You may also be interested in my page
about The Causes and Effects of High Gas
Prices, and my page about Environmental False
Alarms, but the greatest distortion in environmental news coverage can be observed when the
topic is Global Warming.
When 'green' is
shorthand for environmental idiocy: Consider the recent "lights out" campaign
the World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) quickly called it an amazing success. Newspapers around the world dutifully wrote
feel-good stories about how engaged environmentalists celebrated as the lights went out around the world.
Nobody, it seemed, wanted to spoil the party by pointing that the event was immensely futile, that it
highlighted a horrible metaphor, or that it caused much higher overall pollution.
Biased Media's New Bailiwick: Recession
Calls. During an election year, the media's constant use or expectation of "recession" does matter. Sen.
Barack Obama, the Democratic Party's likely nominee, already considers the U.S. economy "in a recession." So are
we — at least as economists commonly define the term? No, not even close.
Gaiag Me With
a Spoon. No subject, not even Barack Obama and the New Camelot, inspires reporters to drop any
pretense of balance and objectivity like the Environment. Green is the only way to go. Global
Warming is likely to wreak havoc on your flowerbeds by the end of next week, it's all the fault of that
parasitic species, Industrial Man, and anybody who disagrees is either a hopeless simpleton or a paid agent
of Big Oil.
John Coleman vs Al Gore:
Regular readers of this website are well aware of the Global Warming scam. Poking holes in the AGW theory is becoming
child's play. But we have to keep at it because the general public and major presidential candidates are not so well
informed. A large percentage of the public still get their news from the mainstream media. And of course the
MSM is in the tank with Al Gore and the global warming believers.
Has Big Media Global Warming
Bias Begun to Endanger the Public? Why did the AP and the [Boston] Globe de-emphasize Maine officials' snowpack
warning, especially when doing so endangered the property and safety of the public they are supposed to serve? The
Globe is owned by the New York Times Company. Both the Times and the Associated Press are heavily invested in the myth of
Global Warming
.
TV weather coverage intentionally exaggerates warming sympotoms.
Global Whining vs. the
Truth: The bank not only referenced the name of the town, but had a thermometer that was several
degrees off, thanks to the heat absorbing black asphalt on the adjacent multi-lane street and the pavement of
the nearby parking lot. The producer knew 105° would easily read 110°. On air, I always
quickly explained the reason for the soaring temperature reading for our audience, but it was not enough.
The misleading visual message was absolutely clear: 110° in Walnut Creek -- another sign of climate
doom!
The Editor says...
I can tell you from personal experience as a broadcast engineer that on at least one occasion I have been
asked by a news reporter to use photographic tricks in order to make summertime haze look like pollution.
Many people who call themselves "journalists" are really environmental or political activists. These
are the people who will tell you that they got into broadcasting so they could "make a difference" and
change the world. But an objective reporter does not "make a difference." If that happens, the
report is probably biased or very selective with the facts.
My Big Fat Green Wedding
and Other Media Nonsense: From carbon footprint calculators to electricity-free weddings, the
media's promotion of anti-global warming hysteria is warming up with the approach of Earth Day on April 22.
ABC's Good Morning America was actually running a Countdown to Earth Day every morning, beginning last
week, as if we were all like kids waiting for Christmas Day. Maybe that's how it is at Al Gore's house.
ABC Wants You to Fight Global
Warming One Cheeseburger at a Time. It's not enough for the media to try to brainwash the public
the Earth is in peril due to global warming. Now they're telling you what to eat. This is something
you might expect to hear at a PETA rally, but instead it was ABC's May 13 "World News with Charles Gibson"
telling you to curb your beef consumption to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
What Americans 'Know' about Air Pollution
Is False. Activists and regulators depend on public fear and outrage over air pollution to
maintain and enhance their power and budgets. As the polls show, their phony gloom and doom stories
have been all too successful in misleading Americans to overestimate the risks we face. The
exaggerations and fabrications have now been repeated so often that they have become "common
knowledge." Journalists should be acting as a check on these distortions, but they are
not. Journalists, like much of the public, consider environmentalists and regulators
to be virtuous guardians of the public good.
The Media's 'Green is Good'
Philosophy Strangles our Energy Policy. [ANWR is] the kind of place that makes Siberia look like
Miami Beach. That hasn't stopped more than a decade of propaganda campaigns portraying something akin to
an Alaskan Eden and warning of threats to wildlife. Such stonewalling works in Washington.
Politicians won't lead when they risk being seen as anti- the media's crusade du jour. Lately, the
media pound us with the "green is good" mantra. Anyone who dares challenge it is called a "denier" or a
tool of oil interests, as opposed to someone who is just worried about our economy and our energy needs.
ABC's Shameful Global Warming Character Assassination.
The nasty tone and gutter tactics of global warming alarmists and their media allies reached a new low on Easter
Sunday [3/30/2008] when ABC aired on its nightly news and published on its Web site a character assassination
of prestigious scientist S. Fred Singer. Singer, one of the most respected and impeccably credentialed
atmospheric scientists in the world, deserves much better than the media mafia hit ABC delivered on him.
Facts Not Fear on Air Pollution:
Air pollution has been declining for decades across the United States, yet most Americans still believe air
pollution is a growing problem and a serious threat to their health. The reason: most information
on air pollution from environmentalists, regulators and journalists — the public's main sources for
information on the environment — is false. Air quality in America's cities is better than ever.
Propaganda as Journalism: One of the
vilest, most venomous pieces of writing masquerading as journalism was the Newsweek cover story on August 13,
2007. With the sun as the backdrop, which in the piece got a minor supporting role for global warming,
compared to man-produced CO2, the magazine screamed "Global Warming is a Hoax" * and the asterisk led to
the clincher as a large enough footnote: "Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the
overwhelming evidence of climate change. Inside the denial machine."
It
may be cold, but CBC reassures us that calamity still looms. Ah, the weather.
How cold is it? It's
so cold the CBC had to rush to assure all of us that global warming is still a big, big problem. With record snow
falls, record cold snaps, the return of sea ice to the north, snow in the Middle East and a deep freeze in China, any
sensible person might begin to wonder and even have doubts about global-warming theory and climate change. A little
skepticism might begin to creep into the public sphere and threaten to undermine public belief in global warming.
The
media snowjob on global warming: [Scroll down] The bias is that whatever the IPCC and its
defenders claim, the Washington Post and most other outlets report without scrutiny. Meanwhile, the
motives and sources of all sceptics are instantly suspected and derided.
In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm.
A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the
hottest year on record. At year's end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was
not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, "2007 Data Confirms
Warming Trend." When the Arctic sea ice last year hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news
and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest
level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored.
The
red, red Koyapigaktoruk comes bob, bob, bobbin' along. Always interested in a good global warming hook, the
press was all over this.
