The Republicans want to protect us against Islamist terrorists. The Democrats want to protect us against climate change. Each side believes the other's fears are largely imaginary. Rush Limbaugh regularly treats global warming theories as a "hoax." A prominent political scientist dismisses Republican candidates' appeals as sounding "like the day after Sept. 11."
That people who used to be called "climate change sceptics" are now called "deniers" is quite deliberate. The aim is to suggest that climate change scepticism is somehow akin to Holocaust denial. The moral repugnance we feel for the latter, we should essentially feel for the former. The connection is subliminal mostly, but some commentators have been more than happy to spell it out.
British journalist Mark Lynas wrote: "I put (climate change denial) in a similar category to Holocaust denial — except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don't will one day have to answer for their crimes." In Nuremberg-style trials, one presumes.
Guardian columnist and author George Monbiot wrote: "Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and unacceptable as Holocaust denial."
Closer to home, Margo Kingston wrote: "David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial. Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all."
To start judging people guilty for denying things that haven't happened yet — for having contrary thoughts — is surely to trump Orwell's nightmare vision.
The global warming issue has become a bonanza for marketing political products dubbed green, meaning nature, but more realistically, meaning money. While actual dollars are rarely exchanged in electronic financial trading, the markets are thriving on green speak and fear mongering. The problem grows, but the buzzwords and commercials offered, as solutions make no mention of the economics that must be confronted.
It also corrupts the central tenet of science — that hypotheses are there to be tested; to be verified or falsified. As scientist Thomas Huxley said of his discipline, "scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin". The overwhelming majority of scientists believe in man-made climate change. No argument from me. But when you read or hear that "the jury is in" on climate change, or the "science is settled", alarm bells should ring. Science is never really settled. It can always be challenged. Science that isn't open to challenge isn't science; it's more like faith.
A group of 38 scientists recently wrote an open letter to the production company behind The Great Global Warming Swindle, insisting that the doco be altered before its release on DVD. "Free speech," they wrote, "does not extend to misleading the public by making factually incorrect statements." Really?
March 2007 – "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming"
The U.N. recently announced global warming is leading inexorably to global catastrophe. Al Gore won the "best documentary" Oscar for his disaster film "An Inconvenient Truth." The news media beat the drum of "climate catastrophe" daily, all but ignoring scientists who say the threat is overblown or nonexistent. And across America, school children are frightened to death with tales of rising oceans, monster tornadoes, droughts and millions dying – all because of man-made global warming.
However, hidden just beneath the surface of the world's latest environmental craze is a stunningly different reality, as the March edition of WND's acclaimed Whistleblower magazine documents.
Titled "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming," Whistleblower tells the rest of the story the "mainstream press" will never reveal.
To begin with, those who believe the dire warnings of today's establishment press should know, as U.S. Sen. James Inhofe has pointed out, that "for more than 100 years, journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age."
Believe it or not, over the last century America's major media have predicted an impending global climate crisis four different times – each prediction warning that entire countries would be wiped out or that lower crop yields would mean "billions will die." In 1895, the panic was over an imminent ice age. Later, in the late 1920s, when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree, the media jumped on a new threat – global warming, which continued into the late 1950s. Then in 1975, the New York Times' headline blared, "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable." Then in 1981 it was back to global warming, with the Times quoting seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an "almost unprecedented magnitude."
Today, to cover all their bases, much of the press is changing its terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" or "climate catastrophe." That way they're covered either way: If the world gets colder, global warming is still at fault.
But hot-and-cold press coverage is just the beginning. Whistleblower's "HYSTERIA" issue reveals exactly why so many scientists, journalists and others (even the president's speechwriters now have him pay lip service to "climate change") are so gripped by global warming fever.
Here's a hint: As "Deep Throat" famously told Washington Post "Watergate" reporter Bob Woodward, "Follow the money."
Whistleblower shows how all the main players – from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations – benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming. Indeed, just three weeks after the U.N. ratcheted up international fears over global warming, a panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries has now reported to the U.N. that the only thing that can stop catastrophic climate change is a global tax – on greenhouse gas emissions.
That's right. Global problems, real or conjured up, require global governmental solutions. As Whistleblower explains, environmentalism is nothing less than the global elitists' replacement ideology for communism/socialism. With communism largely discredited today – after all, 100-150 million people died at the hands of communist "visionaries" during the last century – elitists who desire to rule other people's lives have gravitated to an even more powerful ideology. More powerful because it seems to trump all other considerations, as it claims the very survival of life on earth is dependent on implementing its agenda.
