"The Heartland Institute" Cover for "What Global Warming?"

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I've taken time today to look for resources about Global Warming. I personally accept the term "Climate Change" to be a political run around the term "Global Warming." Climate change sounds more like an act of God, while environmental scientists agree that the earth is warming and human activity is one of the elements feeding Global Warming. But there are those out there who cannot accept this whether it be to protect the oil and auto industries or because they have framed this as a "Global Warming = Liberal Agenda" political ploy that does not fit their politically conservative view of the world.

The mom and apple pie sounding "The Heartland Institute" has a video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRaeEIN5Sh8 that pans Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Here is a still image from that video (my comments are in white letters, italicized):



It's hard for me to make out what the people (person?) behind "The Heartland Institute" are trying to prove, that Al Gore has a slide showing steam instead of smoke? Hired guns in the video say that the earth heats first, and then that raises CO2 levels. Hmmm..... Maybe those jokers who said we never landed on the moon were right after all.

Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media

Thanks to checking out the Society of Environmental Journalists' link of the week, I became aware of the new Yale Forum on Climate Change and The Media:

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media is an online publication and forum to foster dialogue on climate change among scientists, journalists, policymakers, and the public. The Yale Forum is an initiative of the Yale Project on Climate Change, directed by Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Edited by veteran environmental journalist and journalism educator Bud Ward, The Yale Forum seeks to provide print, broadcasting, and online reporters and editors timely and credible information on one of the most important and complicated issues of our time. The Yale Forum will include useful media resources on climate change causes, consequences, and solutions. It will also analyze and discuss the process by which climate change is communicated through traditional and new media.

I suppose this will be seen as a "liberal" site, but I suspect that any news that would seem contrary to the notion of Climate Change will appear here.

Society of Environmental Journalists

This journalism organization is worthy of note. Indeed, they are doing professionally what I'm doing as an evangelist for bringing information about how to resolve global warm (and that still seems to need to get people off the fence and into the field of play). "SEJ members envision an informed society through excellence in environmental journalism.

Mission

"The mission of the Society of Environmental Journalists is to advance public understanding of environmental issues by improving the quality, accuracy, and visibility of environmental reporting."

At this point, I don't know if Matt Drudge could become a member or not.

Know the Enemies of Responding to Global Warming

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Happily, I came across a great site that's almost sure to find and publish anyone and everyone who, even if taken out of context, appears to question Global Warming and, more specifically, its cause being human activity. This great reactionary site is http://www.businessandmedia.org/. They trumpet themselves by citing this quotation:

“Finally there is an organized effort to put an end to the embarrassing media bias against the free market – and we can thank the folks at BMI for it. From oil price reality checks to the underreported success of the most recent tax cuts, Business & Media Institute gets it done.”

– Vicki McKenna, host, “Upfront w/Vicki McKenna”
News/Talk 1310 WIBA, Madison, Wis.

WIBA-AM radio in Madison Wisconsin? Vicki McKenna is an unabashedly conservative radio talk show host, hardly a bastion of objectivity. So an obscure conservative radio talk show host is proud of businessandmedia.org. That's the best they can do? What's wrong with this picture. Would you go see a new movie based on a review from WIBA-AM in Madison? No offense to the station (I'm an old radio guy), but this is pretty sad. Nevertheless, this is a great site to monitor to see what the "potential" (I'm being generous in using that word) disinformation promoters are saying to encourage us to laugh off Global Warming, shrug our shoulders, and just accept "Climate Change" as a normal procession of "another day at the office" on Planet Earth.

This site, thankfully, points out another site, Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com), "an indispensable on-line source for news as it should be reported – accurate, balanced, and unfiltered." And to show just how interested businessandmedia.org really is in objective news, get this:

TimesWatch, another Web venture of the MRC [right-wing Media Research Council...but you wouldn't know it by its name, eh?], follows The New York Times and exposes inaccuracies and glaring bias in news coverage.

That's a pretty fair objective. I wish the Media Research Council would hold the Washington Times' feet to the same fire. Nevertheless, this is good news. We can see how conservatives (not all conservatives, I'm quite sure) strive to tell us to "don't worry, be happy" when it comes to Global Warming.
So, I'll have to find a way to watch these sites and marvel at their "fair and balanced" view of the world, from the point of view of a right-wing group.

By the way, there's going to be no convincing some people, ever, that either "Climate Change" or "Global Warming" exist and that warming is accelerating faster than even the most dire predictions for it. The belief now is that our political leanings (e.g., reacting cautiously or openly to a political issue) have a genetic basis, according to a May 2005 article in The American Political Science Review and many other sources.

