Government Comes to the Rescue
Mankind managed to survive three phases of fear about global warming
and cooling without massive bureaucracy and government intervention, but
aggressive lobbying by environmental groups finally changed that reality.
The Kyoto treaty, new emissions standards and foreign regulations are
but a few examples.
Getting the government involved to control the weather isn’t a new
concept. When the earth was cooling, The New York Times reported on a panel
that recommended a multimillion-dollar research program to combat the
threat.
That program was to start with $18 million a year in funding and
increase to about $67 million by 1980, according to the Jan. 19, 1975,
Times. That would be more than $200 million in today’s dollars.
Weather warnings in the ’70s from “reputable researchers” worried
policy-makers so much that scientists at a National Academy of Sciences
meeting “proposed the evacuation of some six million people” from parts of
Africa, reported the Times on Dec. 29, 1974.
That article went on to tell of the costly and unnecessary plans of the
old Soviet Union. It diverted time from Cold War activities to scheme about
diverting the coming cold front.
It had plans to reroute “large Siberian rivers, melting Arctic ice and
damming the Bering Strait” to help warm the “frigid fringes of the Soviet
Union.”
Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” noted climatologists’
admission that “solutions” to global cooling “such as melting the arctic ice
cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers,” could result
in more problems than they would solve.
More recently, 27 European climatologists have become worried that the
warming trend “may be irreversible, at least over most of the coming
century,” according to Time magazine on Nov. 13, 2000. The obvious solution?
Bigger government.
They “should start planning immediately to adapt to the new extremes of
weather that their citizens will face – with bans on building in potential
flood plains in the north, for example, and water conservation measures in
the south.”
Almost 50 policy and research recommendations came with the report.
The news media have given space to numerous alleged solutions to our
climate problems.
Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh had some unusual ideas to
repel an effect of global warming. In 2002 he had the notion of creating a
rainmaker, “which looks like a giant egg whisk,” according to the Evening
News of Edinburgh on Dec. 2, 2002.
The Atlantic edition of
Newsweek on June 30, 2003, reported on the whisk. The British government
gave him 105,000 pounds to research it.
Besides promoting greater prosperity and peace, it could “lift enough
seawater to lower sea levels by a meter, stemming the rise of the oceans –
one of the most troublesome consequences of global warming.” The rain
created would be redirected toward land using the wind’s direction.
Instead of just fixing a symptom of global warming, Salter now wants to
head it off. He wants to spray water droplets into low altitude clouds to
increase their whiteness and block out more sunlight.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has considered other ways to
lower temperatures and the media were there to give them credence.
Newsweek on May 20, 1991, reported on five ways to fight warming from
the National Research Council, the operating arm of the NAS.
The first idea was to release “billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled
balloons” to reflect sunlight. To reflect more sunlight, “fire one-ton
shells filled with dust into the upper atmosphere.” Airplane engines could
pollute more in order to release a “layer of soot” to block the sun. Should
any sunlight remain, 50,000 orbiting mirrors, 39 square miles each, could
block it out.
With any heat left, “infrared lasers on mountains” could be used “to
zap rising CFCs,” rendering them harmless.
Global Warming: 1981-Present and Beyond
The media have bombarded Americans almost daily with the most recent
version of the climate apocalypse.
Global warming has replaced the media’s ice age claims, but the results
somehow have stayed the same – the deaths of millions or even billions of
people, widespread devastation and starvation.
The recent slight increase in temperature could “quite literally, alter
the fundamentals of life on the planet” argued the Jan. 18, 2006, Washington
Post.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Nicholas D. Kristof of The New
York Times wrote a column that lamented the lack of federal spending on
global warming.
“We spend about $500 billion a year on a military budget, yet we don’t
want to spend peanuts to protect against climate change,” he said in a Sept.
27, 2005, piece.
Kristof’s words were noteworthy, not for his argument about spending, but
for his obvious use of the term “climate change.” While his column was
filled with references to “global warming,” it also reflected the latest
trend as the coverage has morphed once again.
The two terms are often used interchangeably, but can mean something
entirely different.
The latest threat has little to do with global warming and has
everything to do with … everything.
The latest predictions claim that warming might well trigger another
ice age.
The warm currents of the Gulf Stream, according to a 2005 study by the
National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, U.K., have decreased 30
percent.
This has raised “fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the
continent into a mini ice age,” as the Gulf Stream regulates temperatures in
Europe and the eastern United States. This has “long been predicted” as a
potential ramification of global warming.
Hollywood picked up on this notion before the study and produced “The
Day After Tomorrow.” In the movie global warming triggered an immediate ice
age. People had to dodge oncoming ice. Americans were fleeing to Mexico.
Wolves were on the prowl. Meanwhile our hero, a government
paleoclimatologist, had to go to New York City to save his son from the
catastrophe.
But it’s not just a potential ice age. Every major weather event
becomes somehow linked to “climate change.”