Alas, as with most over-simplified global warming claptrap, more thought goes into coming up
with the alarmist concept than in actually looking into whether or not it is true
.
NASA measures global
temperatures. NASA is spending around 20 million dollars a year to deploy and monitor 3000 robot buoys
around the worlds oceans and the data coming in doesn't support their theory on global warming, in fact it turns out the
world has cooled slightly in the last five years. It's surprising the mainstream media hasn't picked up on this, you
would think the fact that the earth is cooling would be front page news.
Time Magazine subsection
Time
magazine replaces flag in famous Iwo Jima photograph with tree for global warming story. Furious
World War II veterans called for a boycott of one of America's most influential and respected magazines today
over a controversial picture on its front cover. Next week's Time magazine cover is based on the famous
shot by war photographer Joe Rosenthal of marines raising the US flag on Iwo Jima during the bloody battle in
the Pacific.
Time Bomb: Time
calls green "the new red, white and blue" and likens global warming to the fight against Nazism and fascism.
As it insults World War II vets, the magazine seeks to impose a tyranny all its own.
Voters
Don't Care About Global Warming, But They Should. Voters must care, but not for Al Gore's
reasons. Plenty of scientists say we don't have to fear a global warming apocalypse. The global
food riots stemming from forced biofuel policy serve as a chilling clue of what we do have to fear.
Instead of global warming causing food shortages, U.S. government policy has done that. Instead of rising
sea levels, we must fear rising tax levels. Instead of ice caps melting away, we must fear our jobs
evaporating. Elevating the earth's temperature to the prominence of our enemies in World War II is
abominable. Ignoring what the next president could do to us is dangerous.
Time Fights
Carbon Emissions; Military Fights Evil. The state of the liberal mind is on display on this week's
cover of Time magazine. The already notorious cover takes the iconic photograph of U.S. Marines planting
the American flag on Iwo Jima and substitutes a tree for the flag. Why Time's editors did this
explains much about contemporary liberalism.
Chickenfeedhawks:
If the tree-raising is Iwo Jima, a one-degree increase isn't exactly Pearl Harbor. But General Stengel wants us to
engage in preemptive war. The editors of Time would be the first to deplore such saber-rattling applied to, say, Iran's
nuclear program, but it has become the habit of progressive opinion to appropriate the language of war for everything but
actual war.
Time
Magazine's Environmental War Whoop: No doubt Time's editors think they will be celebrated in poetry and song
for generations to come for their high-minded cleverness. Still, if the symbolism wasn't clear enough, Time writer
Bryan Walsh spells it out: "Green is the new red, white and blue." There are any number of problems here,
starting with the fact that this is simply a lie. Green is not the new red, white and blue. Concern over climate
change may be the most honorable and vital thing imaginable. But if "the red, white and blue" means anything, it means
patriotism or love of country. Patriotism and environmentalism simply aren't synonymous terms.
Earlier in Time...
Time Shills for Global Warming Alarmist
Site. Time magazine is at it again. This time, it's going beyond unquestioning coverage of global
warming alarmism to act as a public relations agent for a global warming alarmist's campaign. A Time.com article
by Bryan Walsh encouraged readers to go to an environmentalist Web site because it might be their last chance to see
the "polar world."
The Editor says...
Please note: One degree per century is not enough to erase the polar ice caps.
Time Magazine Gives 51 Ways to
Save Planet, Including Taxes and Regulation. The magazine especially doesn't like anyone who
doubts any aspect of the global warming mantra. According to one article, if a parade of disasters
"didn't quiet most of the remaining global-warming doubters, the hurricane-driven destruction of New Orleans
did." The story then went about blaming Hurricane Katrina on global warming.
The Media are Far From Objective on Climate
Change. Journalists pledged to be neutral, long ago gave up their watchdog role to become lapdogs
for one position. The media became alarmist claiming the planet is at a "tipping point" as if at any
moment everything would go over the edge. An April 2006 issue of Time magazine pushed readers over that
edge with 24 pages of advocacy, claiming: "The debate is over. Global warming is upon
us -- with a vengeance." CBS's Scott Pelley, who covers the environment, actually compared climate
change skeptics with Holocaust deniers and claimed: "There becomes a point in journalism where
striving for balance becomes irresponsible."
Media Frenzy Over Global Warming. The
campaign to convince us all of the coming disasters caused by global warming continues at hurricane force.
There have been gloom-and-doom cover stories in Time magazine and Vanity Fair, and one-sided stories on ABC
News and CBS's 60 Minutes. The problem is that the stories start with the premise that global
warming is here, primarily caused by human activity, and that this is the overwhelming consensus of the
scientific community. As a result, rarely do any of the reports give any sort of a fair representation
of the views by the thousands of scientists who disagree….
Time Bemoans 'Doomed' Wildlife
Refuge: The media took little pain to conceal their displeasure that the Bush Administration won
House approval for oil exploitation in Alaska. Time Magazine ignored entirely the possibility of
coexistence between industry and the environment, unfairly skewing the issue.
Not So Hot. If a scientific
paper appeared in a major journal saying that the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought, that
would be front-page news in every major paper around the planet. But what would happen if a paper was
published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought?
Nothing.
'Nightly News' Gives One Side
of Antarctica Ice Changes. Defying the tenets of ethical journalism has become the norm for some
media outlets when it the issue is global warming. "NBC Nightly News" was no exception. On
January 14, "Nightly News" aired a biased alarmist report of changes in the ice shelf in Antarctica
during its "Our Planet" segment, blaming "manmade carbon dioxide" for the shift and ignoring any other
possibilities.
Evening Newscasts Not Sure
Energy Bill is Enough. President Bush just signed an epic energy bill that will increase fuel
efficiency standards in automobiles, increase biofuel requirements for gasoline, and phase out incandescent
light bulbs. Two network newscasts couldn't decide if the "massive" changes are enough.
Two Out of Three Networks
Support Banning Incandescent Bulbs. How many networks does it take to change a lightbulb?
Two. "CBS Evening News" and ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson" both excluded anti-regulatory
opinions from segments about a coalition that wants to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact
fluorescents. Only NBC "Nightly News" offered a statement from its parent company, General Electric,
supporting consumer choice during the March 14 broadcasts.
Anatomy of a Fake Consensus: Most
scientists (more than 80 percent) believe some global warming has occurred. The best estimate is
that global temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the past 100 years. A
majority of scientists, but certainly not all, believe the human presence is responsible for some part of
the warming that occurred after 1940. Most scientists, however, don't agree on how much of the modern
warming is the result of natural cycles and how much is due to human activities.
GE's Househugger TV
commercial. The voice-over commentary of GE's "house hugger" commercial says: "Introducing
a new way to build a home, with advanced GE lighting and technology that not only helps to reduce energy use,
but greenhouse gas emissions as well." Does false advertising become truthful just because the falsehood
is communicated in the context of an obvious flight of fancy?
