Welcome to the Best of the Left Podcast with clips today from Counter-Spin, Lesho, Ring

of Fire, The Daily Show, and Countdown.

As CNN host Lou Dobbs run out of scary things to say about immigrants, probably not,

actually definitely not, but two recent segments on climate change suggest that he can do

deceptive reporting about more than one thing. On December 18, Dobbs presented a segment about how

unusual wintery weather in the West was casting doubt on global warming, or as Dobbs put it,

so what are those folks talking about, global warming? His guests were CNN meteorologist Chad Myers

and Jay Lair of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has been funded by Exxon

Mobile. Lair unsurprisingly argued against the existence of warming, but CNN's in-house guest

was only slightly better, bemoaning the arrogance of thinking that climate could be impacted by

mere human activity. Dobbs unfortunately returned to this subject, announcing on his January 5th

show, quote, up next, new indications that the hype over global warming may be based on

in-exact science and in-exact assessment of facts, close quote. Dobbs warned viewers to relax

and listen to the facts in the report, but there wasn't much to go on. Last year was among the

warmest ever, but cooler than the previous few. One study suggests ice levels are higher than

they've been in some time, though it's thin ice that melts easily. Nonetheless, CNN sought out

comments from two sources, a climatologist who doesn't trust the overwhelming scientific consensus,

and someone from the pro-corporate Cato Institute who argued against government doing much about

climate change at all. Dobbs closed the report by commenting that people who believe global warming

is happening treated as almost a religion before floating the idea that sunspots could be the

real culprit here. The theory most climate scientists have rejected. After offering up that

discredited hypothesis, Dobbs ironically lamented the quote, crowding out of facts and objective

...