Thus, while scientists and climatologists who dare to question the rigid orthodoxy of man-made catastrophic global warming are openly ridiculed and threatened with decertification, the movement for global governance, complete with global taxation, is moving into the fast lane.
"Global warming will be one of the most powerfully coercive weapons in the globalists' arsenal for the foreseeable future," said David Kupelian, WND managing editor and author of "The Marketing of Evil." "It's important that everyone understands the game being played. This issue of Whistleblower provides a powerful antidote to all the hysteria – namely, common sense and truth."
There is conflict over whether the climate problem is exaggerated, or even exists at all except in a natural sense. But whether we believe it is man made or ultimately correctable by universe, dualistically speaking, we suffer either way . Until we confront the ever more dangerous system of production and distribution of the earth’s resources, arguing about the origins of a process destroying our future makes as little sense as debating whether death results from mass murders called wars, or mass murders called terrorism. The end result is the same.
Do I Dare Challenge the Global Warming Debate?
Yep!
Don"t Let This Picture Fool You
Buy Warmer Clothing!
Main Stream Media Has Lost All Objectivity on Global Warming
MEDIA COULD NOT DECIDE BETWEEN WARMING OR COOLING SCARES
There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares.
Here is a quote from the New York Times reporting on fears of an approaching ice age.
“Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again.”
That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times. Let me repeat. 1895, not 1995.
A front page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor “Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.”
The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the “Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: “Ice Age Coming Here.”
By the 1930’s, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming:
“America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933. The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.
An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared:
“Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada.” The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be “wiped out” and Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated.”
A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.”
The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that “A major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable.” These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring, don’t they? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of former Vice president’s brand of climate alarmism.
After more than a century of alternating between global cooling and warming, one would think that this media history would serve a cautionary tale for today’s voices in the media and scientific community who are promoting yet another round of eco-doom.
Much of the 100-year media history on climate change that I have documented here today can be found in a publication titled “Fire and Ice” from the Business and Media Institute. http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice_timeswarns.asp
MEDIA COVERAGE IN 2006
Which raises the question: Has this embarrassing 100-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories made the media more skeptical of today’s sensational promoters of global warming?
You be the judge.
On February 19th of this year, CBS News’s “60 Minutes” produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml
It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water.
“60 Minutes” failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.
On March 19th of this year “60 Minutes” profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.
The “60 Minutes” segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6
The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.
“60 Minutes” also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of “extreme scenarios" to dramatize climate change “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public's attention to the issue. http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html
Why would “60 Minutes” ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of “Holocaust deniers.” http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml
This year also saw a New York Times reporter write a children’s book entitled” The North Pole Was Here.” The author of the book, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, wrote that it may someday be “easier to sail to than stand on” the North Pole in summer. So here we have a very prominent environmental reporter for the New York Times who is promoting aspects of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at children.
TIME MAGAZINE HYPES ALARMISM
In April of this year, Time Magazine devoted an issue to global warming alarmism titled “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.” http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20060403,00.html
This is the same Time Magazine which first warned of a coming ice age in 1920’s before switching to warning about global warming in the 1930’s before switching yet again to promoting the 1970’s coming ice age scare.
The April 3, 2006 global warming special report of Time Magazine was a prime example of the media’s shortcomings, as the magazine cited partisan left-wing environmental groups with a vested financial interest in hyping alarmism.
Headlines blared:
“More and More Land is Being Devastated by Drought”
“Earth at the Tipping Point”
“The Climate is Crashing,”
Time Magazine did not make the slightest attempt to balance its reporting with any views with scientists skeptical of this alleged climate apocalypse.
I don’t have journalism training, but I dare say calling a bunch of environmental groups with an obvious fund-raising agenda and asking them to make wild speculations on how bad global warming might become, is nothing more than advocacy for their left-wing causes. It is a violation of basic journalistic standards.
To his credit, New York Times reporter Revkin saw fit to criticize Time Magazine for its embarrassing coverage of climate science. http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2006-04-28§ion=1&id=7
So in the end, Time’s cover story title of “Be Worried, Be Very Worried,” appears to have been apt. The American people should be worried --- very worried -- of such shoddy journalism.
AL GORE INCONVIENIENT TRUTH
In May, our nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” In addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.