Happy Earth Day. More than 30 years
ago political scientist Anthony Downs discerned what he called the "issue-attention cycle," a five-stage process
by which the public and especially the news media grow alarmed over an issue, agitate for action, generate piles
of scary headlines, and then begin to draw back as we come to recognize that the problem has been exaggerated or
misconceived, and the price tag for action comes in.
MSNBGreen: "We have turned out
the lights in the studio," NBC's Bob Costas told viewers of Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game,
"to kick off a week that will include more than 150 hours of programming designed to raise awareness
about environmental issues."
On a typical game day, a large football stadium burns about 65,000 kilowatt
hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The cars driving to the game spew about 200
metric tons of CO2 (and that assumes nobody's driving SUVs or RVs, which is like assuming tailgaters are
eating only sushi). There's also the electricity used to broadcast the game and to watch it. But
thank goodness Costas turned off the studio lights for a minute or two.
CNN Predicts Possible 'Century
of Fires' Due to Global Warming. CNN exploited a national tragedy on October 23 by finding
a way to blame global warming for wildfires. During the October 23 "Anderson Cooper 360: In
the Line of Fire," Cooper reported from Southern California saying, "People are wondering if these fires are a
result of global warming in some way."
BBC folds, then folds
again. The BBC appears to have serially caved-in to global warmist activism. There was much
online discussion this weekend about a Friday BBC global warming / La Nina related article suddenly changing
its wording and with it — its apparent balance. Today, news that an eco-activist has smugly
taken credit for coercing the change has joined the conversation.
Al Gore buddy owner of sunken
ship that left huge carbon footprint on Antarctic Ocean floor. You'd never read
this in the mainstream media: The owner of MS Explorer that sank, leaving a huge carbon
footprint at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean Friday [11/23/2007] is an acolyte of
teensy-weensy carbon footprint crusader Al Gore. G.A.P. Adventures CEO and Explorer
owner, Bruce Poon Tip and Gore have similar ideals, "filling their schedules with speaking
engagements on environmental change to educate global audiences."
Media
bias proves to be a Gray area. It's not that [Dr. William] Gray is a media pariah. His
annual forecast on the number of hurricanes is dutifully reported and prominently displayed. But when
Gray talks about global warming — he's on the record as a strong skeptic of man-made global
warming — the media barely notice.
Weather Channel Founder Blasts Network.
The Weather Channel has lost its way, according to John Coleman, who founded the channel in 1982. Coleman told an
audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical
of global warming alarmism. "The Weather Channel had great promise, and that's all gone now because they've made
every mistake in the book on what they've done and how they've done it and it's very sad," Coleman said.
"... Let's hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what
to think and start giving us useful weather information."
Weather
Stations Giving Bad Global Warming Data — MSM MIA. A few months ago, the blogosphere
and talk radio were abuzz with the story of how the nation's various weather stations and temperature reading
devices have been improperly located or badly constructed and how the data received from these improper devices
must be suspected as inaccurate. The MSM briefly mentioned this story but quickly dropped it like the
proverbial hot rock.
Do the researchers who turn this inaccurate data into justifications for global
warming theories really want to have proper data?
Global Warming
Lie of the Day: We're used to reporters making up scare stories about global warming, but when
scientists start to make up "drop dead" headlines, things must really be getting desperate in the climate
game. But yesterday, we were told that you'll get a heart attack from global warming. Fortunately,
we can look up the original research on the National Library of Science website, and waddayaknow? People
die of heart attacks whenever it's really hot. Or when it is really cold!
Scientists
Send Letter to UN: Give Up Futile Climate Change Battle. If a former vice president with
absolutely no formal scientific training in climatology or meteorology makes a statement about the world coming
to an end due to rising temperatures, media will fawn over him like teenyboppers in the presence of Elvis
Presley. Yet, if more than 100 scientists from around the world send a letter to the Secretary General
of the United Nations urging him and his organization to stop wasting time, resources, and money fighting a
futile climate change battle, crickets will be heard in newsrooms around the country.
Teresa
Heinz's Favorite Scientist: If you've paid any attention to the global warming debate, you've
heard of James Hansen. Hansen is the politicized NASA climate scientist who virtually invented the global
warming issue in the broiling summer of 1988 when he was the star doomsayer at Senate hearings called by
Al Gore. Since then, Hansen has received better press than Mother Teresa. In hundreds of interviews
and glowing profiles, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has been treated as objective
and/or infallible by an adoring mainstream liberal media.
The Money and Connections Behind Al Gore's Carbon
Crusade. Al Gore's campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and
commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But
while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the
dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence
that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore's followers realized
how much their man stands to gain?
ABC's GMA Touts Environmentalist Who Boycotts
Toilet Paper. On Thursday's [5/10/2007] Good Morning America, the ABC program touted a liberal
New Yorker who is so concerned about the environment that he refuses to use toilet paper. GMA devoted eight
and a half minutes of the May 10 show to promoting the cause of Colin Beaven, a man who, in addition to his
bathroom stance, refuses to buy anything in packaging, won't use transportation, even elevators, and insists
that all his food be grown within 250 miles. … Somehow, the word "liberal" didn't appear in the GMA
segments. If this man isn't a left-winger, who is?
Media Promote Global Warming Fraud. On
the matter of global intervention to stop global warming, there seems to be no need for scientific evidence to
justify what is shaping up as a global carbon tax of 35 cents a gallon of gas on the American people.
Our media want the public to believe that the same organization that gave us the oil-for-food scandal can be
trusted on its dire predictions of calamity from alleged man-made global warming.
Twisting Science to Fit
the Global Warming Template: The global warming crowd does not take kindly to being contradicted,
either by critics or data. Of course, critics can be defamed and data can be skewed. But unless the
critics can be silenced, they can fight back and expose phony data. When it begins to look like predictions
of doom are not turning out sufficiently catastrophic, a full Orwell is called for. The media mobilize their
templates to completely re-cast the information.
Newsweek climate article
an 'editorial rag,' says warming skeptic. Newsweek magazine is being compared to
"editorial screed that violates basic standards of journalism" over a cover story that refers to global
warming skeptics as "deniers." The cover story, titled "The Truth About Denial," claims so-called
global warming "deniers" are a "well-funded machine."
The Campaign Against Bottled Water
ABC Promotes Kicking the Bottled
Water. Stop and drop that water bottle, you're hurting the environment. That was the message
promoted by ABC "World News" on the July 8 broadcast. The segment blasted the bottled water industry
and promoted the decision of a "venerable" restaurant to take bottled water off the menu. "With every sip
are you actually hurting the environment?" teased anchor Dan Harris, before Eric Horng's report made an
undisputed claim that you are.
'World News' Hits the (Water)
Bottle Again. It must be summer rerun season because the July 9 ABC "World News with Charles
Gibson" report on bottled water sounded a lot like the one from a day earlier. For the second consecutive
night, ABC aired a story criticizing the bottled water industry for the environmental cost.
Bottled Water Bash: Networks
Continue Assault. Bottled water has been attacked recently for environmental damage, but now
Aquafina's bottler, PepsiCo is under fire for not previously disclosing the source of its water.
'Nightly News' Continues 'War'
on Bottled Water. In recent months, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN have designated the bottled water
industry as the environmental "bad guy." The media have claimed the bottled water industry uses an
unnecessary amount of energy to bottle and ship its product — and therefore contributes to global
warming.
Bottled water:
No longer cool?. Critics are asking: Why drink bottled water? After all, it's
pricey.
Empty bottles add to litter and solid waste. And, as a rule, bottled water is no
safer or healthier than the H2O that flows from municipal water systems. What's more, blind taste
tests, while wholly unscientific, often show that few people can distinguish between bottled and tap water.
Campaigners launch fresh attack on bottled water.
[An environmental group called] Sustain accused consumers and drinks firms of "bottling out" of their duty to protect the
environment and tackle climate change by continuing to buy bottled water in record quantities. The group's new report,
published this week, urges consumers to drink tap water "to save the planet". The move may put extra pressure on
drinks firms at a time when environmental concerns are in the public spotlight.
IBWA launches pro-bottled water
media campaign. The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is launching a
major media campaign in the United States in response to recent negative stories in the media
about bottled water and campaigns against it by advocacy groups and some city mayors.
UK bottled water boom
defies cynics. Bottled water sales are booming in Britain thanks to a new generation of
consumers who see the sector as more than glorified tap water and better for their health and well-being
than fizzy drinks.
Bottled water
'is immoral'. Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a
[British] government adviser. "We have to make people think that it's unfashionable just as we have
with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong," said Tim Lang, the
Government's naural resources commissioner.
Water bottlers face
growing opposition. The lumber mill closed five years ago, and so many families moved out that
the town can no longer even field a high school football team. But McCloud is hoping to turn things
around by exploiting the other natural resource in abundance along the icy flanks of Mount
Shasta — water.
Mayors' bottle ban is no specious attack on Big
Water. U.S. mayors, having solved all other problems, resolved at their annual conference, in
Miami, to stop providing bottled water for employees and guests. ... And now it sounds like they will, 250
mayors or so signing on to sing the praises of their own municipal water systems while also sheepishly having
to confess that's where bottled water probably comes from in the first place.
US mayors ban bottled water.
The US Conference of Mayors on Monday [6/23/2008] passed a resolution calling for a phasing out of bottled water by
municipalities and promoting the importance of public water supplies. The vote comes amid increasing
environmental concerns about the use of bottled water because of its use of plastic and energy costs to
transport drinking supplies.
Bottled water industry fights back,
launches ad campaign to rebut bottled water bans. "The bottled water industry has
recently been the target of misguided and confusing criticism by activist groups and a handful
of mayors who have presented misinformation and subjective criticism as facts," the International
Bottled Water Association (IBWA) said today in a news release.
If you're interested...
Bottled Water News.
Note: This whole subsection might have to move to
the Environmental False Alarms page.
America Goes Insane Over the Weather.
America is now totally insane over the weather. Even the Weather Channel that used to simply provide reasonably
accurate, short-term information about the weather is now telling everyone we're doomed because global warming
is going to destroy the Earth.
Newsweek Quiz: What Isn't Causing
Global Warming? You would never know there was a single dissenting view from reading the Newsweek
story. The magazine isn't the only media outlet that has embraced an attitude of "The earth is warming,
it's mankind's fault and no one can question it." ABC, CBS and NBC all treated the IPCC report with that
same perspective.
ABC Won't Tell Who Caused
Ecological Disaster. Up to two million tires are at the bottom of the ocean floor off the coast
of Florida. They damage reefs, wash up on the beach and create a hazard for beachgoers. How did they
get there? Don't ask ABC News. With the power of government and the green movement of the 1970s, the
process was set into motion to build artificial reefs from used tires. All ABC could say was that
"someone" had gotten the idea going.
Heartland President Debunks Global Warming Myths.
The popular press features possible crises on their front pages all the time, because bad news sells and they
are in the business of selling copies of their publications and generating ad revenue, not reporting the truth
about complicated subjects. As they say in the business, "if it bleeds, it leads." These are the
same guys who told us Alar, saccharin, Red Dye #2, dioxin, a hole in the ozone layer, electric power lines, and
cell phones were all causing cancer epidemics, and that Y2K would shut down the nation's electric grid and banks.
Science and Global Warming: What Do We
Know? Wholly implausible scare scenarios are routinely disseminated to and through the media,
even though they are contradicted by real-world scientific evidence. Some of these scientifically
unsubstantiated assertions appear in former vice president Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient
Truth." ... Gore's cinematic assertions are repeated as "truth" by a largely sympathetic media that
seldom bothers to do their own research or mention contradictory scientific facts.
Green Issues Are the Place to
Be. Vanity Fair has more green issues than all the other magazines combined. … The profile
of Rush Limbaugh accuses him of enabling "environmental destruction." Another feature claims "almost every
move you make affects the health of the planet." From the second the alarm clock goes off, it argues, we
are killing Mother Earth.
How the Left Intimidates the
Media. Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently paid $20,000 by
Virginia Tech to tell the students that there aren't two sides to the global warming debate and
that the problem with the media today is that we don't have a fairness doctrine. Those
positions, which sound contradictory, betray the modern liberal agenda. They want to bring
back the fairness doctrine not to ensure true fairness and balance in journalism but to intimidate
and censor those expressing a view contrary to their own.
Pesticide-Free Schools — Full of Rats and
Roaches? Our local radio station ... is broadcasting "public service announcements" saying
pesticides used in the schools are "linked" to cancer, asthma and lower IQ scores among the kids. Probably
you are hearing the same announcements on your radio stations. They're produced by Earthworks, a
consortium of eco-groups, and sponsored by The Ad Council.
Post Glosses over Deaths Linked
to 'Silent Spring' Author. The book "Silent Spring" set in motion the banning of DDT and
needlessly cost millions of lives. The Washington Post chose to mark author Rachel Carson's 100th
birthday by barely mentioning that her actions "have remained controversial." That's quite an
understatement.
Bad Research,
Worse Reporting on Global Warming. In trying to prove that the Bush administration is throttling
research into global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists rolled out some breathtakingly bad
science. … "The new evidence shows that political interference in climate science is no longer a
series of isolated incidents but a system-wide epidemic," Dr. Francesca Grifo, Director of the
UCS Scientific Integrity Program, said in a press release. … Grifo obviously doesn't appreciate the
irony when he trots out a poll that is so flawed that it is manifest evidence of exaggeration,
incompetence or dishonesty on his group's part.
