Please. Make them stop.

It seemed that every conservative talk show host today was getting yuks from the irony of the Obama  Commerce Department announcing the launch of a new government climate change service in the middle of unprecedented snowfall in Washington, D.C. Underlying the hilarity was the persistent implication, and sometimes outright assertion, that the snowfall itself actually undermined the prevailing scientific findings of climate change research. If Hannity, Limbaugh and others who did this (and have done it before) really believe that one snowstorm, or twenty, can have any probative value at all in determining the accuracy of climate change science, then they are too ignorant to participate in policy debates about the issue.  If, on the other hand, the talk show pundits are deliberately pandering to the many science-illiterates among their listeners—and I think that is exactly what they are doing—then they are being dishonest and unfair. Continue reading →