By Roger Aronoff in Accuracy in Media
The extremists committed to the man-made global warming theory-that humans are causing the world to get hotter and that we have to drastically raise taxes and/or ration energy in response-are on the run. How else does one explain the sensational Newsweek cover story with the provocative headline, “Global Warming is a Hoax,*” over a photo of a boiling sun?
Newsweek, a Washington Post property, claims to be telling us “The Truth About Denial,” and to make sure everyone gets the point, it uses some form of the word “denial” 20 times, including “denial machine” 14 times. The article, which is the worst kind of advocacy journalism, is a shoddy attempt to suggest that those skeptical of the theory are like holocaust deniers.
The asterisk in the Newsweek headline leads to a smaller note connecting the “hoax” charge to “well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change.” Newsweek tells its readers that its cover story is about “the denial machine” -those against the theory. Senate staffer Marc Morano, a long-time conservative journalist and activist, points out that while those skeptical of the man-made global warming theory have received some $19 million, the forces favored by Newsweek have taken in closer to $50 billion, much of it from American taxpayers and channeled through federal and global agencies. This figure, of course, doesn’t include the dollar value of all of the media coverage in support of the theory.
Where’s the Fairness Doctrine when we need it? We should know by now that the concept of “fairness” is only supposed to apply to those who disagree with liberals. We are supposed to be “fair” to them by presenting their view-and only their view-as the truth. In truth, they are the mud-slingers with a political agenda that threatens the American way of life. This is the fact that they are so desperate to conceal. Read full story here.
By Lorne Gunter, National Post
In his enviro-propaganda flick, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore claims nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the last decade. That’s been a common refrain for environmentalists, too, and one of the centrepieces of global warming hysteria: It’s been really hot lately—abnormally hot—so we all need to be afraid, very afraid. The trouble is, it’s no longer true.
Last week, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—whose temperature records are a key component of the global-warming claim (and whose director, James Hansen, is a sort of godfather of global-warming alarmism)—quietly corrected an error in its data set that had made recent temperatures seem warmer than they reaIn many cases, the changes are statistically minor, but their potential impact lly were.
In many cases, the changes are statistically minor, but their potential impact on the rhetoric surrounding global warming is huge. The hottest year since 1880 becomes 1934 instead of 1998, which is now just second; 1921 is third.
Four of the 10 hottest years were in the 1930s, only three in the past decade. Claiming that man-made carbon dioxide has caused the natural disasters of recent years makes as much sense as claiming fossil-fuel burning caused the Great Depression. The 15 hottest years since 1880 are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before atmospheric carbon dioxide began its recent rise; seven occurred afterwards. In other words, there is no discernible trend, no obvious warming of late. Read more here.
Newsweek Debunks Itself!. Washington DC - Robert J. Samuelson, a contributing editor of Newsweek, slapped down his own Magazine for what he termed a “highly contrived story” about the global warming “denial machine.” Samuelson, writing in the August 20, 2007 issue of Newsweek, explains that the Magazine used “discredited” allegations in last week’s issue involving a supposed cash bounty to pay skeptics to dispute global warming science and he chided the Magazine for portraying global warming as a “morality tale.” Samuelson’s article titled “Greenhouse Simplicities,” also characterized the “deniers” cover story as “fundamentally misleading.”
“Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week’s Newsweek cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder,” Samuelson wrote. See the full news-breaking blog story here.