[The topic of Global Warming is covered
extensively on another page.]
It's official:
San Diego paper is a propaganda organ. On Monday, the legacy media crossed a critical line.
The San Diego Union-Tribune announced, in a column with the grotesquely misleading title "Fair Reporting on
Global Warming" by its media columnist Carol Goodhue, that it will no longer cover both sides of the global
arming story, instead limiting itself to acting as a conduit for Green propaganda.
Media Promote Global Warming Fraud. On
the matter of global intervention to stop global warming, there seems to be no need for scientific evidence to
justify what is shaping up as a global carbon tax of 35 cents a gallon of gas on the American people.
Our media want the public to believe that the same organization that gave us the oil-for-food scandal can be
trusted on its dire predictions of calamity from alleged man-made global warming.
Climate Change in Plain English:
It is unrealistic to expect the public, policymakers, or the media to read and understand the full body of
climate-change literature. Instead, they must rely on publications put out by pressure groups with a
position for or against climate change, or on the verbal summation of a small number of high-profile
experts. But 30-second sound bites do not leave much room for qualifications, and, just as the
devil is in the details, the quality of science is in the qualifications.
Global warming killing the planet? It's not
fact — just hot air. Not since wholesale calamity was predicted as a result of the
so-called millennium bug has so much coverage been given to a topic. Miles' worth of column inches are
now dedicated to global warming. The predictions by media commentators are becoming more numerous and
more strident as each new piece of evidence appears to support their case. They have progressed from
possibilities to probabilities and are now becoming certainties. Global warming is a hypothesis, not
fact. And even if temperatures are increasing, that does not necessarily mean it is a result of human
activities, nor does it mean that the outcomes will necessarily be overwhelmingly detrimental.
Are the Media Giving You the Whole Story on
Global Warming? If you want to know the truth about global warming — or
acid rain, or the ozone hole, or any other environmental issue — you must keep in mind
that the media are not giving you the true story. And the reason for that is very simple. They
are reporting on the world as they see it: distorted through green lenses.
Vanity Fair Tells Conservatives
to Go to Hell. The two-page "Dante's Inferno: Green Edition" was part of Vanity Fair's
full-issue attack that even claimed Rush Limbaugh "has blinded millions of Americans to the climate crisis"
and accused him of "the environmental destruction that he did so much to enable in his multi-decade reign
of denigration."
Christian Science Monitor Favors
Mower Regulation. The Christian Science Monitor gave a green thumbs up to a recent EPA decision
mandating emission standards for new lawnmowers. It downplayed one detail about the increased
regulation — higher costs.
Dangerous Warming
Unlikely, MIT Climatologist Says. Global warming is unlikely to be a
dangerous future problem, with or without the implementation of such programs as the
Kyoto Protocol, according to Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, a member
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and one of the world's leading climatologists,
told a September 9 [2004] audience at the Houston Forum that alarmist media claims to the contrary
are fueled more by politics than by science.
AP Fumbles
Global Warming Story. In late March, the Associated Press ran a global
warming story that makes a number of misleading, if not downright inaccurate,
statements. Faulty "news" stories like this one, which mislead people all over the
world, do not reflect a consensus of scientists. It is alarming that a media outlet
as influential as AP would run a story this wrong … and that so many news editors would
be gullible enough to run it.
Global Warming: Why Can't the Mainstream Press
Get Even Basic Facts Right? Carbon dioxide accounts for less than ten percent of the greenhouse
effect, as carbon dioxide's ability to absorb heat is quite limited. Only about 0.03 percent of the
Earth's atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide (nitrogen, oxygen, and argon constitute about 78 percent,
20 percent, and 0.93 percent of the atmosphere, respectively). The sun, not a gas, is primarily
to "blame" for global warming — and plays a key role in global temperature variations as well.
TV News Gives One-Sided View On Global
Warming. If you want the straight dope about the seriousness of the alleged global
warming problem, beware of the media — namely television.
Cartoon:
Can the Media be Trusted on Global
Warming?
Media Misconceptions Help Lead to
Public Fear of Global Warming. A review of the actual scientific record
shows that atmospheric increases in temperature are nonexistent. This information
is too important to be ignored in these stories.
Experts Expose
Flaws in Global Warming Extinction Predictions. A January 8 article
in Nature magazine created a media sensation by predicting global warming will cause
between 15 and 37 percent of the Earth's species to go extinct by the middle of
this century unless immediate and drastic action is taken. But no sooner did the article
gain the attention of the popular media than experts exposed its serious flaws.
Are the Media Giving You the
Whole Story on Global Warming? Most media reports ignore the evidence for
cooling and focus instead on records from land stations, which indicate a 1°F increase in
surface temperatures during the 20th century. What they fail to report is that this
increase was measured mostly in and around urban centers, and therefore
indicates urban — not global — warming.
The Myth of Catastrophic Global Warming: If the
continual resurrection of the issue of global warming in the media is not a consummate example of the Big Lie,
I'd be hard pressed to find a better one.
Recent Warming Is Not Historically
Unique: The twentieth century is not the least bit climatically unusual. So why the recent
media hysteria that the twentieth century is the warmest of the last 1,000 years?
The Global Warming Censors: Did you
ever tune in the network news and think you were getting a bedtime story in reverse? Instead of calming
you to sleep, every story seems to tell you of the phantoms under your bed, the ghosts in the closet, and the
monsters that plan to visit on the weekend. Dan Rather goes beyond that new frightening haircut. He
loves to forecast everything short of plagues of locusts as the summer begins.
EPA Proposing Limits on Mower Emissions.
Engines under 50 horsepower, which are mostly used to power walk-behind and riding mowers, account
for up to 10 percent of summertime smog emissions from mobile sources in some parts of the country. The
Environmental Protection Agency has been considering a proposal that would cut smog-forming emissions from the
engines by roughly 40 percent. [Emphasis added to show that the article describes
the worst-case problem and the best possible results from the proposed new regulations.]
Fire and Ice: It was five years
before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change. Page six of The
New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of "geologists." Only the president at the time
wasn't Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn't warning about global warming — it
was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age. The year was 1895, and it was just one of four
different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate
crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be "wiped out" or
lower crop yields would mean "billions will die."
This article reeks with bias:
Atmospheric Carbon
Dioxide Levels Highest On Record. Human activity such as fossil fuel exploitation, rice
agriculture, biomass burning, landfills and ruminant farm animals account for some 60% of atmospheric
[methane], with natural processes including those produced by wetlands and termites responsible for the
remaining 40%.
The Editor is quick to point out a few details...