Climate Change Houdinis

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May 17, 2006: Big Oil Launches Attack On Al Gore. This posting on http://thinkprogress.org sums up so well how the fossil fuel industry muddies the waters around the proposition that both global warming is happening and it is caused by human activity, that I am reposting it here as a backup:

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will unveil two 60-second TV ads focusing on what it calls “global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions.” The ad, which will be aired in more than a dozen cities across the country, is being released just a week before the May 24th opening (in LA and NYC) of Al Gore’s new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

Who is CEI? The Washington Post explains:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which widely publicizes its belief that the earth is not warming cataclysmically because of the burning of coal and oil, says Exxon Mobil Corp. is a “major donor” largely as a result of its effort to push that position.

CEI also gets funding from other oil companies through the American Petroleum Institute.

Exxon documents reveal the company gave $270,000 to CEI in 2004 alone. $180,000 of that was earmarked for “global climate change and global climate change outreach.” Exxon has contributed over $1.6 million to CEI since 1998.

CEI’s general counsel Sam Kazman said, “I think what attracted [Exxon] to us was our position on global warming.” CEI’s position? The Institute believes the dangers of global warming are akin “to that of ‘an alien invasion.’”

Exxon’s spokesperson Tom Cirigliano has explained why the company is so dedicated to funding CEI’s pushback on global warming:

We want to support organizations that are trying to broaden the debate. … There is this whole issue that no one should question the science of global climate change that is ludicrous. That’s the kind of dark-ages thinking that gets you in a lot of trouble.

The science is not questioned because the science behind global warming is indisputable. Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus that the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program concluded that humans are driving the warming trend through greenhouse gas emissions. And the EPA has said that the recent warming trend “is real and has been particularly strong within the past 20 years…due mostly to human activities.”

For the oil industry, Al Gore’s film exposing the truth is perceived as a threat, and they have no shortage of funds to try to distort it.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/attack-on-gore/, accessed 13 October 2007, © thinkprogress.org Please credit http://mynews.in/ for the image above, acccessed 28 June 2008.

Planet in Peril: Environmental Coverage - Special Reports from CNN.com

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FYI, CNN will be presenting documentaries in October 2007 related to the topic of, among others, Global Warming. Fox News has emerged as an unabashedly right-wing commentary rather than a news network. This has encouraged many conservative voices who see the "News" in "Fox News" as proof that it is a "fair and balanced" network to "prove" that CNN is liberally biased. While not a new claim, when compared to Fox News, any other mainstream television news show or network is going to look quite liberal, indeed. Viewers of the BBC know that it has reported on Global Warming for years now, and it clearly does not see any debate left in the issue. Al Gore wisely has positioned "Climate Change" as a moral and ethical issue, not a political one.

I am in the process of trying to find sources that question what conservatives call "Climate Change" (and yes, many liberals have sneaked away from "Global Warming" because "Climate Change" doesn't blame human activity for the unprecedented changes in our environment). Interestingly, all of the projected changes of wild swings in the weather including exceptionally cold periods, are happening. The shocking truth is that even with an updated version of "An Inconvenient Truth", the apparent increases in temperature and even something as "in your face" as record-setting wild fire activity around the world are coming to pass faster than expected, and the pace of that change is accelerating. Incredibly, these changes (including 2007 becoming the hottest year on record) are emerging faster than the most dire predictions that have been made as recently as this year, 2007.

American media have been very slow to accept the Global Warming or even Climate Change premise is a valid one. Video of wild fires and temperatures in the U.S. over 100 degrees in most of the eastern U.S. for about 10 days this past summer have allowed mainstream U.S. media to begin to look at what's going on. Nevertheless, there is a pushback from conservative groups that may or may not constitute themselves under names that may be "objective" as well as others who choose "environmentally friendly" sounding names.The BP (British Petroleum) logo has "1984" written all over it as the company created a logo that looks about as earth-friendly as any logo you might find. They also have an advertising campaign extolling the virtues of BP in doing something about the impact of the use of its products on the environment. My guess (Klopfenstein © 2007...yes, you are allowed to chuckle) is that BP sees this is more of a marketing ploy to attract customers than great devotion to creating alternative sources of energy (which, as Al Gore kept emphasizing in the 2000 presidential race, could make the energy companies even more money as they invent new ebergy technologies). I hope someone from BP challenges me on this, but that would bring attention to this blog...not a good idea if you are BP.