The political right likes to claim that the mainstream press has a liberal bias. These self-appointed media watchdogs see a cadre of left-leaning fascists looking to manipulate popular opinion, to infringe on individual freedom by stripping law-abiding citizens of their God given right to own guns, smoke, pray in public, eat supersized fatty foods and drive gas-guzzling CO2–belching behemoths. In truth, the American press isn’t red, blue, pink or green. It’s yellow.
Once upon a time, journalism was considered a public service. The news media was owned by beneficent potentates; men who cloaked their more obvious commercial enterprises in the sanctimony of servicing our “right to know.” When technology fractured the audience, when news was made to stand on its own, it suddenly became more of what it was all along: a business.
The news media’s unshackled economic motives have amped-up their insatiable desire to be seen, heard and/or read. To that end they cater to our basest instincts with stories about all sorts of human extremes: fires, fanatics, fatalities and most important of all, anything urgently threatening.
Even before the news media lost their dignity, they perpetuated pervasive paranoia. My childhood was haunted by visions of nuclear attack, food shortages and dwindling oil supplies. These stories eventually gave way to dark tales of nuclear disaster and Y2K meltdown.
Thankfully, all of these perceived calamities are still largely theoretical. Food is produced in abundance, oil supplies have grown and Japan and France have demonstrated that nuclear power is safe and the Internet lives! And so new villains have arrived, most prominently terrorists but including the automobile.
While it pains me to even partially vindicate Detroit’s anti-media paranoia, it’s certainly true that automobile manufacturers have been victimized by willfully ignorant, self-righteous muckrakers. As ttac.com contributor Paul Neidermeyer recently recounted, the Chevrolet Corvair and Audi 5000 were both torpedoed by bogus safety concerns perpetuated by self-anointed safety campaigners (Ralph Nader and CBS).
Other popular models have fallen prey to absurd exaggerations of risk, provided without any discussion of context, scientific analysis or mitigating factors. Was the Firestone tire-clad Ford Explorer inherently dangerous? What does that mean anyway? The fact that over half the Explorer rollover deaths involved passengers who didn’t buckle their seat belts escaped the media’s limited attention.
Clearly, this trend has progressed to the point where the news media feels free to demonize the automobile in general, and vilify anyone who dares drive anything other than a [get-out-of-PC-prison-free] hybrid.
How many times does the media use the words “oil addiction” to describe our habit of driving our children to school, commuting to work, buying the things we need to survive and keeping the American economy healthy for ALL of us?
SUVs are regularly portrayed as the sole province of selfish, clueless, amoral Americans. The companies that provide these vehicles are cast as foot-dragging Neanderthals who, ironically enough, cater to their customers’ basest instincts.
Never mind that the news trucks schlepping their high-tech equipment are about as fuel efficient as a Sherman tank, or that the news helicopters that hover over televised tragedy burn more fuel than an entire fleet of Hummers.
And why is it OK to treat a normal, commercially vital activity like driving as if it’s some kind of criminal act? Global warming! And if global warming is the problem, American drivers are the cause. Oh, sorry, did I say “if?" I mean, “because.”
In case you hadn’t noticed, today’s news media never misses an opportunity to remind us of the “fact” that our vehicles’ fossil fuel combustion is creating greenhouse gasses that will hasten an increase in global temperatures that threatens our species’ survival.
Vehicle-induced global warming is a fact because a lot of scientists say it is– even though a large number of reputable scientists say it isn't. Woe betide anyone foolish enough to question global warming in the press; they're served-up as a crank or right wing nutcase.
Ten years from now, after a decade of declining ocean temperatures (as forecast by the National Hurricane Center), we’ll look back and wonder why people bought the paranoid pseudo-reality of global warming. Of course, by then the tragedy industry will have invented some new automobile-related threat to keep us riveted with fear.
Fascination is the key. The news media is afraid to tackle the tough questions relating to our cars because they believe the public is fundamentally stupid. They’re scared that their audience will take one look at a more complicated truth and switch off. If the information gatekeepers don’t simplify issues (e.g. SUVs suck), Americans will lose interest.
I like to think they’re wrong; that drivers can go beyond sound bites to engage in a proper debate on important issues related to our automotive activities. With your help, we’ll find out.
218 Comments on “The Truth About the Press’ Anti-Car Global Warming Jihad...”
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Global warming debates never go well. Please don’t get us started.
But about the Corvair… it seems to me Nader’s criticisms were reasonable. Even your article pointed out the problems pretty well.
Good editorial. Kudos to you.
“The news media is afraid to tackle the tough questions relating to our cars because
they believethe public is fundamentally stupid”FTFY.
Believe me, if there was money in reporting logical arguments for anything, it would be done. But since the public can really only think in black and white (cars are baad, um k), that’s what they’re fed. When people find out I’m a scientist they often ask me a question about my work and when I don’t give them a black and white answer, they’re always confused. They expect science to have a “yes/no” type answer, rather than the “it depends..” that we always use. E.g., the latest controversy with the head of NASA saying that IF there is global warming, it still may not be a bad thing. Seriously, if you look over geologic time scales, the climate of the earth has changed drasticlly (the high-altitude dessert that I’m at right now typing this comment, used to be a sea level tropical rain forest). Who’s to say that the current climate is the optimal climate (or even if you can create an ordered list of climates) for the Earth. It is what it is, and it will always change, and we just have to adapt.
When scientists stop throwing their weight behind global warming almost unanimously I’ll start to doubt it, and not beforehand.
Thanks, William for not being afraid to question the blind acceptance of the religion of global warming. Folks like you and NASA’s Administator Michael Griffin need to be heard. Today, I saw footage taken from a news helicopter hovering over Paris Hilton’s house waiting for officers to haul her to court and I thought “Wow, how is this really worth the $4.00/gallon jet fuel? What can the media say to defend this?”
(This is going to get heated, I can tell…)
I disagree with your contention that reputable scientists reject global warming. They are few and far between, and often receive funding directly from companies who would benefit directly from diminishing concerns about global warming. The fact that you believe that there is a significant body of scientists skeptical of global warming is proof positive that the media has done a grand job of ill informing the public (i.e., the few global warming deniers are given voice far out of proportion to their presence in the scientific community).
That being said, I totally agree that the mass media, especially the news media, seldom makes and effort to inform and if often distracted by stories that are easy to cover that they think will fascinate or titillate their audiences (Anna Nicole Smith’s death…who really cared?!!!).
The treatment of cars and car companies is shoddy indeed. Toyota is widely lauded as a green car company, based solely on the existence of the Prius, while they expand aggressively into market segments known for poor mileage (trucks and SUVs). GM, however, was recently castigated by a variety of journalists for bringing back the Camaro, even though the anticipated volume of that vehicle was small. Not once have I heard a journalist or newsperson try to illustrate the difference between ‘mileage’ and ‘emissions’, i.e., if you got 5 mpg but devised away to trap all the ‘bad’ emissions, you’d have an atmosphere saving vehicle. Nor have I seen them explain to their audiences the concept of statistical significance, i.e. 12 cars out of a sample size of 500,000 may not in fact be indicative of anything.
Finally, they often fail to provide meaningul analysis of why people drive or, by extension, inquire why it can take 2 buses, a slow subway ride, and another 2 buses (almost two hours travel) to get from the west of Toronto to the east.
jabdalmalik:
Like the man said, global warming is not black and white (although the press portrays it that way).
First, what constitutes global warming? Second, if it is happening, is it man-made? Third, is the man-made part related to vehicular emissions? Fourth, if they are, what percentage is related to vehicles? Fifth, is it something we need to address? Sixth, is reducing vehicular emissions the best way to reduce global warming? Seven, how would you do that?
These are not simple questions. The answers are not simple. Me, I'm still wondering about question one before I start worrying about question four. Thanks to the media, the public is already on seven.
GREAT article.
Though I tend to lean conservative, I always chuckle at the way some conservatives depict the liberal media. Journalists tend to be liberal. Sure. Engineers tend to be conservative. That affects what both groups do, but it does not make either group part of a big conspiracy, eager to get “their man” into office.
In the eyes of some conservatives, the media is always looking for a way to make “us” look stupid. But let’s be honest. In that regard neither “we” nor “they” need much help…
William, you had me until you indulged in the rant about climate change.
There is near-universal consensus that climate change is real. Only a tiny minority of scientists disagree with that position; arguably, they constitute a fringe group at most.
As an auto enthusiast who tilts leftward, I have to shake my head at the hard-right among us whose absolute unwillingness to accept this aforementioned consensus on climate change could lead to anti-car laws that verge on overkill, because the enthusiasts are such ideologues that they were unwilling to make logical compromises.
It’s really head-in-the-sand thinking to believe that climate change is a hoax just because we like to drive. I love driving, but passion for driving and wishful thinking about it do not equate to fact.
As much as I love cars, I also care about the world that I live in and the legacy that I am leaving for the generations to come. It’s ironic for us to indict the short-term business strategies of the Big 2.8, while forgetting the importance of the long-term prospects of Earth, Inc. at the same time.
I think we should hedge the global warming discussion this way.
Even if we assume that man-made global climate change is in progress, and if we assume that fossil fuels are a big contributor:
(1) The mainstream media’s reporting is sensationalist, oversimplified, and inaccurate.
(2) The perspective that American SUVs are solely or largely responsible for the fossil fuel emissions is not accurate.
