If you frequent right-wing blogs you may have noticed a pattern: Global Warming skeptics cite a city or a region in which temperatures have been cold in the past month or so. They then extrapolate this irrelevant event to conclude that the whole planet is cooling and therefore Al Gore is a liar and a fraud.
But since this is global warming we're talking about, let's look at the big picture:
Never in the history of recorded June temperatures had Earth's oceans been so hot as in June, 2009. This same month was the second warmest June recorded in the history of planet Earth (land and ocean combined), trailing only 2005.
I bet you didn't see that one in Drudge.


Source: National Climactic Data Center.

Two of the most prestigious fact-checking websites in the nation, Politifact.com and Factcheck.org have attempted to debunk claims by the "Birther" movement that Barack Obama is not a US Citizen. The main claim to back this up is that Hawaii has both a "short form," aka "certification of live birth," and a "long form" which is much more thorough than the "short form," containing extra vital information.
A lot of time and effort could have been saved if Hawaiian officials had said from the beginning that the long forms for every person born in Hawaii from 1908 to 2001 were discarded in 2001.

Last Friday, July 24th, TVNewser posted an email exchange between CNN President Joe Klein and the Hawaiian Health Department the day before:

----- Original Message -----
From: Klein, Jon (CNN)

Sent: Thu Jul 23 19:00:44 2009
Subject: Important re birth certificate

I asked the political researchers to dig into the question "why couldn't Obama produce the ORIGINAL birth certificate?"

This is what they forwarded. It seems to definitively answer the question. Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead - because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

*****************

*In 2001 - the state of Hawaii Health Department went paperless.*Paper documents were discarded. *The official record of Obama's birth is now an official ELECTRONIC record Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Health Department told the Honolulu Star Bulletin, "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

But this is what Factcheck.org reported back in August, 2008:

We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response

Why wasn't the crazy theory put to rest that same day? Why was Factcheck.org kept in the dark about this conclusive fact? What was so sensitive about the information about the 2001 purge that it had to be kept secret?

Politifact.com has equally done a great job in helping debunk the myth, but the Pullitzer prize winning site was also kept in the dark regarding the 2001 transition from paper to electronic form either. You won't find that key fact in its reporting..
Hawaii just wasted my time and your time, and allowed this stupid controversy to linger. What took them so long?