More Misleading News

I let these accumulate until I have enough for a post

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Earth’s magnetic field failed 41,000 years ago – forever changing human evolution

More cosmic rays and ultraviolet light would have reached the surface, posing a threat to living organisms. This exposure might have driven humans and animals to adapt quickly—or disappear.

Around the time of the Laschamps excursion, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe. But shortly after, Neanderthals vanished. Could changes in the magnetic field have played a role?

…One key adaptation may have been clothing.

…There’s also evidence that Homo sapiens began using ochre more frequently around this time. …It may have functioned as a prehistoric sunscreen.” (Brighterside News)

An interesting article but it is all speculation — “might have,” “may have been” — and neither clothing nor ochre is evolution. The story contains nothing to justify “forever changing human evolution” in the headline.

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NASA warns! 100-foot asteroid 2025 QV9 racing towards Earth at over 10,000 mph on September 10; should we be concerned

…. It will pass at a safe distance, about five times the Moon’s distance. (The Times of India)

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Fact Check: Vance called Trump ‘America’s Hitler’ in 2016

Claim:

U.S. Vice President JD Vance once called President Donald Trump “America’s Hitler.”

Rating:

Rating: Correct Attribution

Context:

In 2016, Vance wrote in a private message to his former law school roommate: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?” (Snopes)

The text message.

Vance said that Trump might or might not be America’s Hitler not that he was.

The text message.

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A 30-year-old sea level rise projection has basically come true

Even without today’s advanced modeling tools, scientists made a ‘remarkably’ accurate estimate. (Yale Climate Connections)

From the article that the story linked to:

Global mean sea-level projections versus observations for the satellite altimetry era (1993–2023). Low, mid, and high projections (red, with associated equilibrium climate sensitivities of 1.5, 2.5, and 4.5°C, respectively) from Scenario IS92a in IPCC-SAR (including aerosol changes) (Warrick et al., 1996) compared to globally averaged sea-level measurements (thick black line is a quadratic fit through the high-resolution time series shown by the thin black line) based on satellite altimetry (without correction for glacial isostatic adjustment) (Hamlington et al., 2024).

There were six alternative emissions scenarios, IS92a-f. Calculating the implications of a scenario required combining it with an assumed sensitivity, a measure of the effect of CO2 on global temperature. The article reported that for one emission scenario combined with one of three sensitivities the SLR projection in the second IPCC report¹ of 8cm was close to what happened, 9 cm.

In other words, one projection out of eighteen in one of the first two IPCC reports was almost correct. The key word in the headline is the first: “A”.

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Authorities release person of interest detained in Brown University shooting

The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, firing more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, a law enforcement official told AP. Two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody and authorities also found two loaded 30-round magazines, the official said. One of the firearms was equipped with a laser sight that projects a dot to aid in targeting, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity. (pbs story)

That makes it sound as though the magazines, handguns, and laser sight belonging to the “person of interest” had some connection to the shooting. But the first sentence of the story was:

A person of interest detained after a Brown University shooting that killed two students and injured nine will be released after law enforcement authorities determined there was no basis to keep the individual in custody, officials said Sunday night.

Later in the story:

He [attorney general Peter Neronha] said that “certainly there was some degree of evidence that pointed to the individual” who’d been taken into custody but “that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed. And over the last 24 hours leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.”

My guess is that the evidence that pointed to the individual was the fact that he had firearms, observed by one of the hotel staff and reported to the police.

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In almost all of these, the article is fine, the headline, possibly written by a different person, is misleading. The last reverses that.

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1. “The First Assessment Report (IPCC-FAR; Houghton et al., 1990) is based on emission scenarios that deviate substantially from what has been observed since 1990 and it was therefore not further considered.”