Media Malpractice

Another global warming meltdown.

FTA:THERE IS A SURE-FIRE WAY to make the news these days: Just issue a press release beginning with the words, "New scientific study shows," and have it assert a conclusion that the MSM fervently want to believe--especially if the resulting story would serve to debunk or refute a Bush administration policy. Slam-dunk! Your press release will become news!

You are skeptical, you say? But what other explanation is there for the decision by CBS and MSNBC to post on their websites a ridiculous story about a new scientific "finding" that global warming is causing an increase in the world's earthquakes--an item that was even linked for a time on the Drudge Report.

Now I am not a scientist, but the idea that a few alleged degrees of warming--with none apparently in the last decade--could cause an increase in earthquakes seemed pure quackery to me. So, I decided to perform Google and Yahoo searches of the "scientist" who had issued the finding, one Thomas Chalko, MSc, Ph.D. In less than five minutes I found that Chalko was perhaps the last person who should be quoted on the purported impact of allegedly man-caused global warming.

Chalko is best described as a pseudo-scientist--at least when it comes to the fields of global warming and earthquakes about which he was quoted by CBS and MSNBC as an authority. He is not a meteorologist. Nor is he a geophysicist or seismologist. His website reveals that he is into "self healing," "vibrations," and alien visitations."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/237xqtks.asp