Hot & Cold Media Spin Cycle: A Challenge To
Journalists Who Cover Global Warming
October 25, 2006
http://www.universalpolitics.com:80/
QUOTE: "Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and
warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time
periods"
I am going to speak today about the most media-hyped environmental issue
of all time, global warming. I have spoken more about global warming
than any other politician in Wa****ngton today. My speech will be a bit
different from the previous seven floor speeches, as I focus not only on
the science, but on the media's coverage of climate change.
Global Warming -- just that term evokes many members in this chamber,
the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture to nod their heads and
fret about an impending climate disaster. As the senator who has spent
more time educating about the actual facts about global warming, I want
to address some of the recent media coverage of global warming and
Hollywood's involvement in the issue. And of course I will also discuss
former Vice President Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
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 pedaled 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.
Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try
to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue
of our generation. Just last week, the vice president of London's Royal
Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle
the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism. During the past
year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of
environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which
link every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw
many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and
objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely into
global warming advocacy.
SUMMARY OF LATEST DEVELOPMENTS OF MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING HOCKEY STICK
First, I would like to summarize some of the recent developments in the
controversy over whether or not humans have created a climate
catastrophe. One of the key aspects that the United Nations,
environmental groups and the media have promoted as the "smoking gun" of
proof of catastrophic global warming is the so-called 'hockey stick'
temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues.
This graph pur****ted to show that temperatures in the Northern
Hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward
in the 20th century presumably due to human activity. Mann, who also
co-publishes a global warming propaganda blog re****tedly set up with the
help of an environmental group, had his "Hockey Stick" come under severe
scrutiny.
The "hockey stick" was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all
in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the
statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National
Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the
foundation of the "hockey stick."
http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697
The National Academy of Sciences re****t reaffirmed the existence of the
Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age
from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the
invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly
impacted the Earth's climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was
warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew
crops in Greenland.
Climate alarmists have been attempting to erase the inconvenient
Medieval Warm Period from the Earth's climate history for at least a
decade. David Deming, an assistant professor at the University of
Oklahoma's College of Geosciences, can testify first hand about this
effort.
Dr. Deming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming
believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in
the 20th century. Deming says he was subsequently contacted by a
prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank "We have to get
rid of the Medieval Warm Period." When the "Hockey Stick" first appeared
in 1998, it did just that.
END OF LITTLE ICE AGE MEANS WARMING
The media have missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the
Earth's temperatures and mankind's carbon dioxide (C02) emissions. It is
very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit
temperature increase during the 20th century means we are all doomed.
First of all, the one degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest
advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and
human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that
the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow
negative or part of a catastrophic trend.
Second, what the climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have
continued to ignore is the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted
in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths,
ended about 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by
comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than
during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show
a catastrophic temperature trend.
In addition, something that the media almost never addresses are the
holes in the theory that C02 has been the driving force in global
warming. Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began
warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, long before
man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940,
just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a
decline that lasted until the 1970's, prompting the media and many
scientists to fear a coming ice age. Let me repeat, temperatures got
colder after C02 emissions exploded. If C02 is the driving force of
global climate change, why do so many in the media ignore the many
skeptical scientists who cite these rather obvious inconvenient truths?
SIXTY SCIENTISTS
My skeptical views on man-made catastrophic global warming have only
strengthened as new science comes in. There have been recent findings in
peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the
Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new study in
Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for 50%
of 20th century warming.
Recently, many scientists, including a leading member of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the
horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun's output.
A letter sent to the Canadian Prime Minister on April 6 of this year by
60 prominent scientists who question the basis for climate alarmism,
clearly explains the current state of scientific knowledge on global
warming.
The 60 scientists wrote:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605
"If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate,
Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded
it was not necessary."
The letter also noted:
"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by
activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming
and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global
climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human
impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural
'noise.'"
COMPUTER MODELS THREATEN EARTH
One of the ways alarmists have pounded this mantra of "consensus" on
global warming into our pop culture is through the use of computer
models which project future calamity. But the science is simply not
there to place so much faith in scary computer model scenarios which
extrapolate the current and projected buildup of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere and conclude that the planet faces certain doom.
Dr. Vincent Gray, a research scientist and a 2001 reviewer with the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has noted,
"The effects of aerosols, and their uncertainties, are such as to
nullify completely the reliability of any of the climate models."
Earlier this year, the director of the International Arctic Research
Center in Fairbanks Alaska, testified to Congress that highly publicized
climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than
"science fiction."
In fact, after years of hearing about the computer generated scary
scenarios about the future of our planet, I now believe that the
greatest climate threat we face may be coming from alarmist computer
models.
This threat is originating from the software installed on the hard
drives of the publicity seeking climate modelers.
It is long past the time for us to separate climate change fact from
hysteria.
KYOTO: ECONOMIC PAIN FOR NO CLIMATE GAIN
One final point on the science of climate change: I am approached by
many in the media and others who ask, "What if you are wrong to doubt
the dire global warming predictions? Will you be able to live with
yourself for opposing the Kyoto Protocol?"
My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is
chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all
heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource
scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None
of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from
continuing to predict a dire environmental future.
The more the eco-doomsayers' predictions fail, the more the
eco-doomsayers predict. These failed predictions are just one reason I
respect the serious scientists out there today debunking the latest
scaremongering on climate change. Scientists like MIT's Richard Lindzen,
former Colorado State climatologist Roger Pielke, Sr., the University of
Alabama's Roy Spencer and John Christy, Virginia State Climatologist
Patrick Michaels, Colorado State University's William Gray, atmospheric
physicist S. Fred Singer, Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics, Oregon State climatologist George Taylor and
astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, to name a few.