Notice that the anonymous author of the article above attributes farm animal emissions to "human
activity" and he (or she) assumes that "human activity" is not a "natural process." Notice also
the use of the term, "fossil fuel exploitation." The author could have used the word "consumption"
but that wouldn't have had sufficiently negative connotations. (Crude oil is of no value unless it is
refined and put to use. Of course we're going to expolit it.) And the notion that
CO2 levels are the "highest on record" is no cause for alarm, since
accurate records of such things have been kept for only one century, at best.
New Research Adds Twist to Global Warming
Debate. Given the stakes in the current debate over global warming, the research may very well
turn out to be one of the most important climate experiments of our time — if only the media would
report the story.
Cosmic ray study fails to penetrate lead-lined media.
Top Ten Junk Science
Moments for 2006. Swedish researchers provided experimental evidence that cosmic rays may be a
major factor in climate change. They calculated that just 5 years of cosmic ray activity can have
85 percent of the effect on the Earth's climate as 200 years of manmade carbon dioxide emissions.
Though the study was published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A, the findings went
largely unreported by the Al Gore-smitten media.
Al Gore's Recycled Doom:
First came the warm wave of supportive publicity surrounding [Al Gore's] slide-show documentary "An Inconvenient
Truth." Katie Couric and Harry Smith and Oprah Winfrey all touted Gore as so warm, so vulnerable and
self-effacing, and his predictions so impossibly scary. … Now comes another warm wave of media smooches
and applause with the news of his plan for an international set of "Live Earth" concerts to promote massive
government action to curb humanity's excessive reliance on energy.
Warming fears do not add
up. Since the publication of the Stern review on the economics of climate change, global warming
hysteria has reached fever pitch. Which is not surprising, as the review was presented in terms carefully
calculated to engender alarm. It warns that climate change poses risks "on a scale similar to those
associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century" and requires
immediate action. There has been something of a political and media frenzy ever since.
Media Bias on
Global Warming Called 'Inconvenient Truth'. A U.S. Senate committee hearing considering the
media's handling of climate change was told Wednesday [12/6/2006] that media bias on global warming was an
"inconvenient truth," although participating experts disagreed sharply over which side of the debate receives
preferential media treatment. "Journalists who have pledged to be neutral long ago gave up their watchdog
role to become lapdogs for one position," Dan Gainor, director of the Business and Media Institute (BMI), told
the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee. The "alarmist" press behaves "as if at any moment,
everything could go over the edge," Gainor said.
Time's Special Report Exemplifies the Decline of
Ethics in Environment News Coverage. Time's special report … is not a report but a
diatribe — one-sided advocacy from start to finish. Scientists who take a non-alarmist view
of global warming do not get a word in edgewise.
Time and global warming:
Time's 1974 piece was nowhere near as sensationalized or irresponsible as last week's global warming sermon.
With its moralizing tone, overheated rhetoric about "crashing climates" and "glaciers and ice caps turning to
slush," plus its parroting of the Green party-line about human-forced global warming, "Be Worried ..." couldn't
have been less fair or unbalanced if it had been guest-edited by Al Gore.
"I don't like the word 'Balance', Says ABC
News Global Warming Reporter. ABC News Reporter Bill Blakemore declared "I don't like the word
'balance' much at all" in global warming coverage at a journalism conference in Vermont over the weekend.
Blakemore, who reported on August 30, 2006, "After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such
[scientific] debate" on global warming, said he rejects 'balance' in order to justify excluding any skeptics
of manmade catastrophic global warming from his reporting.
When Bad News is Good News: The
Spinach Story. While death and disease of any sort is tragic, the fact that a foodborne illness
has received so much attention at all is one indicator of just how safe our food supply generally is.
Despite the perpetual calls for additional federal oversight … Americans already enjoy the safest
food supply in human history — and it's getting safer every day.
Remember Global Cooling? In April,
1975, in an issue mostly taken up with stories about the collapse of the American-backed government of South
Vietnam, Newsweek published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster.
Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine
warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." … if you had been following the climate-change
debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling.
Ding-Dong, Global Warming is Dead!
A Los Angeles Times reporter in early December wrote, "Scientists studying Yosemite National Park's bountiful
wildlife have found that several animal species have moved to higher altitudes, an uphill migration possibly
spawned by the grinding effects of global warming on one of the nation's most protected wilderness." This
is not news. It is mere speculation clothed in the majesty of journalism, but rife with the reporter's
opinion that Yosemite's menagerie of mammals, birds, and reptiles are "possibly" responding to "the grinding
effects of global warming."
Cow emissions blow
up the atmosphere faster than autos. Environmental alarmists and much of the media refuse to look
at other industries and other reasons carbon dioxide is pumped into the air. … According to a United Nations
report released in late November (and widely ignored by the media), bovine flatulence is responsible for
18 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. By contrast, it is estimated that the
U.S. auto fleet accounts for 6 percent of global CO2 emissions.
'Global
Warming' TV Special 'Misleads Public,' Scientist Says. A program on "global warming" set to
debut on the Discovery Channel Sunday night [7/16/2006] "misleads the public," because it relies on "just a
few scientists with a particular personal viewpoint on this subject," says a climatologist who has seen
the two-hour special.
Al Gore's Rhetoric Doesn't Match
Reality. The environmental left has been waging a fear campaign about global warming for
years. The news media in their addiction to the scary and violent is a willing accomplice. … The
global warming propaganda group Environmental Defense is also behind this campaign. The group has now
received $100 million in free air time (mostly from major networks) for advertising about the dangers
of global warming. They have invested $1.5 million or their own money and solicited the help of
the Ad Council to create the dramatic spots.
A convenient
lie: Atmospheric-science professor John Christy … says, "Doomsday prophecies grabbed
headlines but have proven to be completely false. Similar pronouncements today about catastrophes due to
human-induced climate change sound all too familiar." But the media can't get enough of doomsday.
AP Incorrectly Claims Scientists Praise Gore's
Movie. The June 27, 2006 Associated Press (AP) article titled "Scientists OK Gore's Movie for
Accuracy" by Seth Borenstein raises some serious questions about AP's bias and methodology. AP chose to
ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticized the science presented in former Vice President
Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Editor's Note:
Reviews of Al Gore's movie can be found at the bottom
of this page.
Bald Eagle-DDT Myth Still Flying High.
While the AP acknowledged the fact that bald eagle populations "were considered a nuisance and routinely shot
by hunters, farmers and fishermen" — spurring a 1940 federal law protecting bald
eagles — the AP underplayed the significance of hunting and human encroachment
and erroneously blamed DDT for the eagles' near demise.
The NY Times: Objective Journalism or Pro-Environmentalist
PR? "The Cost of an Overheated Planet" dominates the front page of the Tuesday [12/12/2006]
Business section, accompanied by a cliched graphic of a Planet Earth with a giant thermometer stuck into
it. Reporter Steve Lohr is no less certain that global warming exists, as he celebrates the head of
an energy company who favors federal regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.
ABC's
Global Warming Cattle Call: Things that, sans strict scientific scrutiny, most likely are
happenstance, anecdotal or not related to global warming at all now are going to be reported by a major
U.S. news network as proof positive of not just the man-made effects of global warming but that it lives
and breathes….
Drought Scare Goes Up in Smoke.
Global warming is increasing Western wildfires! At least that's what lots of news stories said in
response to a July 6 paper by A.L. Westerling of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and three
co-authors. Like most scientific issues, though, this one is more complicated than the headlines suggest.
Hot & Cold Media Spin
Cycle: A Challenge to Journalists who Cover Global Warming. Since 1895, the media has
alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time
periods. From 1895 until the 1930's the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920's until
the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a
coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing
climate change fears during the last 100 years.
Senator Inhofe and CNN Anchor in Heated
Exchange Over Global Warming Coverage. On CNN American Morning today [10/03/2006], Senator James
Inhofe, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, engaged in a heated exchange with CNN
newsman Miles O'Brien over CNN's biased and erroneous coverage of global warming. Senator Inhofe
questioned the journalistic integrity of CNN anchor for, 'scaring a lot of people' with hyped climate
reporting. Senator Inhofe also questioned O'Brien about his 1992 CNN report regarding fears of a coming
ice age.
Santa Barbara News-Press loses five
editors. Five top editors and a veteran columnist resigned from the Santa Barbara News-Press
this week, complaining that billionaire-libertarian-environmentalist owner Wendy McCaw was undermining the
paper's credibility and sticking her nose into the newsroom. … An animal rights activist and
philanthropist, Mrs. McCaw, 55, often put her own personal touches on stories, including one opposing
the consumption of turkeys on Thanksgiving because of the suffering of the "unwilling participant."
Time Misses Climate. Time devoted a
recent cover to the "near-certainty" that humans are causing dangerous global warming. However, Time
offered evidence only of a warming, which could be either man-made or natural. Based on historic and
geophysical evidence, Time's story is likely to be as wrong as its 1974 cover story touting global
cooling! Newsweek did one the next year. Neither magazine understands the moderate, natural
climate cycle that history tells us has dominated the last 2000 years of Earth's temperature variations.
Did I mention there's another page
about Global Warming?
Everything you know is
wrong. For years, reporters have been alerting America to one scare after another.
Chemicals, cell phones, SARS — everything is going to kill us! You would think by now we'd
be doing nothing but digging graves. Instead, Americans are living longer than ever. Not that
you'd ever know that from the mainstream media.
The Bird-Flu
Scam: You can't make any real money without a boogeyman, and the new "Bird Flu" hoax is the
latest scam used to generate profits for pharmaceutical company insiders.
Hyping High Gas Prices, Hiding
Good News. During the Clinton years, network journalists argued (correctly) that strong economic
growth, a rising stock market, low unemployment and low inflation were the benchmark indicators of a good
economy. Today, economic growth is a phenomenal 4.8 percent, the stock market has been climbing
for three straight years, and inflation and unemployment are both low. But instead of trumpeting the
amazing "Bush economy," TV news has downplayed this recent good news while hyping the bad news of rising
fuel costs.
CBS, ABC, NBC Fuel Gas Price
Hysteria. The morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't been just reporting
consumer discontent about higher gas prices but also actively stoking public outrage.
Media Drill 'Big Oil' Again on
'Record' Profits: NBC's Chip Reid subtly suggested oil company executives are a patently
dishonest bunch. … Yet while Reid worried about "Big Oil" profit margins, his own employer enjoyed
a profit margin higher than most American oil companies, according to data from CNN.com. General
Electric, the company which owns Reid's network, outpaced most major oil companies with a profit margin
of 11.05 percent.
Drivin' and Not Cryin'? When it
comes to gas prices, the media too often know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Flip
open a paper and turn on the TV and you'll learn that gas prices are rising again. "Stormy 6 Weeks
Ahead" says CBSNews and warns consumers to expect "pain at the pump."
Why Are Gas
Prices the Only Economic News? While the average nominal gas price has risen
above $2 a gallon, the networks routinely fail to adjust for inflation. In
today's dollars, gas prices were at least 26 percent higher in March 1981 after
the Carter-era inflation spiral. Gas prices today would have to reach $2.99 a gallon
to be a record.
And eventually they did.
A little warming, a lot of hysteria.
Not so long ago, the media fad was all about the coming ice age. Newsweek reported in 1975 that the earth
was cooling and the effects on food production would be catastrophic. Farmers in Northern Europe could
expect the growing season to shrink by two weeks by the end of the century. That didn't happen.
Fire and
Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide whether
we face an ice age or warming. Thanks to the release of Al Gore's latest effort on global
warming — this time in book and movie form — climate change is the hot topic in press rooms
around the globe. It isn't the first time. The media have warned about impending
climate doom four different times in the last 100 years. Only they can't decide if
mankind will die from warming or cooling. … Journalists have taken advocacy positions, often
ignoring climate change skeptics entirely. One CBS reporter even compared skeptics of
manmade global warming to Holocaust deniers.
Let's put a
freeze on global warming hype. "Recently, media and politicians have virtually stopped
talking about global warming and are now referring to climate change instead," states [Dr. Chris]
de Freitas. "That's because predictions of doom and gloom from warming just aren't coming
true. But with 'climate change,' Kyoto advocates can now cite any change or phenomenon as proof
that CO2 emissions have upset the global apple cart."
"Too Hot" Not So Hot. The latest
triumph of the global warming crusade is a one hour HBO special entitled "Too Hot Not Too Handle" that is
premiering in several cities this month. … If we adopted every suggestion in the film, concentration of
carbon dioxide will still double this century. The reality avoided in the film is that China is
currently building over 500 coal-fired power plants; they intend to build one new coal fired plant every
week for decades to come, and no matter what we do in the US, emissions from throughout the world will
drive atmospheric carbon dioxide levels steadily upward.
Good News is Swept Under the Rug on Earth
Day. April 22 marks the activist-styled "Earth Day," when every environmental Chicken
Little with an axe to grind takes to the media and proclaims the ecological sky is falling.
Media Often Gets the News on the
Environment Wrong. The media has suspiciously changed its tune on a number of environmental
issues. For example, in 1987, the Washington Post editorialized the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve
is "one of the bleakest, remote places on this continent" but by 2000, the paper described the area as a
"unique, wild, and biologically vital ecosystem." In 2001, the media decried Bush's return to "old"
arsenic standards, yet said nothing when such "dangerous" standards were embraced for eight years under the
Clinton administration before they were changed only during the last few days of the administration.