Numerous news reports connected Hurricane Katrina with changing global
temperatures. Droughts, floods and more have received similar media
treatment.
Even The New York Times doesn’t go that far – yet.
In an April 23, 2006, piece, reporter Andrew C. Revkin gave no credence
to that coverage. “At the same time, few scientists agree with the idea that
the recent spate of potent hurricanes, European heat waves, African drought
and other weather extremes are, in essence, our fault. There is more than
enough natural variability in nature to mask a direct connection, they say.”
Unfortunately, that brief brush with caution hasn’t touched the rest of
the media.
Time magazine’s recent cover story included this terrifying headline:
“Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More; Land Is
Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying
Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point The climate
is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis hit so soon —and
what we can do about it”
That attitude reflects far more of the current media climate. As the
magazine claimed, many of today’s weather problems can be blamed on the
changing climate.
“Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when
they hit this hard and come this fast — when the emergency becomes
commonplace —something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global
warming,” Time said.
Methodology
The Business & Media Institute (BMI) examined how the major media have
covered the issue of climate change over a long period of time. Because
television only gained importance in the post-World War II period, BMI
looked at major print outlets.
There were limitations with that approach because some major
publications lack the lengthy history that others enjoy. However, the search
covered more than 30 publications from the 1850s to 2006 — including
newspapers, magazines, journals and books.
Recent newspaper and magazine articles were obtained from Lexis-Nexis.
All other magazine articles were acquired from the Library of Congress
either in print or microfilm.
Older newspapers were obtained from ProQuest. The extensive
bibliography includes every publication cited in this report. BMI looked
through thousands of headlines and chose hundreds of stories to analyze.
Dates on the time periods for cooling and warming reporting phases are
approximate, and are derived from the stories that BMI analyzed.
Conclusion
What can one conclude from 110 years of conflicting climate coverage
except that the weather changes and the media are just as capricious?
Certainly, their record speaks for itself. Four separate and distinct
climate theories targeted at a public taught to believe the news. Only all
four versions of the truth can’t possibly be accurate.
For ordinary Americans to judge the media’s version of current events
about global warming, it is necessary to admit that journalists have
misrepresented the story three other times.
Yet no one in the media is owning up to that fact. Newspapers that
pride themselves on correction policies for the smallest errors now find
themselves facing a historical record that is enormous and unforgiving.
It is time for the news media to admit a consistent failure to report
this issue fairly or accurately, with due skepticism of scientific claims.
Recommendations
It would be difficult for the media to do a worse job with climate
change coverage. Perhaps the most important suggestion would be to remember
the basic rules about journalism and set aside biases — a simple suggestion,
but far from easy given the overwhelming extent of the problem.
Three of the guidelines from the Society of Professional Journalists
are especially appropriate:
-
“Support the open exchange of
views, even views they find repugnant.”
-
“Give voice to the voiceless;
official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.”
-
“Distinguish between advocacy
and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not
misrepresent fact or context.”
That last bullet point
could apply to almost any major news outlet in the United States. They could
all learn something and take into account the historical context of media
coverage of climate change.
Some other important points include:
People in northern climes
might enjoy improved weather and longer growing seasons.
-
Don’t Ignore the Cost:
Global warming solutions pushed by environmental groups are notoriously
expensive. Just signing on to the Kyoto treaty would have cost the United
States several hundred billion dollars each year, according to estimates
from the U.S. government generated during President Bill Clinton’s term.
Every story that talks
about new regulations or forced cutbacks on emissions should discuss the
cost of those proposals.
-
Report Accurately on
Statistics: Accurate temperature records have been kept only since the
end of the 19th Century, shortly after the world left the Little Ice Age.
So while recorded temperatures are increasing, they are not the warmest
ever. A 2003 study by Harvard and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
“20th
Century Climate Not So Hot,” “determined that the 20th century is
neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather
of the past 1,000 years.
Bibliography
For sources
click here
Originally published at
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20071004161833.aspx
For a related look at the growing
Technocracy of the New World Order see:
TechnoFascism Is Totalitarianism
Hidden in the Form of Democracy
The Carbon
Currency proposal is only as good as the science on which it was
based.
Peak Oil Theory
was based on the unscientific theory that oil is derived from fossils
and therefore its supply is limited to "reserves". The Peak Oil
Theory
is also based on the
questionable faith that the oil companies and their puppets will tell
us honestly how much oil they have in reserve.
Global Warming
Theory is based on very unscientific theory that CO2 created by the
combustion of "fossil fuels" has a significant and deleterious effect
on global temperatures.
For the OTHER
Side of Peak Oil "Theory" see:
Peak Oil Introduction
-
2
The Peak Oil Myth-
2 -
3
Peak Oil is a Myth based on Ignorance of Russian
/ Ukrainian Science -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 -
6 -
7
Peak Oil Is a Scam to Promote World Depopulation
- 2 - 3 - 4
Scientific Abstracts on Peak Oil
-
2
For the OTHER
SIDE of Global Warming "Theory" see: