When it comes to issues as important as global warming I find comfort in the Huffington Post ramblings of a rowing musician. Global warming is a lie you say? Well then NASA and the Royal Society be damned.
A new Huffington Post blogger named Harold Ambler has posted an unoriginal rehashing of the same old global warming denial talking points that we've seen over and over again for close to a decade now.
What's so newsworthy here is of course the venue.
Huffington Post has long been a place where this type of junk science has been debunked, not promoted.
I'm sure this little coup has the climate skeptics all giddy, because it definitely has thoughtful bloggers like Adam Siegel at Get Energy Now rightly ticked off:
Huffington Post published Harold Ambler's Mr Gore: Apology Accepted which is notable in its breadth and audacity of disinformation, truthiness, and simply wrong-headedness. Literally books and hundreds (actually, thousands) of scientific studies and analyses have been written that provide the substance to prove Ambler's words false. What is shameful, on top of this, is that this is not just the 'false' and misleading material, but its deceit in support of recklessly dangerous policy concepts that would hinder our ability to move forward to greater prosperity and a stronger American future.
The question for me is: who the heck is Harold Ambler?
And what makes Ambler such an authority on climate science to so confidently make the a claim as bold as global warming being a lie? By the looks of his various bios scattered around the internet it appears that Ambler's background in the area of climate science is non-existent, he is the author of an upcoming book on a rowing team at Brown University and a musician.
Such an outrageous claim as: "It [global warming] is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind," flies in the face of what the top scientific institutions in the world like NASA, the US Academy of Science and the Royal Society have been saying for years and its going to take a lot more than the ramblings of rowing guitarist to prove it.
I am hoping that Ambler's post was some type of technical glitch or editorial goof-up because it is this type of misinformation from wannabe scientists that are a major reason so many people are willing to pass over global warming as a concern they have to deal with.
For many people, especially now with the major worldwide economic problems we are all dealing with, there's enough worry in day-to-day life - putting food on the table, making mortgage payments, finding daycare - and global warming is something that most would naturally like to not have think about.
It's easy to put aside something as big as global warming if we have an excuse to do so and Ambler's post is just the thing for those people with more immediate concerns they have to deal with.
Even if it is just the rehashed misinformation of a rowing musician.
UPDATE:
Arianna Huffington has put out the following message:
Harold Ambler reached out to me about posting a critical piece on Al Gore and the environment. We are always open to posts that present opinions contrary to HuffPost's editorial view -- and have welcomed many conservative voices, such as David Frum, Tony Blankley, Michael Smerconish, Bob Barr, Joe Scarborough, Jim Talent, etc., to the site. We have featured also countless posts from the leading lights of the Green movement, including Robert Redford, Laurie David, Carl Pope, Van Jones, David Roberts, and many others -- and I myself have written extensively about the global warming crisis, and have been highly critical of those who refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence.
When Ambler sent his post, I forwarded it to one of our associate blog editors to evaluate, not having read it. I get literally hundreds of posts a week submitted like this and obviously can't read them all -- which is why we have an editorial process in place. The associate blog editor published the post. It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.