-America’s movement of goods is based on heavily polluting commercial trucking.
-We fly thousands of enormous airplanes every day, many of them serving distances that could easily be driven or trained.
-Maybe 10% of non-governmental helicopter use is truly worthwhile.
-Other countries (China, India, the EU, Russia, Indonesia, and Brazil) contribue immensely to fossil fuel emissions, in many categories far outweighing the U.S., not just in vehicles but with massive powerplants and factories.
I’m a car enthusiast, and I’m grateful to Ralph Nader for pushing vehicle safety forward.
The government should push emissions reduction forward.
Automakers drag their feet, claiming safety and fuel economy standards will kill them, and then, when forced by the market or regulations (or the market spurred by regulations), then they miraculously comply.
The media may be sensationalist, but automakers and oil companies have a clear interest in pretending global warming does not exist. That is what they pay the “credible scientists” to write articles disputing global warming. Their goal is to get people like you to buy into their propaganda and then spread seeds of doubt to the masses.
Comparing fuel used to cover a news event with one of my neighbors firing up the Hummer to drive an able-bodied, but probably overweight, 6th grader 4 blocks to school is bogus. I don’t much care for a lot of the coverage TV deems worthy, like high-speed chases, but yours is not a valid comparison. Should TV trucks run on something other than gasoline or diesel? Yeah, probably. The garbage trucks around here are CNG, which is practical for short-rage fleet vehicles but not long-haul vehicles. The soccer moms I see in my area driving 2- and 3-ton trucks for the purpose of hauling around a couple of kids and some groceries IS wasteful. Add in the cell phone and an endemic lack of driving ability, and the whole scenario redefines absurd.
As for global warming not being a fact, name ONE reputable scientist who says otherwise. Every time this comes up, the non-believers point to some industry-backed group. So, name one independent scientist with peer-reviewed and published research who says global temperatures are not rising.
As for climate change over geologic time scales, the human race has only existed during a small portion of the latest of those epochs. If we want to make it through even a bit more of this one, something has to give.
After watching PBS news for years now, I can not tolerate the nightly news as served up by the likes of ABC, NBC and CBS: Short “sound bite” ridden stories, lots of commercials. No depth.
The local news is ever more difficult to tolerate: “A tree fell on Backwater Street, and we’ve got exclusive video.” Yawn.
Global warming: I’ve seen numbers stating cars contribute 20% – leaving 80% from other sources; and I’ve seen where they’re [we are] blamed for 1/3rd – leaving 2/3rds from other sources. (Minimal research on my part, I’ll admit.)
If that’s the case, the focus is on the smaller piece of the pie. But my wife points out “You have to begin somewhere.” But is it even real? Really long-term real? Tough to know given the shallow wading-pool depths of mainstream media coverage in the U.S.
Let’s see what the headline of the moment is at http://www.wfsb.com, Channel 3, the local CBS affilliate here in central Connecticut is, shall we?
Ah yes, nice dark red banner: “Live video on WFSB.com: Paris Hilton Late for Court Appearance”
“Judge Says Paris Must Show in Court” is the lead for their “Eyewitness News Big Stories” as well.
Not much left to say, is there?
Save for: Excellent opinion piece. :-)
“Today, I saw footage taken from a news helicopter hovering over Paris Hilton’s house waiting for officers to haul her to court and I thought “Wow, how is this really worth the $4.00/gallon jet fuel? What can the media say to defend this?” “
They defend it because you and others watched.
I agree with Glenn; the networks, which used to be decent, are now as empty-headed as local news. If you think you’re on celebrity overload where you live, try stomaching what we get in SoCal.
As for who and what produces pollution, there is no doubt that 3rd world countries’ unchecked smoke-stack emissions play a huge role. Is that an excuse for industrialized nations to ignore the issue? Of course not.
How far back to acurate weather records go 150 yrs maybe 200?
Show me some good data going back 20,000 yrs,maybe then we can make a good call on this.
As William points out in his excelent article, the media loves big bad life threatening news,it sells.
Why is it allways the rich people at fault?Why do we target the Lawyer drving his 70,OOO$ SUV 10,000 miles a year?Why not beat up the left over flower child with his 12 yr old out of tune Volvo,who drives 40,000 miles a year from one demonstration to another?
I believe the whole global warming crap, is nothing more than another tool for the left, in thier never ending quest for wealth distrubution.
The news game is business and scaring people sells – whether its child molesters, terrorism or nasty things in the food that will kill you, they love pressing the fear buttons despite that all of things have a negligible chance of happening to you as opposed to the dull and un-newsworthy things that people really die from in large numbers.
