MSNBC.com has drawn a line in the sand regarding where it stands on the “consensus” of man-made climate change. Following Bill Nye’s appearance on Sunday’s Meet the Press, MSNBC.com’s Ned Resnikoff continued to peddle the liberal line on climate change and conveniently dismissed any skepticism of human involvement on the issue.
Just yesterday, David Gregory, moderator of Meet the Press, used the term “consensus” six times when objecting to Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s (R-Tenn.) hesitation on whether or not the federal government should spend billions of dollars on climate change related programs. Resnikoff must have gotten Gregory’s memo as he ran a website article nearly mirroring Gregory’s liberal talking points on climate change, including using the “consensus” phrase.
Resnikoff began by hyping how:
This was Nye’s second high-profile jousting match with a dissenter against the scientific community. Earlier this month, the former host of children’s television show Bill Nye the Science Guy debated the Biblical creation story with Creation Museum founder Ken Ham.
In both cases, Nye attempted to act as an ambassador on behalf of the scientific method, explaining how the preponderance of evidence leads one to a particular conclusion. And in both cases, his interlocutor fought him to a standstill by conjuring up the appearance of ambiguity.
Resnikoff then cited the misleading statistic that “The scientific consensus on climate change is accepted by 97 percent of climate scientists” without pointing out the flawed methodology used to obtain the number. He continued to dismiss Ms. Blackburn’s objection to the climate change “consensus” instead choosing to minimize her arguments once more:
Although the arguments marshalled in the Meet the Press debate were structurally similar to those used at the Creation Museum, the stakes differed considerably. The threat of natural selection is largely philosophical: It calls Biblical literalism into doubt and undermines the argument that humans are somehow distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom.
But the threat of climate change is corporeal. If left unchecked, rising global temperatures could lead to unpredictable extreme weather events, mass famine, pandemics, political instability, and resource wars.
Resnikoff then continued to repeat Nye’s Meet the Press arguments that “mitigating climate change means attempting to “do everything all at once,” not dwelling on whether that will put a slight dent in the energy industry’s profit margins. The piece concluded with Resnikoff using Nye to dismiss climate “denialism” because “The more we mess around with this denial, the less we’re going to get done.”
