The most amazing detail in a story today on Politico a story today on Politico is not that a piece of news sent President Trump into a rage. That seems — if reports of him shouting at CNN can be trusted — to happens on a daily basis. No, the shocking/appalling news is that 45 exploded in rage at when an aide slipped him a fake news story about how global cooling was feared by scientists back in the 1970’s.
This myth has been thoroughly disproved. John Fleck, an excellent reporter, and two highly reputable scientists published a paper on this myth almost ten years ago for the American Meteorological Society. They wrote:
An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists’ thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth’s climate on human time scales.
Yet a national security aide named K.T. McFarland, a former candidate who lost to Hillary Clinton, and subsequently worked for FOX News, somehow put a fake Time magazine cover on this myth that sent him into a rage against the media. Politico reports:
Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.
Brings to mind a scary quote from “1984” recently posted by a NYTimes critic:
“When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.”
To see the fake news cover that sent this duped individual over the edge, click here. One can only imagine the comedy routine that must have been Ivanka talking her dad out of this insanity.
Kit Stolz 