A case study on what happens when somebody makes an assertion about a Fox News personality without doing some elemental research into what he actually says or believes.
A Business Insider article yesterday links to a video on how a supposedly diehard Bill O’Reilly fan watches him daily, loves him, is “proud to be an American”, and up until now, believed him on the topic of global warming. However, after viewing the movie Chasing Ice, she now tearfully believes global warming is real and we all should do something about it immediately.
No doubt this video will be a great preaching-to-the-choir promo for the Al Gore crowd, but for the rest of us having actual familiarity with the issue and being frequent viewers of Fox News and The O’Reilly Factor, her proclamation falls apart in an instant.
First, if she were to appear on The Factor and arbitrarily blurt out that she was “proud to be an American”, he very likely would glare at her and ask what that has to do with anything. Apparently she is mixed up over that statement being more appropriate for Sean Hannity and his “you’re a great American” radio show tagline.
Second, a rather clear indicator that this person is not at all familiar with the global warming issue is her new-found ‘belief’ in it, as opposed to the nauseatingly repeated talking point about Fox News viewers and skeptics in general being “deniers” of global warming, climate change or whatever its current designation happens to be. Nobody that I’m aware of denies outright that global warming is happening, especially the skeptic climate scientists. As hurricane expert Dr William Gray said so succinctly almost thirteen years ago in the New York Times, “I don’t think we’re arguing over whether there’s any global warming, the question is, ‘What is the cause of it?'”
Third, there is the teensy little problem that Bill O’Reilly would prompt daily viewers not to ‘believe’ in global warming.
Daily viewers like me will remember rather clearly when guest Laura Ingraham unsuccessfully attempted to steer him to the skeptic side after he told her that he believed in global warming. Then there was the time when his producer Jesse Watters tried to entice Al Gore into accepting an interview with O’Reilly by saying “You know Bill is not a big anti-global warming guy”. [12/4/12 Author’s UDATE: I missed O’Reilly’s Feb 2007 CBS News “60 Minutes” interview where it very clearly said (bold emphasis mine), “But what you don’t expect are his views, which sound more like they’re coming from a Democrat. …. “Government’s gotta be proactive on environment,” says O’Reilly. “Global warming is here. All these idiots that run around and say it isn’t here. That’s ridiculous.” Transcript here, YouTube short clip here.]
I was even compelled to write my own story right here at JunkScience back in March about his failure to recognize the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
To his credit, however, O’Reilly had Bill Nye and Joe Bastardi debate in a February 2010 segment where O’Reilly opened by saying a global warming study was debunked, but he ended the segment with “I am making an appeal to the Diety to come onto the program and tell us once and for all what’s going on”. Compare that to how Sean “global warming is a hoax” Hannity causes pro-global warming folks to rant about his tone of discussion.
And, O’Reilly had Bastardi back again on November 1st to debate with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Brenda Ekwurzel. It is hard to miss the basically fair and balanced moderator approach O’Reilly gave to each guest, concluding with “I have to compliment you both; very clear, and that’s the kind of debate we need to hear, so the folks can get the information.”
So, if the promoters of man-caused global warming hope that a single viewing of a film showing melting ice is enough to sway even the most ardent Bill O’Reilly fan, then it would be advisable to chose a spokesperson having just a little more plausibility if the endorsement needs to avoid the appearance of being a botched orchestration.
Piling on, pt. II: From O’Reilly’s July 10, 2009 Talking Points Memo segment, “So right now, the only global warming strategy that might work worldwide may be prayer. That’s how difficult it will be to convince emerging nations to clean up their acts.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,531481,00.html
Piling on – Bill O’Reilly from a 2002 “Talking Points Memo” segment: I have never understood the resistance to the concept of global warming. It’s certainly happening here in New York. When I was a kid, we used to be able to skate on frozen ponds for two months. Now if you get a week of natural ice, that’s a cold winter.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,54413,00.html
And where is it found anywhere on the internet the story of O’Reilly’s giant conversion which led the ‘tearful lady’ to believe him and be so anti-global warming herself up until a couple of weeks ago?
My argument remains as straightforward as I can make it; Bill O’Reilly is not the strident anti-global warming guy the ‘tearful video lady’ portrays him to be. Q.E.D.
