In a July 23 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard promotes Rush Limbaugh’s conspiracy theory that the heat index — how hot it feels outside by factoring humidity into the surface temperature — is a government conspiracy to promote global warming, and chastising Bill Maher for reporting the heat index as the surface temperature:
If folks like him were honest, they would first make clear that heat index is not temperature. It’s temperature including the impact humidity has on it.
[…]
And that’s the real news this week that global warming obsessed media members have downplayed – record humidity.Heat indices skyrocketed last week, and that must mean Nobel laureate Gore is right about global warming regardless of all the other factors involved.
If folks like Sheppard were honest, he would acknowledge that increased humidity is a sign of global warming. Also, he would explain why record heat doesn’t prove global warming but record cold disproves it — a claim he has made repeatedly at NewsBusters.