Fire and Ice Doomsday Alarmism Then and Now - 3

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:

• Don’t Stifle Debate: Most scientists do agree that the earth has warmed a little more than a degree in the last 100 years. That doesn’t mean that scientists concur mankind is to blame. Even if that were the case, the impact of warming is unclear.

     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

Fire and Ice Doomsday Alarmism Then and Now - 2 - 3

Originally published at http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20071004161833.aspx