How fortunate that you mention Cook’s (no relation to me) SkepticScience, a site I am quite familiar with, as he is the person who was caught redhanded deleting comments that undermined his decidedly non-skeptical viewpoints ( http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/skepticalscience-rewriting-history/ ), and as it turns out today, Lord Monckton has this marvelous takedown of SkS at WUWT: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/04/skeptical-science-gets-it-all-wrong-yet-again/
” … Even the name of the “Skeptical” “Science” blog is a lie. The blog is neither skeptical nor scientific. It is a malicious, paid propaganda platform for rude, infantile, untruthful, and often libelous attacks on anyone who dares to question whether global warming is a global crisis. … ”
I could go on. This is like shooting fish in a barrel.
I have one more thing to say on this and then I will go away, since you are obviously convinced by your own tortuous argument. Show me your ‘moon rocks’, and I’ll show you mine: Skeptical Science.
Entertaining explanation of pendantry. But think of what I do not as ‘correcting’, but pointing out the proverbial 800lb gorilla-in-the-room. Consider this comparison: A guy walks into a room saying the moon is made of blue cheese. I point out there is a mountain of analysis of moon rocks with actual specimens that can be examined, then I ask the guy if he can explain his contradictory statement. When he accuses me of ignorance about cheese science / not having peer-reviewed papers accepted by dairy journals, or says I’m paid by the beef jerky industry to trash cheese snacks, there is your 800lb gorilla. The guy never refuted what I said.
Try considering that your ‘facilitating miscommunication at the speed of light’ insinuation may be a term of projection not unlike the notion that skeptics ‘manufacture doubt’ about AGW. If you and enviro-activists can’t prove the doubt was pre-existing about man-caused global warming for this entire time, and nobody refutes that enviro-activists’ efforts thus have the appearance of manufacturing doubt about skeptics’ credibility, now you have a gorilla that’s gained another 1000 pounds.
I point out the “O’Reilly lady” is some kind of plant and demonstrate that rather thoroughly, and no one has refuted my evidence or speculates for themselves on why her narrative does not add up. Folks on the AGW side of the issue apparently avoid asking such devil’s advocate questions, which to me is inextricably weird. Wouldn’t have been in the best interest of the video shooter to confirm that O’Reilly was a bombastic anti-global warming guy before posting the video?
Wouldn’t have been in the best interest of AGW promoters to confirm that accusations of corruption against skeptic climate scientists actually could stand up to basic courtroom standards for evidentiary hearings before running with those?
Unless I’m still misunderstanding you (entirely possible!), all I think you’ve managed to prove is the truth of the following aphorism:
Me, earlier this year 🙂
Nobody doubts that climate change is happening – as was pointed out in point #2 in the article above. That is why the ‘denier’ label flatlines when open minded people examine it.
The ‘twitter correspondent’, a.k.a. the shooter of the video, may be an entirely unrelated pawn in whatever happened here. But whatever we have, it does not add up right, which means there is a likely better than average chance that the lady in the video was a global warming believer all along and simply was operating off of some kind of incomplete impression of what a Fox viewer sounds like, and which Fox personalities have strident positions on global warming.
Thus little or no good was done beyond ‘preaching to the choir’, which itself stands the very real chance of harming the entire global warming movement because nobody knew to stop this thing from getting out of hand – if it ends up being revealed that the lady never was a daily O’Reilly viewer. Imagine what happens if O’Reilly’s producer Jesse Watters catches up with her to ask her about her ‘conversion’ and if she still follows his other topics. If she can’t keep narratives about those straight either, then she’ll be in a heap of trouble.
That’s an inconvenient problem with folks chanting words someone else put in their mouths. If a guy walks up to the folks asking if they can elaborate on what they chant, it sure doesn’t look good when they can’t: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HWlqiv-YL7c#t=104s
Hi. I gather from the tone of this page that ‘junkscience.com’ is on a mission to debunk global warming hysteria. Apologies if that’s an incorrect evaluation.
As your twitter correspondent says:
Just more fodder from The Ministry Of Truth for consumption by the sheeple in preparation for increased taxes. Sheep are to be sheared. I can’t wait until gasline is six of seven dollars a gallon. Big luxury cars and luxury pickups like the F150 Larriat ought to be selling for a song. I’ll update Town Car and F150 then.
Not overly worried about O’Reilly, but since he is a fair and balanced guy, he is one of the few having no fear of putting skeptics up against AGW believers, and it makes him wonder any time people back down from debates – no less that exactly what Gore does.
Meanwhile as a form of an update, I’m in a Twitter discussion with the person who shot the “O’Reilly lady” video here https://twitter.com/questionAGW/status/274623275483680769
Entertaining how he seems to be running from debate…..
O’Reilly is the charter member of the Church of Bill O’Reilly. Self-promoters don’t care about much of anything else.
Why worry about an irrelevant media type?