Global warming may very well be embellished by the media to the point where it sounds like the plot from a bad 70s disaster movie but that may not be such a bad thing as the push for alternative energies is a timely exercise in the US. The growth in oil demand in fast growing economies such as China will drive up the price of gas to a point where it will seriously impact the US economy which is much more prone to energy cost fluctuations than Europe which have a considerably lower per capita energy consumption. If the media hype will get us to a point where Americans stop wasting so much energy then that is a good thing as it will help cushion us (the US) from the inevitable oil crunch and the struggle against the every increasing global oil demand.
Is the global warming danger real? Probably but not certain.
Is the press presenting a well-informed discussion? Hell no – its just selling another fright story to its readers and viewers to increase their ratings and sell more advertising.
All that I am positive about these days is that I sure miss Walter Cronkite.
One credible non-industry backed scientists:
Jan Curtis, Aurora Borealis researcher and climatologist.
“It’s really head-in-the-sand thinking to believe that climate change is a hoax just because we like to drive. I love driving, but passion for driving and wishful thinking about it do not equate to fact.” –Pch101
I second that. I’m pretty conflicted about more anti-car regulation, since I love driving so much. If only there was a way for automakers to make lightweight, safe, fun, frugal cars that people wanted. I guess a number of different factors would have to come together to make that happen, which probably won’t happen anytime soon. But someday…
jabdalmalik:
June 8th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
When scientists stop throwing their weight behind global warming almost unanimously I’ll start to doubt it, and not beforehand.
NickR:
June 8th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I disagree with your contention that reputable scientists reject global warming. They are few and far between, and often receive funding directly from companies who would benefit directly from diminishing concerns about global warming.
Thaks to RF for writing most of what I was about to write. But first I need to address the above two quote. You need to remember that what you see in the media is filtered in some way. You may think that every scientist out there says that global warming is happening, and that it’s terrible and that the world’s going to end. But the only reason you see that is because that’s what the media is letting you see. I’m not going to go all crazy with conspiricy theories, but you need to remember that you really know only what “they” want you to know unless you read the primary literature.
I have read the primary literature, I have seen informal and formal talks given by scientists who work in this field, and they truely are split on what’s going on. Granted, when they write proposals to get more funding, they write it in a way that says the world’s about to end, that gets them more money to do research. But when you actually see a talk that describes the data, they truely are conflicted. I personally know scientists on both sides of the debate, they are all very smart and honest people, they want to know the truth, they are not out to make public policy.
Here’s a quick example with graphs that I stole from the interwebs (I believe this counts as fair use, so no one should complain about copyrights).
First, here’s a plot of the average global temperature over the last 1000 years. Before you look at the plot, I want you to think of a few things. 1) How do you define global temperature? Truthfully, if I were to give you money to measure the global temperature, I want you to explain how you’d do the measurement and how accurate it would be. 2) How do we know the global temperature for times before 1850’s when we started keeping track of that stuff. 3) What does this plot look like if we could have measured the temperature back to the beginning of the earth, think of ice ages, nuclear winter that probably killed off the dinosaurs, other large climatic changes before humans.
So now, look at the plot
I will say, that yes, indeed, there is an increase in temperature over the last 100 years, but there is nothing there that says that this is a big change, or that there haven’t been bigger changes before, or that it just isn’t normal fluxuation. remember, we only have data over the last 1000 years, and we’re seeing a change in the last 100 years, that’s only 10% of the recorded data. Not enough to really make any conclusions.
Now, what scientists will do, is also show this plot
of CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 1000 years, and say, “Hey look, when CO2 goes up, temperature goes up”. I agree that there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature, but is it causal? is it even related? Check out this other correlation with average global temperature
Scientifically, it’s just as valid. But for some reason people will be lauging at the second correlation and not the first. Why? Because it doesn’t “Feel” right. but feeling right (truthiness) isn’t science, and it doesn’t tell us about the world.
The statement “CO2 is causing global warming” has just as much evidence supporting it as the statement “Iraq as involved in 9/11″. But different people will pick which statement they want to believe.
/end rant
“(1) The mainstream media’s reporting is sensationalist, oversimplified, and inaccurate.”
Unlike the Drudge Report, several blogs that do nothing more than regurgitate what they swiped from the NY Times and a few others for which the authors’ grammar and spelling wouldn’t get them out of high school.
“(2) The perspective that American SUVs are solely or largely responsible for the fossil fuel emissions is not accurate.”
Cite one story from any news source, “mainstream” or otherwise that says this. Don’t quote something that you assume means this because of your perceptual bias. An actual, verbatim quote from a news story, not an editorial or some half-baked column.