But more im****tantly, it is the global warming alarmists who should be
asked the question -- "What if they are correct about man-made
catastrophic global warming?" -- because they have come up with no
meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades
that they have been hyping this issue.
If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions
are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that
symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis.
The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully
ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on
global temperatures. And keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to
being complied with by many of the nations that ratified it, including
13 of the EU-15 nations that are not going to meet their emission
reduction promises.
Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have
been saying all along:
The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.
Legislation that has been proposed in this chamber would have even less
of a temperature effect than Kyoto's undetectable impact. And more
recently, global warming alarmists and the media have been praising
California for taking action to limit C02. But here again: This costly
feel-good California measure, which is actually far less severe than
Kyoto, will have no impact on the climate -- only the economy.
Symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.
In addition, we now have many environmentalists and Hollywood
celebrities, like Laurie David, who have been advocating measures like
changing standard light bulbs in your home to fluorescents to help avert
global warming. Changing to more energy-efficient light bulbs is a fine
thing to do, but to somehow imply we can avert a climate disaster by
these actions is absurd.
Once again, symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.
But this symbolism may be hiding a dark side. While greenhouse gas
limiting proposals may cost the industrialized West trillions of
dollars, it is the effect on the developing world's poor that is being
lost in this debate.
The Kyoto Protocol's post 2012 agenda which mandates that the developing
world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases could have the
potential to severely restrict development in regions of the world like
Africa, Asia and South America -- where some of the Earth's most
energy-deprived people currently reside.
Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the
developing world are seen by many in the green movement as a threat to
the planet's health that must be avoided.
Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature
death.
If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to
influence policy makers to restrict future energy production and the
creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world -- billions of
people will continue to suffer. Last week my committee heard testimony
from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed
left-wing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that
movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called
"The Skeptical Environmentalist" and has organized some of the world's
top Nobel Laureates to form the 2004 "Copenhagen Consensus" which ranked
the world's most pressing problems.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=158
And guess what?
They placed global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our
planet's priorities. The "Copenhagen Consensus" found that the most
im****tant priorities of our planet included: combating disease, stopping
malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift
the developing nations out of poverty. I have made many trips to Africa,
and once you see the devastating poverty that has a grip on that
continent, you quickly realize that fears about global warming are
severely misguided.
I firmly believe that when the history of our era is written, future
generations will look back with puzzlement and wonder why we spent so
much time and effort on global warming fears and pointless solutions
like the Kyoto Protocol.
French President Jacques Chirac provided the key clue as to why so many
in the international community still revere the Kyoto Protocol, who in
2000 said Kyoto represents "the first component of an authentic global
governance."
Furthermore, if your goal is to limit C02 emissions, the only effective
way to go about it is the use of cleaner, more efficient technologies
that will meet the energy demands of this century and beyond.
The Bush administration and my Environment and Public Works Committee
have been engaged in these efforts as we work to expand nuclear power
and promote the Asia-Pacific Partner****p. This partner****p stresses the
sharing of new technology among member nations including three of the
world's top 10 emitters -- China, India and North Korea -- all of whom
are exempt from Kyoto.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE:
Many in the media, as I noted earlier, have taken it upon themselves to
drop all pretense of balance on global warming and instead become
committed advocates for the issue.
Here is a quote from Newsweek magazine:
"There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to
change dramatically and that these changes may ****tend a drastic decline
in food production- with serious political implications for just about
every nation on Earth."
A headline in the New York Times reads: "Climate Changes Endanger
World's Food Output."
Here is a quote from Time Magazine:
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past
several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect
that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are
actually part of a global climatic upheaval."
All of this sounds very ominous. That is, until you realize that the
three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek
Magazine and The New York Times, and Time Magazine in 1974.
http://time-proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/printout/0,23657,944914,00.html
They weren't referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming
ice age.
Let me repeat, all three of those quotes were published in the 1970's
and warned of a coming ice age.
In addition to global cooling fears, Time Magazine has also re****ted on
global warming. Here is an example:
"[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are
quite right. weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the
time being is growing warmer."
Before you think that this is just another example of the media
promoting Vice President Gore's movie, you need to know that the quote I
just read you from Time Magazine was not a recent quote; it was from
January 2, 1939.
Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and over
three decades before Time Magazine began hyping a coming ice age and
almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.
Time Magazine in 1951 pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof
that the planet was warming.
In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global
warming "has been the melting glaciers."
BUT 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 form the New York Times re****ting 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 Wa****ngton Post article declared: "Ice Age Coming
Here."
By the 1930's, the media took a break from re****ting 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 re****ted
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 re****ted 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
do***ented here today can be found in a publication titled "Fire and
Ice" from the Business and Media Institute.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialre****ts/2006/fireandice/fireandice_timeswarns.asp
MEDIA COVERAGE IN 2006
Which raises the question: Has this embarrassing 100-year do***ented
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
re****t, 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.
Many in the media dwell on any industry sup****t given to so-called
climate skeptics, but the same media completely fail to note Hansen's
huge grant from the left-wing Heinz Foundation.
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 re****ter write a children's book
entitled" The North Pole Was Here." The author of the book, New York
Times re****ter 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 re****ter for the New York Times who is promoting
aspects of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at children.
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"Let me say it plainly: The environmental movement has been taken over
by anti-capitalist radicals who are using it to wage war against
capitalism and campaign for liberal Democrats. Protecting the
environment is now number three, or lower, on their list of priorities."
Joe Bast, President, Heartland Institute, One-time Ardent
Environmentalist, Has seen it from both sides.
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