On June 27, the Associated Press ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared “Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie.” The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore’s science, despite AP’s having contacted over 100 scientists. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-06-27-inconvenient-truth-reviews_x.htm
The fact that over 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore’s brand of climate alarmism. http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909
I am almost at a loss as to how to begin to address the series of errors, misleading science and unfounded speculation that appear in the former Vice President’s film Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT has written about “An Inconvenient Truth.” “A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.” http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
What follows is a very brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:
• He promoted the now debunked “hockey stick” temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate
•He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age
•He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist.
•He asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer
•He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.
•He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing
•He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices
•He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific “consensus” and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.
•He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing
•He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits
•He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving
•He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004
Now that was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie -- there would not be enough time to deliver this speech today.
TOM BROKAW
Following the promotion of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the press did not miss a beat in their role as advocates for global warming fears.
ABC News put forth its best effort to secure its standing as an advocate for climate alarmism when the network put out a call for people to submit their anecdotal global warming horror stories in June for use in a future news segment. http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2094224&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth’s climate. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=258659
You don’t have to take my word for the program’s overwhelming bias; a Bloomberg News TV review noted “You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program” because of its lack of scientific objectivity.
Brokaw also presented climate alarmist James Hansen to viewers as unbiased, failing to note his quarter million dollar grant form the partisan Heinz Foundation or his endorsement of Democrat Presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 and his role promoting former Vice President Gore’s Hollywood movie.
Brokaw, however, did find time to impugn the motives of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism when he featured paid environmental partisan Michael Oppenhimer of the group Environmental Defense accusing skeptics of being bought out by the fossil fuel interests.
The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by a three-to-one ratio. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to the $7 million that Oil and Gas spent through PACs in the 2004 election cycle.
I am reminded of a question the media often asks me about how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. My unapologetic answer is ‘Not Enough,’ -- especially when you consider the millions partisan environmental groups pour into political campaigns.
ENGINEERED ‘CONSENSUS”
Continuing with our media analysis: On July 24, 2006 The Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California San Diego and the author of a 2004 Science Magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=259323
However, the analysis in Science Magazine excluded nearly 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming, according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser.
Peiser also pointed out that less than two percent of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called “consensus view” that human activity is driving global warming and some of the studies actually opposed that view.
But despite this manufactured “consensus,” the media continued to ignore any attempt to question the orthodoxy of climate alarmism.
As the dog days of August rolled in, the American people were once again hit with more hot hype regarding global warming, this time from The New York Times op-ed pages. A columnist penned an August 3rd column filled with so many inaccuracies it is a wonder the editor of the Times saw fit to publish it.
For instance, Bob Herbert’s column made dubious claims about polar bears, the snows of Kilimanjaro and he attempted to link this past summer’s heat wave in the U.S. to global warming – something even alarmist James Hansen does not support. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=261382
POLAR BEARS LOOK TIRED?
Finally, a September 15, 2006 Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming. The article by correspondent Alister Doyle, quoted a visitor to the Arctic who claims he saw two distressed polar bears. According to the Reuters article, the man noted that “one of [the polar bears] looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted." The article did not state the bears were actually dead or exhausted, rather that they “looked” that way.
Have we really arrived at the point where major news outlets in the U.S. are reduced to analyzing whether or not polar bears in the Arctic appear restful? How does reporting like this get approved for publication by the editors at Reuters? What happened to covering the hard science of this issue?
What was missing from this Reuters news article was the fact that according to biologists who study the animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that
“Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.” http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419
Sadly, it appears that reporting anecdotes and hearsay as fact, has now replaced the basic tenets of journalism for many media outlets.
ALARMISM HAS LED TO SKEPTICISM
It is an inconvenient truth that so far, 2006 has been a year in which major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The global warming alarmists and their friends in the media have attempted to smear scientists who dare question the premise of man-made catastrophic global warming, and as a result some scientists have seen their reputations and research funding dry up.
The media has so relentlessly promoted global warming fears that a British group called the Institute for Public Policy Research – and this from a left leaning group – issued a report in 2006 accusing media outlets of engaging in what they termed “climate porn” in order to attract the public’s attention.
Bob Carter, a Paleoclimate geologist from James Cook University in Australia has described how the media promotes climate fear:
“Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as ‘if’, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘probably’, ‘perhaps’, ‘expected’, ‘projected’ or ‘modeled’ - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense,” professor Carter concluded in an op-ed in April of this year. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
Another example of this relentless hype is the reporting on the seemingly endless number of global warming impact studies which do not even address whether global warming is going to happen. They merely project the impact of potential temperature increases.
