Most scientists … say that humans are altering the climate by adding heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere.

Is there anything much more meaningless than asserting that adding things to the climate…. adds things to the climate?

Here is a much more useful piece for thoughtful, open-minded adults to ponder.

The media trope of the week is that Mr. Perry is George W. Bush only more so, but he clearly isn’t the same on monetary policy. Mr. Bush, who first appointed Mr. Bernanke, was an easy-money, weak-dollar President. He and his former economic advisers still don’t understand how Alan Greenspan’s policies at the Fed contributed to the credit and housing manias that led to the financial meltdown that caused the GOP’s political undoing in 2008.

Mr. Perry seems to appreciate that the Federal Reserve can’t conjure prosperity from the monetary printing presses. His articulation needs some work, but we hope the Texan doesn’t let media and other criticism deter him from pursuing the argument.

[Gov. Perry] comes from the state that has energy on its mind. He has spoken about natural gas, and seems to understand as no one running for the presidency does, that we have discovered enough natural gas in the country to change the rules of the game. If our natural gas can be used effectively it can make us independent of foreign oil, allowing us to set the price of oil, not OPEC. It is both a domestic energy issue and a national security issue. What the governor has to say about the issues will be of great importance in the months ahead, not the least of which is how to develop natural gas. Only he is equipped to talk about it as a source of energy and a national security matter.

The new professional “fact-checking” class is, at its best, doing good, regular journalism under the pseudo-scientific banner, complete with made-up measurements.

At their worst, they’re doing opinion journalism under pseudo-scientific banners, something that’s really corrosive to actual journalism…

All too often, “fact-checking” outfits are engaged in the latter, not the former. It’s why our editors frequently refer to such editorializing posing as news/analysis as PolitiFarce or PolitOpinion. We’d much rather see more/better beat reporting, investigative reporting, and INTERNAL fact-checking (see below).

Clarification: Thank you to the astute reader who pointed out that, in Tuesday’s column, Pete McRae’s recollection of Rick Perry showing up at the capital in 1985 in an old jalopy with two kids in the back seat may not have been entirely correct. Neither of Perry’s children had been born yet.

In our note Wednesday, we missed THAT pretty big blunder, although we did caution against relying upon, as sources, felons convicted of campaign-related lawbreaking against the subject of one’s writing (without any indication of the same)! This might not have made it to print at a newspaper with editors and fact-checkers, but this is the Houston Chronicle.