A Democratic video says 240 House members “voted in 2011 that climate change was a ‘hoax.’ ” Not exactly. The 2011 vote was ultimately a referendum on who should set climate change policy — the Environmental Protection Agency or Congress. It was not a vote on whether climate change is a “hoax.”
An ad running in San Diego and on MSNBC claims immigration will cause a rise in U.S. population equal to that of the American West within 30 years. That’s not true. The increase is projected to be substantial, but nowhere near that high, even counting the children and grandchildren of newly arriving immigrants, legal or illegal.
A group called Californians for Population Stabilization began running the ad April 17, pegging it to Earth Day, which is April 22.
Likely GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty's views on cap and trade aren't what they used to be.
Pawlenty told "Fox News Sunday" on Jan. 16 that he "never did sign a bill relating to cap and trade" when he was governor of Minnesota, but that's not true. He also said: "I've opposed cap and trade." However, that's been the case only since 2009.
In fact, the bill he signed in 2007 specifically required a task force to "recommend how the state could adopt"
The Father’s Day political talk shows contained a stretch here, an exaggeration there, misimpressions left everywhere. Here’s what we found.
All Studies Don’t Agree
On CNN’s "State of the Union," Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Independent, bragged about the supposed benefits of the climate-change bill he has introduced with Democratic Sen. John Kerry:
Lieberman: And, look, our comprehensive bill, according to all of the independent studies will create half a million new jobs a year,
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has been attacking incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer since well before June 8, when Fiorina hoped to lock up the Republican Senate nomination in California. Her latest ad went up just a few days before the primary and falsely accuses Boxer of neglecting terrorism in favor of the weather report.
"One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change," Boxer says in a 2007 clip shown in the ad.
In November 2009, private e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were stolen and made public. Climate change disbelievers called it “Climategate,” saying that the e-mails proved collusion and conspiracies that would discredit man-made global warming. We found that there was no solid evidence of wrongdoing in the e-mails, but noted that a detailed investigation by the university was underway.
As it turns out, this investigation came to more or less the same conclusion we did.
In our article on Climategate, we cited overwhelming scientific consensus — represented in part by the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — pointing to a global rise in temperatures. But the IPCC’s credibility has been challenged since we wrote that article, with several situations coming to light in which the panel reproduced erroneous results from non-peer-reviewed literature.
Himalayan Glaciers: The IPCC’s 2007 Working Group II report misrepresented the melt rate of the Himalayan glaciers,
On Dec. 9, an op-ed by Sarah Palin on climate change ran in the Washington Post. Al Gore responded to Palin’s piece and made some fresh claims of his own later that day in an interview with MSNBC. We find that both engaged in some distortions and have been rightly called out by experts in the field. …
This week’s political tidbits range from a new iPhone app to 17th century scientists’ correspondence.
There’s an App for That
OMG! We thought we’d seen it all. But an iPhone app designed to test your knowledge about the overhaul of the health care system? Seriously?
To play "Death Panel," the new game from People Operating Technology, players assume the role of a local official who must answer questions about health care. According to the creators,
In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of …