global climate change

Global Warming Will Cause Earth to Explode! CBS Reports

4 Comments

The Blackboard reports, The AP follows!

Some of you may recall I posted “Odd theories for or about Global Warming” on Monday June 16. The story involved Tom Chalko’s theory that Global warming would create a runaway nuclear reaction in the earth’s core, causing the earth to explode.

Just two days later, the story erupted into the “big time”:

AGW: Earth Will Explode

No. You can’t read June 18, 2008 CBS story; it’s been deleted. The cache wiped clean.

Unfortunately for the credibility of professional science news reporters, some members of the general public read the CBS story.

The result is Ryan M commented on this story at Climate Audit, marveling that it was picked up by wire services. The typical reaction at CA and elsewhere is that of an incredulous commenter at Lonestartimes.com. The title of the comment is ‘The Wacky World of Global Warming “Scientists”.’

How did the story erupt into the blogosphere?

Well…evidently, tremors were recorded by Marketwire on June 17, 2008. Afterwards, the hot story erupted and spreading like molten lava to International Business Times, Ad Hoc News. and Newsblaze.com. I got tired of copying and pasting urls– but let’s just say I didn’t find any stories before June 17.

So, one might wonder: What caused this “nuclear explosion” of stories? Was it fate? Was the avalanche of “Tom Chalko Stories” foretold in The Thiaoouba Prophecy?

Or did someone from Marketwire read my June 16 blog post a bit to quickly?

4 thoughts on “Global Warming Will Cause Earth to Explode! CBS Reports”

  1. The speed at which the mainstream media rushed to print this story reveals exactly why people are becoming more skeptical about AGW. AGW proponents have been badly let down by this because it so clearly shows the confirmation bias that the media displays when it comes to AGW. I despair for the state of science at the moment. The lack of rigour applied to anything espousing AGW is remarkable.

  2. So now we can paraphrase Wegman (Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science).

    The NEW equation must be: Story Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Reporting.

  3. CBS picking this up was truly odd. The rumor is CBS said it was an AP story, but AP denies it was an AP story.

    I suspect it’s not a big enough story for anyone to hammer at CBS and AP to find out what happened.

  4. Lucia,

    I have just looked at the Google cached(text only)version of the CBS story. There is no doubt that it was attributed to the AP as the first and last lines of the article show.

    “(AP) New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago.”

    “© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.”

    I don’t think this ever was a story by AP. CBS seem to have made a big mistake.

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