The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production.
Fortunately, the media’s addiction to so-called ‘climate porn’ has failed to seduce many Americans.
According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it’s from natural factors or not happening at all.
In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.
Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism.
The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.
The American people deserve better -- much better -- from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue.
Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific “consensus” of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. After all, there was a so-called scientific “consensus” that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.
Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells -- it’s very profitable. But I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices this scientific debate and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.
There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares.
Here is a quote from the New York Times reporting on fears of an approaching ice age.
“Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again.”
That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times. Let me repeat. 1895, not 1995.
A front page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor “Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.”
The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the “Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: “Ice Age Coming Here.”
By the 1930’s, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming:
“America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise” stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933. The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.
An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared:
“Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada.” The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be “wiped out” and Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated.”
A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.”
The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that “A major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable.” These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring, don’t they? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of former Vice president’s brand of climate alarmism.
After more than a century of alternating between global cooling and warming, one would think that this media history would serve a cautionary tale for today’s voices in the media and scientific community who are promoting yet another round of eco-doom.
Much of the 100-year media history on climate change that I have documented here today can be found in a publication titled “Fire and Ice” from the Business and Media Institute. http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice_timeswarns.asp
MEDIA COVERAGE IN 2006
Which raises the question: Has this embarrassing 100-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories made the media more skeptical of today’s sensational promoters of global warming?
You be the judge.
On February 19th of this year, CBS News’s “60 Minutes” produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml
It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water.
“60 Minutes” failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.
On March 19th of this year “60 Minutes” profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml
In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.
The “60 Minutes” segment made no mention of Hansen’s partisan ties to former Democrat Vice President Al Gore or Hansen’s receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen’s subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen’s huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation. http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6
The foundation’s money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.
“60 Minutes” also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of Natural Science that the use of “extreme scenarios" to dramatize climate change “may have been appropriate at one time” to drive the public's attention to the issue. http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html
Why would “60 Minutes” ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of “Holocaust deniers.” http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml
This year also saw a New York Times reporter write a children’s book entitled” The North Pole Was Here.” The author of the book, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, wrote that it may someday be “easier to sail to than stand on” the North Pole in summer. So here we have a very prominent environmental reporter for the New York Times who is promoting aspects of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at children.
TIME MAGAZINE HYPES ALARMISM
In April of this year, Time Magazine devoted an issue to global warming alarmism titled “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.” http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20060403,00.html
This is the same Time Magazine which first warned of a coming ice age in 1920’s before switching to warning about global warming in the 1930’s before switching yet again to promoting the 1970’s coming ice age scare.
The April 3, 2006 global warming special report of Time Magazine was a prime example of the media’s shortcomings, as the magazine cited partisan left-wing environmental groups with a vested financial interest in hyping alarmism.
Headlines blared:
“More and More Land is Being Devastated by Drought”
“Earth at the Tipping Point”
“The Climate is Crashing,”
Time Magazine did not make the slightest attempt to balance its reporting with any views with scientists skeptical of this alleged climate apocalypse.
I don’t have journalism training, but I dare say calling a bunch of environmental groups with an obvious fund-raising agenda and asking them to make wild speculations on how bad global warming might become, is nothing more than advocacy for their left-wing causes. It is a violation of basic journalistic standards.
To his credit, New York Times reporter Revkin saw fit to criticize Time Magazine for its embarrassing coverage of climate science. http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2006-04-28§ion=1&id=7
So in the end, Time’s cover story title of “Be Worried, Be Very Worried,” appears to have been apt. The American people should be worried --- very worried -- of such shoddy journalism.
AL GORE INCONVIENIENT TRUTH
In May, our nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” In addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.
On June 27, the Associated Press ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared “Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie.” The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore’s science, despite AP’s having contacted over 100 scientists. http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-06-27-inconvenient-truth-reviews_x.htm
The fact that over 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore’s brand of climate alarmism. http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257909
I am almost at a loss as to how to begin to address the series of errors, misleading science and unfounded speculation that appear in the former Vice President’s film Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT has written about “An Inconvenient Truth.” “A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.” http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
What follows is a very brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:
• He promoted the now debunked “hockey stick” temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate
•He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age
•He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist.
•He asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer
•He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.
•He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing
•He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices
•He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific “consensus” and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.
•He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing
•He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits
•He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving
•He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004
Now that was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie -- there would not be enough time to deliver this speech today.