But wait… SUVs do suck! For many other reasons than the tired topic of global warming. They make driving anything other than an SUV a much bigger chore than it used to be. And the few I’ve driven are terrible handling, boring, slow, the antithesis of enjoyable to drive. I’ve driven an Explorer, a Tahoe (BLEAH!!!), a Trailblazer and the only one I liked was an old Cherokee, which was great for what it was meant to do… handle offroad and bad conditions (which I was in at the time). Driving around nyc in the sea of SUVs I just shake my head sometimes. That’s the last thing I would want to be driving in a city.
Bob Beamesderfer:
June 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
As for global warming not being a fact, name ONE reputable scientist who says otherwise. Every time this comes up, the non-believers point to some industry-backed group. So, name one independent scientist with peer-reviewed and published research who says global temperatures are not rising.
I don’t have time to look up all of his papers, I need to get back to work, but here’s a starting point:
http://www.colorado.edu/chem/people/nozika.html
“How far back to acurate weather records go 150 yrs maybe 200?”
Accurate records go back further. Tree-ring data, plant fossils, recorded history. But weather data isn’t the same as climate data.
As for a “conspiracy to redistribute wealth,” that’s about as far-fetched as it gets.
jabdalmalik said: When scientists stop throwing their weight behind global warming almost unanimously I’ll start to doubt it, and not beforehand.
Ummm… considering the current opinion of the international scientific community… it’s about time to start believing.
Take a look at some DISPASSIONATE evidence:
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
I admit that when the subject of global warming comes up, my BS Detector goes off the charts.
There’s simply not enough evidence out there to prove what man’s contribution to global warming is, if it indeed exists.
What makes me so skeptical is that this is all based on computer modeling, and as they say, Garbage In, Garbage Out. It’s all in the assumptions used to forecast the future, and so there’s a tremendous amount of room for error.
That being said, i fully support technology that will lower our dependency on oil, such as nuclear power. Personally, I’d start by building 1,000 new nuclear plant so we could produce all our energy cleanly. There are stable places to store spent fuel, but that largely been stopped by NIMBY.
Yes indeed bob beam it is about spreading the wealth.
Read and listen to the media it allways rich corps. and rich people that are the bad guys.Its always the poor and downtrodden who are on the recieving end.
Thats what sells
Global warming. Could be true, might not. I tend to lean heavily on the side of it being true and that we are affecting it.
However, it always bothers me that we waste so much time talking about global warming and discussing if we ought to do something about it when we don’t address the less debatable and far more pressing issue regarding US dependence on foreign oil.
Quite simply, the US depends on highly unstable and unfriendly regimes for a large part of our energy. We need to stop this for our own security.
This is why I support higher CAFE standards and true research into alternative energy. The bi-product of this reduction on our dependence on foreign oil is that we are contributing less to the production of greenhouse gas. Like Zarba, I am highly favorable of Nuclear power. At this point, it is clean and cheap, has a low impact on the environment (assuming no meltdowns) and it is domestic.
In short, if we stop our dependence on oil, a secondary benefit is that we will end up reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
“Take a look at some DISPASSIONATE evidence:
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
I admit that when the subject of global warming comes up, my BS Detector goes off the charts.”
This guy’s political axe is huge. Fox News, Cato Institute. That’s not impartial.
Take your bullshit detector and a photo of the Palisades Glacier on the East Side of the Sierra Nevada from 20 years ago and go look at the V and U Notches. The amount of permanent ice has declined significantly. The V-Notch used to be almost entirely a pure ice climbing route. Now it’s a heavily mixed rock and ice climb.
The perspective that American SUVs are solely or largely responsible for the fossil fuel emissions is not accurate.
It’s not just SUV’s, but ~44% of total US crude oil consumption goes to gasoline, which is mostly used to fuel personal motor vehicles. Jet fuel is roughly 8%, diesel and other fuel oils are roughly 14% (and in the US diesel is almost exclusively used for commercial transportation, not personal). Gasoline is by far the largest individual component of US oil demand, and passenger vehicles are the largest component of gasoline demand. So yes, the best thing we can do in the US to reduce oil consumption is address passenger vehicles first and worry about the rest later. A big gas tax is the logical tool, but it probably won’t happen.
I have no view on whether we “need” to reduce oil consumption in the US. But IF you believe that we do, then there is no question that passenger vehicles are the low-hanging fruit.
"# mikey: June 8th, 2007 at 2:12 pm Yes indeed bob beam it is about spreading the wealth. Read and listen to the media it allways rich corps. and rich people that are the bad guys.Its always the poor and downtrodden who are on the recieving end. Thats what sells"
So, simply reporting facts is the same as advocacy in your mind. As for "what sells" it's a lot more complicated than "Gee, today the Daily Bugle has a story on Paris Hilton, I think I'll buy it."
I don't see every wealthy person vilified by a long shot. Bill Gates, Bono, Warren Buffett and many others are given fair shake, and often lauded. Or do you some how think that executives like Ken Lay should be allowed to fleece shareholders without being brought to justice?
