Below is an email I sent to a co-worker who read an article in Fox News online which led her to email me the conclusion Fox wanted her to have that as they titled it: “Wind Power Harms the Earth”. Here was my reply:

Dear Shelley,

So glad you agree that warmer temperatures are harmful to farmers, crops and our food supply, as does Fox New, quoted below in the article you emailed me: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/30/wind-farms-are-warming-earth-researchers-say/#ixzz20kzXyoXm

“The warming could hurt local farmers, who have already suffered through a killer drought over the past few years. Texas agriculture contributes $80 billion to the state’s economy, second only to petrochemicals, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.

West Texas is a dry area that uses irrigation to grow wheat, cotton and other crops, as well as raise cattle. But increased warming can play havoc with plant growth, as well as change local rainfall patterns.”

Only there are several huge problems with Fox’s analysis that “wind farms are harmful” based on a study showing a possible night time ground temperature rise of 1 to 2 degrees beneath wind turbines.

1. This Fox News article ended with “Zhou [one of the researchers] cautioned that his study used satellite data, which can have errors from clouds, for example, rather than temperature readings taken at the surface. He said he hopes to improve his dataset, and look at wind farms in other parts of the world.” So aside from Fox News not listening to the study they’re quoting by not being cautious but rather jumping to conclusions about ground temperatures based on satellites,

2….but even if his study turns out to be corroborated by more data, these increased temperatures of only 1.7 degrees are at night which is much colder than daytime when the real harm to crops occurs from higher temeratures!

3. But more importantly, the Q & A section of this very same study says: “the wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only redistribute the air’s heat near the surface (the turbine itself does not generate any heat), which is fundamentally different from the large scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases due to the burning of fossil fuels.”

So here we have Fox News deliberately twisting, misleading and miseducating readers in five ways:

1 – Taking one satellite study of supposed increased ground temperatures and despite the author of the study saying it needed more confirmation, making the broad claim: “Wind farms are warming Earth”

2 –  Absurdly implying that night time temperature increases of 1.7 degree Fahrenheit after daytime temperature have dropped 20 to 40 degrees are the real problem that can harm crop growth!!

3 –  Covering up that it’s emissions from greenhouse gases such as coal, oil and gas that are actually heating up the air and warming the Earth and

4 –  causing the “killer drought” in Texas over the “past few years.” which Fox News ignores.

5 – Finally, in direct contradiction to their statement, transparently revealing their bias, at the beginning of the article that this phenomenon “could put a damper on efforts to expand wind energy as a green energy solution”, they deliberately left out and covered up the fact that a co-author of this same study, Professor Somnath Baidya Roy at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, concluded “Wind power is going to be a part of the solution to the climate change, air pollution and energy security problems,”

Shelley, they are deliberately pulling the wool over your eyes and engaging in a systematic coverup!!

How else to explain why there aren’t numerous Fox News articles about fossil fuel use causing global warming and threatening “havoc with plant growth” as they themselves put it?

Out of hundreds, maybe thousands of stories in the Fox New search engine, (at that time it was online), I found not a single story on coal/coal industry/coal mines warming the Earth, oil/oil industry/oil wells warming the Earth, natural gas/natural gas wells/fracking warming the Earth nor coal/oil/gas as major cause of global warming, etc. etc.

Like two needles in a haystack, I did find though one video of a climate scientist explaining that the current heat wave, 60% of U.S. is in drought, is due to global warming caused by burning of fossil fuels.

And lo and behold I also found one 2005 Fox News story on global warming called The Heat Is On. (also a book.)  but that’s only one! Maybe there are more but they are way outnumbered by all their other truly junk science stories.

So, now that you agree warmer temperatures aren’t good for us, does the following also make sense?

If you emit enough greenhouse gases, you start to get a greenhouse effect and then the more you emit, over time the more greenhouse effect you get.

If you say, it’s the sun causing global warming, here’s what NASA says: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/05/419064/nasa-human-activity-not-solar-activity-drives-global-warming-350-ppm/

But, if you can show me how Fox News wasn’t misleading and miseducating readers like you in this article, and how they are not overall misleading readers in general about global warming, I’ll give you $1000 — no problem; it’s a promise.

Sincerely Yours,

Tom

Of course, Shelley didn’t take me up on my $1000 offer because Fox News lied to her and millions of others and are continuing to lie.
________________________________________
From: Malmgren, Shelley
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 11:54 AM
To: Kahan, Tom
Subject: Wind farms are HARMFUL Tom!

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/30/wind-farms-are-warming-earth-researchers-say/