TOM BROKAW
Following the promotion of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the press did not miss a beat in their role as advocates for global warming fears.
ABC News put forth its best effort to secure its standing as an advocate for climate alarmism when the network put out a call for people to submit their anecdotal global warming horror stories in June for use in a future news segment. http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2094224&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth’s climate. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=258659
You don’t have to take my word for the program’s overwhelming bias; a Bloomberg News TV review noted “You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program” because of its lack of scientific objectivity.
Brokaw also presented climate alarmist James Hansen to viewers as unbiased, failing to note his quarter million dollar grant form the partisan Heinz Foundation or his endorsement of Democrat Presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 and his role promoting former Vice President Gore’s Hollywood movie.
Brokaw, however, did find time to impugn the motives of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism when he featured paid environmental partisan Michael Oppenhimer of the group Environmental Defense accusing skeptics of being bought out by the fossil fuel interests.
The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by a three-to-one ratio. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to the $7 million that Oil and Gas spent through PACs in the 2004 election cycle.
I am reminded of a question the media often asks me about how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. My unapologetic answer is ‘Not Enough,’ -- especially when you consider the millions partisan environmental groups pour into political campaigns.
ENGINEERED ‘CONSENSUS”
Continuing with our media analysis: On July 24, 2006 The Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California San Diego and the author of a 2004 Science Magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=259323
However, the analysis in Science Magazine excluded nearly 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming, according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser.
Peiser also pointed out that less than two percent of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called “consensus view” that human activity is driving global warming and some of the studies actually opposed that view.
But despite this manufactured “consensus,” the media continued to ignore any attempt to question the orthodoxy of climate alarmism.
As the dog days of August rolled in, the American people were once again hit with more hot hype regarding global warming, this time from The New York Times op-ed pages. A columnist penned an August 3rd column filled with so many inaccuracies it is a wonder the editor of the Times saw fit to publish it.
For instance, Bob Herbert’s column made dubious claims about polar bears, the snows of Kilimanjaro and he attempted to link this past summer’s heat wave in the U.S. to global warming – something even alarmist James Hansen does not support. http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=261382
POLAR BEARS LOOK TIRED?
Finally, a September 15, 2006 Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming. The article by correspondent Alister Doyle, quoted a visitor to the Arctic who claims he saw two distressed polar bears. According to the Reuters article, the man noted that “one of [the polar bears] looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted." The article did not state the bears were actually dead or exhausted, rather that they “looked” that way.
Have we really arrived at the point where major news outlets in the U.S. are reduced to analyzing whether or not polar bears in the Arctic appear restful? How does reporting like this get approved for publication by the editors at Reuters? What happened to covering the hard science of this issue?
What was missing from this Reuters news article was the fact that according to biologists who study the animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that
“Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.” http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419
Sadly, it appears that reporting anecdotes and hearsay as fact, has now replaced the basic tenets of journalism for many media outlets.
ALARMISM HAS LED TO SKEPTICISM
It is an inconvenient truth that so far, 2006 has been a year in which major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The global warming alarmists and their friends in the media have attempted to smear scientists who dare question the premise of man-made catastrophic global warming, and as a result some scientists have seen their reputations and research funding dry up.
The media has so relentlessly promoted global warming fears that a British group called the Institute for Public Policy Research – and this from a left leaning group – issued a report in 2006 accusing media outlets of engaging in what they termed “climate porn” in order to attract the public’s attention.
Bob Carter, a Paleoclimate geologist from James Cook University in Australia has described how the media promotes climate fear:
“Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as ‘if’, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘probably’, ‘perhaps’, ‘expected’, ‘projected’ or ‘modeled’ - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense,” professor Carter concluded in an op-ed in April of this year. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
Another example of this relentless hype is the reporting on the seemingly endless number of global warming impact studies which do not even address whether global warming is going to happen. They merely project the impact of potential temperature increases.
The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards, and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production.
Fortunately, the media’s addiction to so-called ‘climate porn’ has failed to seduce many Americans.
According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it’s from natural factors or not happening at all.
In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.
Yes -- it appears that alarmism has led to skepticism.
The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.
The American people deserve better -- much better -- from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue.
Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific “consensus” of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. After all, there was a so-called scientific “consensus” that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.
Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells -- it’s very profitable. But I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices this scientific debate and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.
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People interested in this subject will find tons of infos about the GW at:
http://globalwarminghysteria.blogspot.com/
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