, Antarctica is gaining ice.” After allowing Solomon to evade the caller’s question about ice melt in the Arctic, Rosen claimed that “global-warming alarmists” provide “selective presentation of ice melting” and “ignore ice-cap expansion someplace else because it doesn’t suit their agenda.”

* Maureen Martin: Rosen on April 15 hosted Martin, whom he introduced as a “senior fellow for legal affairs at the Heartland Institute,” but did not disclose the think tank’s “free-market ” agenda, its president’s description of the scientific consensus on global warming as a “mass delusion,” or its past funding from ExxonMobil Corp., as Colorado Media Matters has noted.

* Paul Chesser: Rosen featured Chesser, director of Climate Strategies Watch, on his Feb. 12 program. As Colorado Media Matters pointed out, Chesser appeared from late January through mid-February on a variety of public and media platforms in Colorado for his organization, which criticizes global-warming “alarmists” and is a “joint project” of the conservative John Locke Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the Better Government Project. On the Feb. 14 broadcast of public television KBDI’s Independent Thinking, Independence Institute president Jon Caldara and Chesser attacked the Center for Climate Strategies, which supported and facilitated the work of the Colorado Climate Action Panel, whose report became the basis of the Colorado Climate Action Plan. Further, neither acknowledged that the Heartland Institute received funding from the fossil-fuel industry.

* Patrick J. Michaels: This University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute appeared on Rosen’s March 30, 2007, broadcast, during which Rosen inaccurately described him as “the Virginia state climatologist,” a title that the current Virginia governor’s office asked Michaels to stop using, according to an Aug. 19, 2006, Associated Press article. Rosen also failed to mention that Michaels is funded by the fossil-fuel industry, as Media Matters for America has noted. Further, Rosen and Michaels dispensed several falsehoods about global warming during the broadcast and labeled Gore’s views on climate change “extreme.”

* Lee Gerhard: The principal geologist of the Kansas Geological Survey appeared on Rosen’s January 30, 2007, program, during which Rosen identified him as someone who “once operated an independent petroleum exploration company” and “co-chaired the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, their Climate Change Issues Committee.” During the interview, Gerhard repeated a number of global-warming falsehoods that Rosen failed to correct, including the inaccurate claim that “humans are not the culprit … solar is the culprit” on global warming.

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