Media is a business and they tailor their product to their audience. You couldn’t get more of a Conservative mouthpiece than Fox News and more of a Liberal one than CNN. They hype things up to get you to tune in so they can sell more ads. It’s the way it works. Would you prefer news run by the government?
There are several reasons for the short sound bites as opposed to involved discussion. People and families of today are much busier than in the past. You have limited time as a seller or media outlet to get your information to your audience. There are many more forms than just newspaper and the nightly 6:00 o’clock news to get your information so they are all competing for your attention. It’s also cultural as more people grow up with access to technology they multitask more and get their information in snippets on the go.
Several points: First, fascism is a right-wing, not left-wing, system of government, contrary to your 2nd sentence.
Second, discussion of the mainstream news media is not complete without mentioning that a handful of companies control the great majority of news outlets. GE, Westinghouse, Viacom, Disney, Fox, Time-Warner are the 6 companies, and do you really think they’re going to let their media branches do anything to undermine their profitability?
Third, manufacturing has severely declined in the US, as we all know. I have no numbers but I am willing to wager that the great majority of journalism college grads come from families and communities with no manufacturing backgrounds, so a lack of understanding of the automotive industry is hardly surprising.
Steve_S:
You couldn’t get more of a Conservative mouthpiece than Fox News and more of a Liberal one than CNN.
Steve_S, CNN is hardly a liberal mouthpiece, and us left wingers see them as mainstream/centrist at best and FOX-chasing right wing wannabees at worst. If you really think that’s as liberal as media reporting gets, get thee to a newsstand, get yourself some copies of Mother Jones and The Nation, and start reading. If you want really left wing, get a copy of Z magazine.
I’ll accept that global warming is real and man-made, and that it is being exaggerated by the media, and by largely well-meaning people(1) who believe it must be simplified and exaggerated in order to get the concept across.
But so what? What can we do about it? Once you start down the path of lowered expectations, of reducing what you can do to fit within limited resources, everyone must live with less and less until we all have nothing. The only way out is to expand resources at a greater rate than consumption rises.
Sure, efficiency and conservation and avoiding wastefulness can buy us time but cannot be the answer. We are either on our way up or the way down. Oil reserves are clearly finite, but the set of all energy sources is not. (There are scary energy sources like fission plants in countries where the industry owns the regulators, and less scary ones.) There are other solutions to managing the planet’s temperature than burning less oil. (There are some scary solutions proposed here, too. Have you seen the proposal to dump powdered iron into the oceans so that algae will act as a carbon sink? I’m sure there will be no unintended consequences to that one!) But my point here is that people can engineer solutions to these problems and we are not limited to a future where a population of one billion lives on organically-raised, hand-hoed potatoes.
(1) I accept that Al Gore is a large, well-meaning person.
The broadcast media will make a fool of ya everytime. The media cater to the un-thinking memorizers in order to sell them something. Take note of how many people will parrot a sound-bite or a TV jingle memorized from broadcasts and how many people hold the same [tired] opinions. Most if not all do not posses a logical step process to back up their [sound-bite] conclusions… so if you question their conclusion, they just get mad at you… They are memorizers not thinkers.
Reminds me of the Alice Cooper song “I have no friends cause they read the papers….”
Jan Curtis was mentioned by N85523. Here’s part of an article on CNS.com
“There should be room for both sides of the argument, says Jan Curtis, a board member of the state climatologists group who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Center in Portland, Ore.
“It’s a complex issue and we encourage open debate,” Curtis said.
He declined to take a position in the global warming debate, but said of the skeptics, “They are concerned about the limited resources and our dependence on foreign fuels. They just believe you don’t need the reason of climate change to do common sense things.
“The real issue here is conservation of limited resources as the population grows,” Curtis said.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200702/CUL20070208c.html
CNN, today, is center-right at best. At worst, they’re a GOP mouthpiece like Fox. CNN used to be less right-biased, but then 9/11 came and boosted Fox News, the GOP propaganda network. CNN, having no good ideas of it’s own, promptly swung away from the mainstream center in an attempt to capture viewers that Rush Limbaugh had long since trained to hate them. And then ABC fell victim to the same disease.
End result: only GOP fundamentalist whackjobs have their views represented by national news media, except for a couple of two-minute-hate pressure release shows on MSNBC.
I agree with you on media’s motivation. With increased competition for audiences, any journalist putting personal political bias ahead of simple commercial concerns will have a dwindling number of articles published. They ones still left writing are so because of their ability to pander to their advertisers’ targets, not because of some political conspiracy.
That being said, SUV’s do indeed suck. That little detail might well be the only thing the political left, and the sheep that continue to keep them relevant, ever got right in their 100+ year history of being wrong, but damn, did they nail that one. I guess that says something about how obvious SUV’s suckage really is.
