File this under “seriously?”

Yep, seriously.  When it comes to global warming, the media is too balanced.

The story starts here:

Gore says media miss climate message-  Journalists have leaned toward balance at expense of consensus data, he says

Back in Tennessee on Tuesday, Gore told a crowd of about 50 people at the U.S. Media Ethics Summit II that the presentation’s single most provocative slide was one that contrasts results of two long-term studies. A 10-year University of California study found that essentially zero percent of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists, whereas, another study found that 53 percent of mainstream newspaper articles disagreed the global warming premise.

I have no doubt that is accurate as far as it goes.  I have a few notes though.  First he did not say ALL  peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists.   He said that essentially all of them did.  Two things.  How many, what percent is the basis for “essentially?  What ratio?

And second, remember what Peer Reviewing is?

Peer review  (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a process of subjecting an author’s scholarly work or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the field. It is used primarily by editors to select and to screen submitted manuscripts, and by funding agencies, to decide the awarding of grants. The peer review process aims to make authors meet the standards of their discipline, and of science in general.

So here is my question:  How many non supportive articles successfully pass peer review when the consensus defending “peers” are likely to find flaw with the non supportive authors?  Likely very few.  How many are even submitted?  Likely very few.  So isn’t that a meaningless statistic? 

He noted that recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fourth unanimous report calling on world leaders to take action on global warming.

Yea, but there are enough problems there that this also is a meaningless claim. 

Dennis Miller is my hero.  He has got to be one of the clearest minded modern thinkers we have.

It was fun watching Rosie spew Liberal mantras like: 

If you sacrifice liberty for percieved security you don’t deserve either.

And then to see Miller rebut it with common sense and fact.

Listen, I’ll agree with you up to a point, but if you’re asking me if I don’t want to check phone calls between here and Saudi Arabia and Iraq just to be free and blown up, I don’t agree with you. I just don’t agree with you.

Thanks Hot Air.

Most conservative bloggers would answer “yes”, something I have long maintained as well.  And when you couple that with their tendency to threats and hate speech, such as the Dick Cheney Death Wish craze,¹ it paints a fairly clear picture.

And many would say who cares, it’s free speech, right?  Of course.  And profanity is not a necessary component of rudeness either.  Is an insult given in a profanity free way any less an insult? 

But excessive profanity is distracting.  It clouds the substance of a debate with an emotional response, quite often.  And personally, I think excessive use is childish.   It is usually coupled with ad hominem attacks which are also fairly juvenile.

Newsbuckit decided to answer the question of who is the worst potty mouth:

The Net’s not always a kid-friendly place; there is plenty of foul language out there. And of course, the blogosphere is no different.

But how different are the Rightosphere and Leftosphere when it comes to “dirty” language? Which side produces the most profanity-laceed diatribes? Via Instapundit, I happened upon this interesting challenge from InstaPunk:

I propose an exercise to be performed by those who have the software and expertise to carry it out. The exercise is this: Search six months’ worth of content, posts and comments, of the 20 most popular blogs on the right and the left. The search criteria are George Carlin’s infamous ‘7 Dirty Words.’ [Click this link for the list of expletives.]

And this is what I found, using what I deemed — through a mix of TTLB and 2006’s Weblog Award lists — to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. I couldn”t account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn’t make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin’s “seven words” versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

Again, not a big shock.