Hurricane Hype Clouds Warming
Debate. ABC's Jeffrey Kofman sounded the alarm about storms so bad scientists "are now considering
adding a fearsome category 6. That's hurricanes of more than 175 miles an hour. Something no
one would want to meet head-on." No one did. Category 6 wasn't even added, and the chorus of
media hype about another deadly season of storms turned into so much hot air. That's right -- forecasts
for the 2006 hurricane season, which ends November 30, have proven entirely wrong. Instead of
17 tropical storms and hurricanes, we got only nine.
Are the Media Giving You the Whole Story on
Global Warming? If you want to know the truth about global warming — or
acid rain, or the ozone hole, or any other environmental issue — you must keep in mind
that the media are not giving you the true story. And the reason for that is very simple. They
are reporting on the world as they see it: distorted through green lenses.
Full-Court Press on Global
Warming. Aggressive focus on manmade climate change is far from a real "tipping
point" — it's a coordinated liberal media play. … Hello, global warming. Goodbye,
journalistic ethics.
Media in the Cold. The first thing we
have to do is fire all the reporters, editors and headline writers who have not got a clue about "global
warming" except that it scares … readers and sells newspapers. … Such stories are best distinguished by
how many times the words "probably", "may", and "could" occur in the body of the text. These are very
slippery words used by so-called scientists trying to justify their latest "findings."
Environmental
Education: School of Crock. If Americans are confused, it's because they are
spoon-fed by sources with little information, but with alternative agendas. Consider where
the average American gets that "information" on the environment. About 60 percent of
respondents in Roper polls cited mostly television and newspapers; about 25 percent credited
the government and 33 percent said radio or environmental groups. (More than one
source could be chosen.)
Good News About the
Environment: After over 30 years of steady progress and improvement, the media still chooses
to emphasize the negative and largely ignore the positive with their coverage of Earth Day events.
Hate
the SUV, but don't shoot the driver. Invariably when an SUV driver is
involved in an accident, the story focuses on the SUV. As though sedans,
station wagons and especially hybrids never make mistakes.
Destroying
America To Save The World. For nearly four years, network news programs have
presented a skewed view of global warming and the Kyoto treaty that liberal environmentalists
claim would cure it. Those same newscasts have all-but ignored the negative economic
consequences that ratifying Kyoto would have on the U.S. The network coverage also largely
ignored scientific evidence questioning global warming theory, while touting dramatic claims
of liberal environmental activists.
Surprise,
surprise: The New York Times gets it wrong... again. Far from being the boogeyman,
Western investment offers the greatest hope for the future of Indonesia. Thanks to Jane Perlez
and her confederacy of dunces, that hope shines less brightly.
Scaring for
money. Usually the horrible disaster never happens. Chaos from Y2K. An epidemic
of deaths from SARS or mad cow disease. Cancer from Three Mile Island. We quickly
forget. We move on to the next warnings. This is the story of a looming disaster that
never became an actual disaster — because the science that led to the terror was never
sound science at all.
Environmentalists
Plus Press Are Dangerous. The problem is environmentalists and newsmen feed on
one another and can become doubly dangerous. The most surprising at the moment are the
radical environmentalists, who have infected large parts of the press with distortion,
exaggeration, and seeming ignorance.
How the Media Get the Environment
Wrong: As strong environmentalism is one of the defining characteristics of the modern liberal,
it should come as no surprise that the media lean toward environmentalism in their coverage of key
issues. Yet politics cannot be the whole answer. Sensationalism and ignorance are also
to the fore.
Media Spin Obscures Improvement in Air
Quality. The Environmental Protection Agency's recently released Latest Findings on National
Air Quality confirms the good news that America's air quality is improving. Unfortunately, many
media outlets and environmental activists insist on telling the public otherwise.
Bush's environmental record is a far cry from media
portrayals. It is very subtle, but it is persistent. Listen to the language used by the
media to describe President George W. Bush's approach to environmental issues. The language speaks
volumes.
Stossel
Attacks Global Warming and Other Media Scares.
Shenanigans at
Greenpeace — And the Media Yawns. After a year in which financial improprieties
gobbled up headlines like never before, it would stand to reason that a brewing scandal involving a major
international organization, millions of dollars, and alleged tax evasion would receive similar treatment. But
if that major international organization is famed environmental group Greenpeace, the media goes mute.
Hollywood's
Environmental Wackoism: Tinseltown's double standard hardly stops at freedom
of expression. One of the funniest sections of James Hirsen's Tales From the Left Coast
describes the stars' environmental elitism. Do as they say, not as they do.
Media Fosters Green Hobgoblins:
Every year reporters give the environmentalists fawning news coverage on Earth Day — not tough
scrutiny of their goals and motivations.
Clamoring for
Kyoto: The Networks' One-Sided Coverage of Global Warming. For years, liberal
environmentalists have insisted that only tough regulations on economic activity can prevent the climate
catastrophe of human-induced global warming. So far, these activists' biggest policy success has
been the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, which would have forced the United States to cut industrial emissions to seven
percent below 1990 levels, or 30 percent lower than current levels. But if the gloom-and-doom
predictions of environmental activists' are exaggerated or wrong, such severe cutbacks — which would have
increased energy prices and drastically reduced economic growth — are not necessary.
Nuclear Power Poised for a
Revival: The truth is spreading about France's highly successful use of nuclear power, holding
great promise for America's energy woes -- but the liberal media are spinning a different story.
Global Warming Speculation vs. Science: Just Ask
the Experts: On the facts of human-made global warming, should one believe television or the experts?
Spin wins over global warming
science: On ABC, CBS and NBC, every reporter and 9 out of 10 talking heads insist the
scientific debate is over.
Facts frozen out: Network News and
Global Warming: A study from the MRC's Free Market Project demonstrates that over the past five
years reporters have presented a highly distorted picture of the global warming debate.
The Big Polluters: CBS,
NBC And ABC Serve As Tribunes For Radical Greens. For years, liberal environmentalists have insisted that
only tough regulations on economic activity can prevent the climate catastrophe of human-induced global
warming. Their activism led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, which would have forced the U.S. to
cut industrial emissions to levels 30 percent lower than they are today, a massive economic sacrifice.
Kyoto was too onerous for both Democrats and Republicans, who rejected its basic principles in a unanimous 95-0 Senate
vote four years ago. President Clinton allowed Al Gore to sign the treaty, but never
submitted it for ratification. After all the rhetoric, only Romania ratified it. This spring,
President Bush finally threw it in the wastebasket.
The press corps covers global
warming. "I've believed for years and years that global warming is a hoax perpetrated on the
political world by Malthusian Greenies whose hidden agenda is a smaller world population and falling standards
of living."
TV's One-Sided Global Warming
Nonsense: Study says ABC, CBS and NBC never mentioned that thousands of scientists
disagree with the doomsayers.
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