I’d be willing to bet 98% of miles driven in modern day America is on roads, as in at least minimally graded paths. Some of those are driven on freeways, some in suburbs, some in dense urban settings, and others on rural roads. And I guess among car blog readers, some on race tracks and in canyons.
Now rank available, or even better, possible, vehicle designs according to how well they serve in each of those environments, with the goal being getting the maximum number of drivers, pedestrians, motor- and bicyclists from their chosen points A to B as quickly and comfortably as possible, constrained by upper limits on systemwide accident number and seriousness, cost of infrastructure maintenance, and other negative side effects, like air and noise pollution. Then assign good to the best third, could use improvement to the middle, and downright sucky to the bottom.
How would you expect a vehicle’s above earned grade to be affected as it gained qualities that changed it from being car’y to suv’y, like higher gravity center and weight, higher beltline and start of tumblehome, less fuel efficiency, and in current day America, more and darker window tint?
For the remaining less than 2% of miles, maybe, just maybe, suv’s don’t suck. But you have to admit, being right 98% of the time is pretty amazing for a bunch of lefties.
Science/Pysical reality has absolutely *nothing* to do with consensus. Consensus is for MBA/politician committee meetings.
“There is near-universal consensus that climate change is real. Only a tiny minority of scientists disagree with that position; arguably, they constitute a fringe group at most.”
How can you make such a statement with such absolute certainty?
NickR:
June 8th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I disagree with your contention that reputable scientists reject global warming. They are few and far between, and often receive funding directly from companies who would benefit directly from diminishing concerns about global warming. The fact that you believe that there is a significant body of scientists skeptical of global warming is proof positive that the media has done a grand job of ill informing the public (i.e., the few global warming deniers are given voice far out of proportion to their presence in the scientific community).
The Fifth Estate, a Canadian news program produced a documentary entitled: “The Denial Machine”. In the program, we find that “Big Oil” employs the same techniques that “Big Tobacco” used to deny the harmful effects of its product. Coincidence? Well, they also employ the same group of scientists tobacco used to obfuscate the issue. Scientists who have not published in peer reviewed journals on any subject in decades.
I cannot do the program justice in a few paragraphs, so I will simply urge readers to locate the documentary for themselves in order to get a sense of how the “debate” is being manipulated in the United States.
Bob Beamesderfer: So, simply reporting facts is the same as advocacy in your mind.
This is what mikey originally posted: Yes indeed bob beam it is about spreading the wealth. Read and listen to the media it allways rich corps. and rich people that are the bad guys.Its always the poor and downtrodden who are on the recieving end.
So, rich people are always the bad guys? The poor are always victims (and, of course, through no fault of their own)?
If you consider this “merely reporting the facts,” please come to my office in the Pennsylvania Capitol, and we’ll discuss this more.
You can also meet my wife, who teaches severely handicapped children in an inner city school district that caters largely to the urban poor.
You’ll get an earful, that’s for sure…and it won’t be what you read in The Nation.
Bob Beamesderfer: I don’t see every wealthy person vilified by a long shot. Bill Gates, Bono, Warren Buffett and many others are given fair shake, and often lauded.
Yes, because they tend to favor causes (aid to Africa, even if it causes harm in the long run; giving away wealth instead of allowing others to inherit it, etc.) that are also favored by those who hail from the “center left” (and some from the center right) of the political spectrum.
Which rather neatly proves his point.
Bob Beamesderfer: Or do you some how think that executives like Ken Lay should be allowed to fleece shareholders without being brought to justice?
No where did he say that, or mention Ken Lay, or say that Ken Lay is somehow representative of rich people or business leaders in general.
bfg9k: Several points: First, fascism is a right-wing, not left-wing, system of government, contrary to your 2nd sentence.
Actually, facism is the “right wing of the left wing.”
It still represents significant control of the economy by the government; it’s just that private property is still allowed. But the expectation is that a strong central government will still ultimately call the shots.
The true right wing, when it comes to economic systems, is libertarianism, which advocates no government intervention in the economy.
Here’s some big, fancy, SCIENTIFIC facts brought to you from the mainstream media (MSN). I’ll bet they even wore labcoats!: “The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for example, dumped enough volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere to lower global temperatures for the next two years. Unlike pollutants from human activity, however, naturally occurring pollutants tend to remain in the atmosphere for a short time and do not lead to permanent atmospheric change.”
OK, so here’s some pollution COOLING the earth…mmmkay. But here’s the big fish: Naturally occurring pollutants are less permanent than man-made…
So sulfur dioxide is somehow different when from a volcano than a tailpipe? “earthy” CO2 is different than from my car? Riiiight…
NEVER trust your facts to television.
