Land of the Lost: Fox & Friends on Crazy Beliefs some People Have
December 12, 2014
John Stossel, on how climate change science is like believing in Ghosts.
Stossel said that he believed that the “climate changes, always has, always will.” But he argued that a “climate catastrophe” was absurd.
“Every year, fewer people die from the weather because of fossil fuels,” the Fox Business host observed. “They are able to protect themselves. Big difference between ‘climate change is going to kill us,’ and ‘climate changes.’”
“So, you are saying that it would be reasonable to point out the pluses of fossil fuels,” Hasselbeck noted.
“In the short term, lives are being saved if the planet warms,” Stossel agreed. “There is some good evidence man contributes to global warming. But I say, so what? We can deal with that. It’s not a catastrophe. And cold is far worse for hurting people than warmth.”
Stossel added that other absurd things that people believed included ghosts, astrology and UFOs.
“What about wage war?” Hasselbeck wondered, referring to gender inequality in the workplace.
“It’s true, you women earn less than we men do,” Stossel replied. “But there are reasons for it. You, maybe, are more sensible. You have put more emphasis in not working in a horrible place, not working in dangerous places, you take time off to take care of a family. There’s a reason for that.”
“How do these ridiculous things get stuck in our heads?” Doocy asked.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
December 12, 2014 at 8:55 am
So glad the esteemed Doctor has spoken and alleviated all our fears about ridiculous climate beliefs.
December 12, 2014 at 11:47 am
The framing of climate change understanding with belief in ghosts, astrology and UFO’s is beneath contempt, that Groucho Marx look alike Stossel is a clown and should be called to account.
A look ‘Al Gore…’ reference just had to be there, from one of the other nonentities on the couch. Pure pantomime.
December 12, 2014 at 2:21 pm
Stossel got one thing right. Many people don’t want the truth. Therefore, he reassures them that what they want to believe is the truth.
December 12, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Groucho brought plenty of laughs skewering people exactly like Stossel. I’d swap out Stossel for Groucho any day of the week.
December 12, 2014 at 1:33 pm
As you once said, Peter: “Those who spread the misinformation and outright lies of the climate denial industry, are useful idiots of some of history’s coldest and greediest killers.”
Those bloody liars should be jailed!
December 12, 2014 at 3:00 pm
Were Stossel honest he’d admit that once CC becomes worrisome it’ll take 40 years to turn the Titanic around because the boat (read: the ocean) is just THAT large. Meanwhile, in those 40 years, CC gets worse.
But you can see the way Faux News is pivoting around this topic. Now, its no longer CC that’s ridiculous, its ‘catastrophic’ CC that’s ridiculous. Stossel is careful to say he believes in it, and that humans are partly to blame. That’s new: in classic propagandistic fashion they are now going to claim this is the reality they ALWAYS took toward this topic. Never admit you made a mistake, just change your talking points and move on.
The day after the WAIS collapses into the ocean, Faux will have Stossel come on and say they always believed that.
December 12, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Could Ethiopia be a small model of how the world’s supply constraints, overpopulation, and the irritation of it all by climate change affect humanity?
From Wiki:
“Agriculture accounted for 46.3% of GDP, 83.9% of exports, and 80% of the labor force in 2006/2007, compared to 44.9%, 76.9% and 80% in 2002/2003, and agriculture remains the Ethiopian economy’s most important sector.[4] Ethiopia has great agricultural potential because of its vast areas of fertile land, diverse climate, generally adequate rainfall, and large labor pool. Despite this potential, however, Ethiopian agriculture has remained underdeveloped. Because of drought, which has repeatedly affected the country since the early 1970s, a poor economic base (low productivity, weak infrastructure, and low level of technology), and overpopulation, the agricultural sector has performed poorly. For instance, according to the World Bank between 1980 and 1987 agricultural production dropped at an annual rate of 2.1 percent, while the population grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent. Consequently, the country faced a tragic famine that resulted in the death of nearly 1 million people from 1984 to 1986.[5]”
In Ethiopia’s case, a ‘low level of technology’ is no modern farm equipment. In the Earth’s case, a ‘low level of technology’ is not being able to adequately tap the unlimited energy resources of the sun and wind (endangering agriculture via warming from fossil carbon), and not being able to recycle all the clean water and other materials we extract (again putting limits on agriculture via supply constraints). The analogy isn’t perfect but the point is there is only so much technology can do…
December 13, 2014 at 12:07 am
Stossel should try telling the families of the 50,000 people who died of heat in France in 2003 how “cold is worse for hurting people than warmth.”
