This Just In: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Liar

Where have I heard that before?

Okay, I get it that Limbaugh will lie about Clinton and Gore and, Biden, your turn is coming. And I get why -- he wants to advance his own perverted political agenda. But what I don't get is why these right-wing wackjobs lie about environmental issues. I mean, I understand having a Bush in the White House is good for their career advancement, but how does a sick, polluted planet help them?

Anyway, Limbaugh has done it again -- picking up on the recent big oil talking points and asserting that global warming is a myth. The proof? A report that says the Antartic ice sheet is growing. There, see, it's all a liberal lie.

Oh, good. We can all go home now and not worry.

Not quite. Limbaugh was regurgitating the talking points of television commercials put out by big oil's front, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), in response to Al Gore's new movie. The CEI claims are based on the conclusions of a 2005 academic study headed by Curt Davis, director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence at the University of Missouri-Columbia. That study in fact noted that the interior Antartic ice sheets are indeed growing as the result of increased precipitation. But the report went on to say that this is predicted by global warming models and is a confirmation of global warming. Here's what Davis recently had to say in response to the CEI deliberate misstatement about his report:

"These television ads are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate," Davis said. "They are selectively using only parts of my previous research to support their claims. They are not telling the entire story to the public."

"The text of the CEI ad misrepresents the conclusions of the two cited Science papers and our current state of knowledge by selective referencing,"said Dr. Brooks Hanson, deputy editor, physical sciences, Science.

Prior to Davis' 2005 Science study, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that if global warming were occurring, increased precipitation in Antarctica's interior would likely result. In his study, Davis reported growth in interior East Antarctica. He said this growth was probably caused by an increase in precipitation.

Davis said that three points in his study unequivocally demonstrate the misleading aspect of the CEI ads.

- His study only reported growth for the East Antarctic ice sheet, not the entire Antarctic ice sheet.

- Growth of the ice sheet was only noted on the interior of the ice sheet and did not include coastal areas. Coastal areas are known to be losing mass, and these losses could offset or even outweigh the gains in the interior areas.

- The fact that the interior ice sheet is growing is a predicted consequence of global climate warming.

"It has been predicted that global warming might increase the growth of the interior ice sheet due to increased precipitation," Davis said. "All three of these points were noted in our study and ignored by CEI in a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public."

From Rumsfeld cooking the intelligence, to Cheney lying about our certainty of WMD, to Santorum lying about the faux house affair, to Limbaugh lying about the Antartic ice sheets, how is it that these guys are still around?

Thanks to Media Matters for bringing this to my attention -- go read the entire report they deal with more than just the Rush's crap.