Lost Faith in Forbes

Forbes Magazine was Just a Billionaire's Fan Boy

…But I still thought they had some decent financial reporting, some telling investigations and a tendency to be tough when it counted.  That was their "image" in my wee brain for years.  I thought Steve Forbes was a rightist dweeb, but I didn't hold that against his magazine.

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Then they hired "Smiley" James Taylor (here supporting Rick Perry)
(senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute*) to write blatant denialist pieces on climate change.  He's a slick trickster who writes pseudo-science with the total confidence of a con man selling you a pyramid scheme.  Here's an example:

He reports on a NOAA study from 2013 about the relationship between extreme weather and global warming, and headlines it:

NOAA Report Destroys Global Warming Link To Extreme Weather

…cherry picking such paragraphs as this:  "Adding additional emphasis to the NOAA publication’s findings, scientists reported in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that natural factors such as ocean current cycles and varying wind patterns caused most of the warming along the U.S. West Coast since 1900."

He blithely omits all the study info that notes that changes in "ocean current cycles" and "varying wind patterns" (think polar vortex, wild jet stream dives, more dramatic el Ninos, etc.) all which are seriously influenced by warmer oceans, disappearing north polar ice, etc.) Taylor conveniently ignores the base cause behind the secondary effect. 

But he shows no such restraint in coming to his conclusions, complete with the word "lie."

"The next time you hear politicians and global warming activists claim global warming is causing or worsening extreme weather events, know that the objective science shows they are telling self-serving lies."

I award him the "slick trickster" title because the *Heartland Institute is ground zero for conservative/libertarian propagandists, and they are good at propaganda.  And obviously they are in the pocket of gangs like Big Tobacco and Big Carbon, as you can see from their choice of 'causes' to support.  From Wikipedia:

"In the 1990s, the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question serious cancer risks to secondhand smoke, and to lobby against government public-health reforms.^[12][13][14] More recently, the Institute has focused on questioning the science of human-caused climate change, and was described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism."^[15] The Institute has organized meetings of climate change skeptics,^[16] and has been reported to promote public school curricula challenging the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.^[17]"

KEEP YOUR MONEY STAINED FINGERS OFF OUR TEXTBOOKS! (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

But Wait, there's more!!!

Forbes has further plunged into protecting the plutocrats by hiring infamous truth twister Jon Entwine

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to deny that certain high-profit pesticides are killing our bees (and other stories inconvenient to Big Money).  As Mother Jones points out, Entine has ties to Monsanto (!) and  Syngenta, the agrichemical company that makes atrazine and neonicotinoids (neonics - the proven bee disrupters). The science was difficult, the proof subtle, but guys like Entine go for the simplistic, especially if it casts doubt on the most convincing findings.  And of course he reports on only what supports his clients and benefactors.  

Look for these two guys in Forbes, James Taylor and Jon Entine.  Put on your blinders if you want to believe them.  I'm just avoiding the magazine unless I crave puff pieces on billionaires.

Check out A Reluctant god.