On local news radio yesterday, Wallace made the following statement, regarding some guests that he was going to have on his Sunday (news) program.

“We are also going to talk about climate change.  There is a growing fury [ now, with] this East Anglia [scandal, finding out] that [the, or some, in decipherable] scientists cooked the books.”

Is there a growing fury that this happened? Maybe. Thus was Wallace’s statement misleading?

Yes.  Any fury is misplaced. But the “fury,” for the most part, is not over the issue. The fury is over a few scientists over at East Anglia. And the “fury” itself, aside from being a highly manipulative and very exaggerated — and hence agenda pushing — word choice, is mainly among those who don’t know the basic science of the issue. (Which, unfortunately, is a LOT  more people than one might think; which is why if you happen to come across this moderate post, you should share it.)

Wallace here is playing right into this misinformation (and is likely even  misinformed himself) — even heightening the skepticism and drama in his tone as he referenced the issue; almost as if there was a “scandal” in the idea that we should address rapidly increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels, that 1) we know with 100 percent certainty are occurring, and 2) we know are occuring as a result of very specific, identifiable human activities, with 100 percent certainty.

The earth is continuing to warm, the evidence is incontrovertible. The credentials of those promoting the evidence (NASA, the World  Meteorological Council, the IPCC, the NOAA, etc.) is solid, and the consensus is not in dispute by a single non partisan scientist.  We know that the long term trend since exhaustive record keeping began, is that the earth is continuing to warm, and, in increasingly significant fashion. This we know.  We also know points (1) and (2) from the paragraph just above.

Are points 1 and 2 the cause of this warming? We don’t know, with certainty. Probably.  Almost every reputable scientist puts the probability of this at between 90 and 99 percent.

But here is what we also know with 100 percent probability.  Heat trapping gases prevent heat from escaping, and heat drives climate.  And climate is tied to atmospheric greenhouse gas levels. And atmospheric greenhouse levels are wildly out of whack — in this case, due to points 1 and 2 above, that we know with certainty — and this will change climate.

How? Our best guess (more heat trapping guesses, despite expected fluctuations along the way, will lead to more heat, and more and more severe storms — which are driven by both temperature differential and heat), is that the earth will warm. Probably increasingly severely.

But we don’t know for sure. The data that has been amassed makes a fairly compelling case that this is and will be the result, but we don’t know with absolute certainty. What we do know with absolute certainty are points 1 and 2 above, and that this will have a radical effect on climate over the longer term.

It turns out that the very beginnings of the specific radical effect that we would most expect — increased warming, increased unpredictability,and increased volatiliy and extremity — are in fact being observed. But this is not the real story. The real story is that greenhouse gases, on even a geologic time frame,  have dramatically increased as a result of specific identifiable activities, and that heat drives climate. And that the data that we have incontrovertibly observed tends to confirm our guestimations.

The non defensible actions of a few data skewing scientists who were overly worried that the overyhype paid to the far less observable issue of shorter term climate variations would further warp perception on an issue that has been very poorly explained — while a story, obviously — is pretty much irrelevant to the issue.

But not to those who are fighting what is non partisan, scientific — and basic scientific — reality. And, seemingly, not to Fox’s Chris Wallace, who himself probably doesn’t even know the basic science facts, and who serves as a legitimizing mouthpiece to those who either also don’t understand the issue, and/or want to turn it into a scientifically misplaced, ideological battle. And Wallace does it, under the guise of “news.”

“Balance” in this Fox world is maybe having some guests on that say climate change is “real,” and some guests on that say it is not (With a push, if one listens to Wallace, for saying it is not).

But climate change is ultimately the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases that are occurring through the result of specific, very isolatable, and identifiable human activities, and the likely, and increasingly dramatic effect that this will have on climate. It is not the thus far corroborating data. But even if it was, as noted above, the existence of he corroborating data is not in dispute either.

But is it in the world of Fox?

And if so, what does that say about the role that Fox — which presents itself to the public, and to the rest of the media, as a news station — is actually playing?