It seems that all of our self-appointed media watchdogs have become Obamacrat cuddle pups.  I ran across a post on the FAIR site (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – - LOL!) while following up on my recent article, NOAA Releases Politically Correct Sunspot Prediction.  The FAIR group may think it is objective, or the name may be a cover; it really doesn’t matter which, since FAIR has an obvious bias and can’t be counted as a trustworthy “watchdog.”

FAIR and balanced contortions?

The FAIR piece I ran across is titled Fox Fantasizes Evidence of Global Cooling.  Yup, another nest of FOX News haters.  The FAIR screed was substantially lifted from a blog called “Science News.”  (Again, LOL.) The FAIR version discusses three articles on the NOAA solar cycle 24 release, including one appearing on National Geographic News and one on the FOX News site.

The NatGeo News article is titled Sun Oddly Quiet – - Hints At Next ‘Little Ice Age’? and includes the following statements:

The sun is the least active it’s been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850.

The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum.

Even if the current solar lull is the beginning of a prolonged quiet, the scientists say, the star’s effects on climate will pale in contrast with the influence of human-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).

The Maunder Minimum corresponded to a profound lull in sunspots—astronomers at the time recorded just 50 in a 30-year period.

In the meantime, . . . experts caution against relying on future solar lulls to help mitigate global warming.

“There are many uncertainties,” said Jose Abreu, a doctoral candidate at the Swiss government’s research institute Eawag. “We don’t know the sensitivity of the climate to changes in solar intensity. In my opinion, I wouldn’t play with things I don’t know.”

The FOX News piece is titled Quiet Sun May Trigger Global Cooling.  It is essentially a shorter version of the NatGeo story, which it hotlinks, and includes the following:

Could reduced sunspots be tied to temperatures on Earth?

That’s what has astrophysicists and meteorologists wondering as the sun enters a prolonged “quiet period,” a deviation from the usual 11-year sunspot cycle in which the dark blobs on our star’s surface ebb and flow, reports National Geographic News.

And there may be a link to global warming — or, in this case, cooling. Current theories link an earlier solar quiet time to the “Little Ice Age,” a cold snap that lasted from about 1300 to 1800 in Europe and North America.

During such “solar minimums,” as they’re called, the sun dims a bit, magnetic activity is reduced and solar storms are fewer. No one knows how long each will last until it’s over.

The Maunder Minimum, a period of extremely low sunspot activity from about 1645 to 1715, coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, when Dutch canals regularly froze during the winter.

But scientists say it may be too early to tell if this solar minimum will really have a prolonged effect.

“There are many uncertainties,” Jose Abreu, a doctoral candidate in Switzerland, tells National Geographic News. “We don’t know the sensitivity of the climate to changes in solar intensity. In my opinion, I wouldn’t play with things I don’t know.”

There is no reasonable reading of these two stories which concludes than one is substantively different from the other.  Both have a similar headline and both impart the same information.

Yet FAIR throws down on FOX News, as follows (mis-spelling in the original):

Meanwhile, almost inevitably, into this otherwise reasoned debate wades a less-than-scientific outlet reaching its own conclusions: “Fox News, predictably, notes the Geographic story and plugs it with this hed: ‘Quiet Sun May Trigger Global Cooling.’”

My first reaction to this drivel is that I had stumbled across some weird spoof site, that the whole bit was a joke; but, no, it appears that these FAIR folks are serious and take themselves seriously.

Or is it me? Do I fail to discern the significant difference between the concepts of “global cooling” and “ice age?”

Again, it seems, we have the “identity politics” game: if the story appears on National Geographic News, it’s reliable, good stuff; but when the same story appears on FOX News, it’s unreliable, bad stuff. Truly, I doubt that the FAIR blogger bothered to actually read what FOX News had published – - Fox Haters evidently refuse to do actual research – - but simply lifted the idea from “Science News,” which may not have compared the FOX News and National Geographic articles, either.

FAIR has a bias, and what it publishes is poppycock.