Also, we have “accurate” climate data for the last 150 years? So we had killer thermometers and weather stations during the civil war? All over the world…you know, for a GLOBAL average?
Listen, I think digging up dead dinosaurs and burning them is as bad of an idea as anyone else, but y’all gotta wake up and see where the “facts” are coming from…
“There is near-universal consensus that climate change is real. Only a tiny minority of scientists disagree with that position; arguably, they constitute a fringe group at most.”…How can you make such a statement with such absolute certainty?
I’ll crib an article excerpt that I provided on an earlier thread, but before I do, let’s cut to the quick: the climate-change-as-hoax rhetoric from the chattering classes and politicos is exclusively a right-wing fantasy, meant to defend our sense of privilege and the alleged unbridled right to consumption. It has no basis in fact, and you won’t be finding much here being offered by the skeptics that actually supports their allegation that a debate is taking place in the scientific community.
The arguments against climate change largely have nada/zippo/zero to do with scientific research or logical thought. Much of the so-called “debate” is generated by corporate interests that seek to avoid regulation or a shrinking of demand for their products. In the real world, there is virtually no scientific debate at all, and it only enjoys the illusion of credibility as it does because the Bush administration has deliberately hijacked this issue to its own benefit.
The article below in Science Magazine does a nice job of summarizing the science. Many of the claims of ambiguity are coming from politicians with no science background, not from scientists:
_______________________
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities: “Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” .
IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise”. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: “The IPCC’s conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue”.
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies’ members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change”.
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.
As a former tv exec, let me tell you this:
My kids grew up without tv (wouldn’t have one at home). They grew up reading books.
I never watch commercial tv. And bartenders (on average) drink much less then the public at large.
TV is like most good/easy ways to make money: the intelligent exploiting the ignorant.
Fellas,
The Earth is alive, and even in the Goracle’s movie, he shows a time line of temperature changes. Those who are 100% convinced of human caused global warming, G-d speed. But when will a little common sense enter this debate?
The earth’s temperature is increasing – not sure I’ve heard anyone dispute that. How much of that is due to my neighbor’s Suburban, or coal burning, or Brazil cutting down the Rain Forest or my brother downloading too much internet porn while leaving the lights on (hey Steve)? Who knows.
I remember growing up in the 70’s hearing all sorts of predictions about population explosions and an inability to feed everyone on earth. Well, turns out that didn’t quite materialize as expected.
Fear mongering is a helluva business (see the Goracle’s FOR PROFIT carbon offset company). As many have pointed out, the news is laden with it. Look at the coverage of the TB case or anthrax, or terrorism on airlines. Anyone have any idea how many people are killed on highways every year? In 2005, the number was 43,443. Let’s stop the hysteria on “what might be true” and focus on what is true first, capiche?
For an excellent analysis of how and why we are manipulated into being afraid of so many things, read “The Culture of Fear” by Barry Glassner.
Good editorial, even if I don’t agree with some of your comments regarding GW.
I’m with Pch101…
Regading climate change (Formerly Known As: “Global Warming”); If one thinks that the trllions of tons of carbon that we brought up from Mother Nature’s 50 million year-old storehouse and thrown into the atmosphere inside of 200 years can make no difference to our climate, then do nothing. If you even have a clue why Venus is said to have an 800-degree surface temperature (due to its closer orbit to the Sun and high concentrations of CO2) then think of starting to turn this ship around, or we’ll be needing to export CO2 to Mars to prepare it for our eventual relocation…
I think it’s pretty simplistic to draw a sharp dichotomy between acknowledging the overwhelming evidence of man-made global warming and being a car buff. It’s not an either-or choice. It is possible to love cars, driving, and the internal combustion engine and yet at the same time realize that global warming is in fact real and also just as threatening as the vast majority of scientists think. The historical moment that we find ourselves in calls for innovation. We need to lower our CO2 emissions, and we need to find a way to do it without losing our love for driving (see the previous review). Any argument that tries to force me to make a choice between acknowledging the reality of global warming and loving cars feels really manipulative to me.
The earth’s temperature is increasing. But the earth has gone through several warming and cooling trends throughout its history, quite indepedent of human activity.
The question is whether human activities – i.e., the burning of fossil fuels – are exacerbating natural trends. And that question is not settled, as of yet.
Although gas prices keep going up, and our heating oil contract just jumped by $45 a month, and food is getting more expensive (because of trucking costs, and demand for corn-based ethanol), so we will be reducing our carbon footprint for the most common “green” reason.
Namely, we don’t have enough “green” to pay for as much gasoline and heating oil as we did at the lower prices.
dean said: read “The Culture of Fear” by Barry Glassner.
Definitely agree with this. It’s a great book.