What a mind-meltingly stupid little man. Quite apart from missing the blindingly obvious he is not even factualy correct regarding the narrow confines of his deliberately disingenuous remark.
“…*Heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States*.
“../NOAA National Weather Service statistical data shows that heat causes more fatalities per year than floods, lightning, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined. Based on the 10-year average from 1994 to 2003, excessive heat claimed 237 lives each year. By contrast, floods killed 84; tornadoes, 58; lightning, 63; and hurricanes, 18.
In the disastrous heat wave of 1980, more than 1,250 people died. In the heat wave of 1995 more than 700 deaths in the Chicago, Illinois area were attributed to this event, and in August 2003, a record heat wave in Europe claimed an estimated 50,000 lives…”
The stupid – it burns!!
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/?n=noaaexcessiveheat
December 13, 2014 at 7:20 am
Thoughts about death from overheating occurred to me too. I recall well the heat wave of 2003, I very nearly expired in a traffic jam at a busy road-motorway interchange in southern England. Having had an ‘unexpected to survive’ myocardial infarction [1] a few years previously I was no longer a driver but the passenger the fumes from traffic were adding to my distress from not dispersing.
I also remember the extreme conditions I worked in on an aircraft carrier in my youth on one occasion whilst in the tropics repairing the stabilator of a Phantom F4K (FG1) the sweat was not evaporating but running down the anhedral tail to form a spreading pool on the deck. Frequent rests and topping up with chilled ‘limers’ (a mix of lime juice powder, salt sugar and water) was required to alleviate core overheat and replace lost fluid. It is with high humidity that heat stress builds quickly. Thus those who find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to work in extremes, maybe wearing cumbersome work dress – firefighters etc, have it particularly tough. Stossel, in an air conditioned studio, clearly just cannot grasp this.
Maybe Stossel should be sent on mandatory work experience, as should those braying heads of Fox, although putting them on a firefighting team would be to create unwelcome liabilities.
[1] I had another arrest whilst wired and plumbed like a space shuttle on the launch pad when the medics were plumbing in a blood sampling box which they had attached to my chest.
December 13, 2014 at 9:11 am
Isn´t there actually people living in the areas with the drought in US?
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Do those people sit in front of their TV and watch these ridiculous FOX programs and agree?
Here in north of Sweden, at the Arctic Circle we once more are experiencing a much too warm winter. When there should be -15°C there is +2°C.
I think that more and more people are experiencing the truth [the changed patterns in weather due to change in climate] by first hand and therefore do not need to sit in front of their TVs and get told to themselves what the reality is.
December 13, 2014 at 10:45 am
the planet is speaking loudly – one reason the polls are swinging away from denial.
December 13, 2014 at 11:05 am
Consider the following statement:
“They are able to protect themselves. Big difference between ‘climate change is going to kill us,’ and ‘climate changes.'”
He should study some history. Climate changes have brought down whole civilizations. At one time the Saraha was not a desert but a semitropical land. During the First Kingdom in Egypt this all suddenly changed and the land began to turn to desert, forcing the collapse of kingdoms and disrupting whole societies, bringing the end of the First Kingdom.
Stossel is one of the smart ones at Fox. Too bad he’s also a Fox whore.
December 14, 2014 at 7:42 pm
“Stossel is one of the smart ones at Fox. Too bad he’s also a Fox whore”.
Every last one if them at Fox is a whore in the image of Glenn Beck and Limbaugh. Stossel is not “smart” beyond realizing that whoring pays better than honest work. It is sickening to watch these clips of pooled ignorance and pandering to the sorry-ass people that swear by Faux News. Peter says “the polls are swinging” away from denial? Let’s hope the swing accelerates rapidly enough to destroy Faux News in the near future.l.
December 13, 2014 at 6:03 pm
Factoid:
As for ghosts, Bible-thumping literalist Christians (those who believe the earth is 6000 years old, e.g.) MUST believe in Ghosts. Show them Luke 24:39 and see what happens:
“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” (King James Version)
Jesus shows up after the resurrection and appears in a room with the disciples, materializing with them, even though the doors to the room were locked. He didn’t use this opportunity to say to them, “you dolts, there’s no such thing as ghosts”, but simply stated that ghosts don’t have flesh and blood. This is by no means an isolated incident of paranormal activity in the scriptures, but for many, if Jesus said it, they believe it, end of story….unless it challenges their bias then of course that’s not what he really meant…
There are genuine paranormal investigators out there using the scientific method to study phenomena such as ghostly apparitions, etc. But, as usual, our money-hungry media have turned even that science, as crazy as it may seem, into pseudo-science for the entertainment of the masses, faking the ‘evidence’ to suit the ratings machine.