AIM Report: Media Promote Global Warming Fraud - March A
AIM Report | March 8, 2007
This document, which blames global warming on people, had no published science to back it up.
MEDIA PROMOTE GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD
When it comes to Iraq, our media have been preoccupied with the issue of whether there was adequate intelligence to justify the invasion and if policy-makers made up evidence before the war. But on the matter of global intervention to stop global warming, there seems to be no need for scientific evidence to justify what is shaping up as a global carbon tax of 35 cents a gallon of gas on the American people.
Our media want the public to believe that the same organization that gave us the oil-for-food scandal can be trusted on its dire predictions of calamity from alleged man-made global warming.
The media's conflict of interest can be seen in the fact that Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman and CEO of General Electric, which owns MSNBC and NBC News, has joined with environmental pressure groups in the United States Climate Action Partnership in promoting an international U.N.-style bureaucracy to reduce the emissions blamed for the warming.
They claim evidence for their view in the recent much-publicized United Nations climate change report. But this document, which blames global warming on people, had no published science to back it up.
A front-page Washington Post story about the report waited until the 20th paragraph of a 21-paragraph story to mention that the "detailed scientific documentation" for the claim is not yet available and won't be released "for a few months." A New York Times account waited until the 40th paragraph of a 44-paragraph story to disclose that "thousands of pages of technical background," supposedly the basis for the alarming conclusions, would be released later in the year.
Faith-Based Science
Now how many people read until almost the end of these articles to discover that the scientific evidence is not yet available?
The odds are that many people didn't get past the sensational New York Times headline, "Science Panel Calls Global Warming 'Unequivocal.'"
Clearly, we are supposed to accept all of this on faith.
In fact, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is officially sponsored by the U.N. Environmental Program, which once organized an Environmental Sabbath project so people could pay homage to the planet. The program included an exercise for children to sit around a tree, hold hands, and meditate.
The coverage of the IPCC report demonstrates how mainstream journalists have abandoned even a pretense of objectivity.
This reflects the influence of such figures as Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who, at the recent so-called National Conference on Media Reform, said that the media should not cover both sides of the global warming debate.
Dissenters
However, some scientists are raising the alarm.
The IPCC's decidedly unscientific approach has come under attack from Harvard University physicist Lubos Motl, who declared, "In the past, scientists had to do their research before the implications for policymaking could have been derived from this research." Mocking the U.N. process, he commented, "Today, the vastly superior postmodern scientific method of the IPCC members allows them to publish the summary for policymakers first."
A Google search of current news, however, turned up only two places where Motl's criticism of the IPCC was mentioned—a story carried by Fox News and attributed to Brit Hume and a CNSNews.com story. Hume cited the CNSNews.com report, which also quoted Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, as saying that issuing a conclusion before producing the evidence for that conclusion is completely improper and that a business which issued a report in such a fashion would be investigated by the government for fraud.
Senator James Inhofe, ranking Member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, called the IPCC report "the corruption of science for political gain" and said the process is completely lacking in scientific integrity. He noted that page 4 of "Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC World" includes the following: "Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."
This means that the scientific data may be altered to conform with what has already been published.
Instead of highlighting the lack of scientific data to support the man-made global warming assertions, our media are trying to discredit critics of the report by trying to tie them to oil companies. Such stories never mention the billions of federal dollars being showered on advocates of the man-made global warming theory.
Pandering to the alarmists, Samuel Bodman, the Secretary of Energy in the Bush Administration, accepted the IPCC report and urged "global solutions" to the alleged problem.
One such "global solution" is a global carbon tax, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, administered and even collected by the U.N. One U.N.-sponsored report suggests a global tax amounting to 35-cents a gallon.
An international conference to promote global taxes, dubbed "solidarity levies," was held in Oslo, Norway, from February 6-7. An international tax on airline travel is already being implemented. One of the biggest state delegations to the conference came from South Korea, whose foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, took over in January as U.N. Secretary-General.
A Global Carbon Tax
A supporter of "solidarity levies" to fund global causes before he became U.N. chief, Ban thinks the IPCC report requires an immediate response from the international community. A special climate change summit, where President Bush could be pressured to endorse a global carbon tax, may be held later this year.
The mass hysteria that passes for coverage of global warming infected Anne Applebaum, who used to be a moderate voice on the Washington Post's editorial page. She wrote a column endorsing a "simple" carbon tax to hike energy prices and added that "If a future American president wants to rally the nation around a patriotic and noble cause, then he or she has the perfect opportunity." Is this a plug for Al Gore?
She wrote that a carbon tax "should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things," such as balancing the budget or fixing Social Security.
Did it ever occur to her that taking a "big chunk of money" out of the economy would slow economic growth and throw people out of work? That it would hurt the poor?
Her column included such gems as, "If the Chinese see that such a tax has produced unexpected benefits in America and Europe, they'll follow." But Applebaum, being a scholar and writer on the evils of communism, has to know that the communist Chinese government is pursuing its own national self-interest economically and militarily and that the regime's increasing production of greenhouse gasses is among the least of its worries.
This kind of analysis goes beyond silly. It reflects emotion, not reason, and wishful thinking, not serious argument. But that is what is driving much of the coverage of this issue.
She tips her hand when mentioning the "apocalyptic climate change rhetoric" that she accepts and believes should spur action at the national and global levels. These people really believe that we are on the verge of the apocalypse. For the acolytes of Al Gore, the apocalypse will come not because an Islamic terrorist or nation will use a nuclear bomb on the U.S. or the world, it will occur because Americans and Chinese are driving too many cars. They believe that a carbon tax, preferably at a global level, has the potential to save the world.
Media Support Carbon Tax
A new website, from an organization devoted to promoting a carbon tax, the Carbon Tax Center, points out that the New York Times and Washington Post are among the leading news organizations in the country in promoting higher energy prices through carbon taxes. "The Times has six regular editorial columnists, four of whom have supported a carbon tax," it says. At the Post, the paper has editorialized in favor of a carbon tax, and columnist Sebastian Mallaby has endorsed it. Applebaum can now be added to the list.
One of the co-founders of the Carbon Tax Center is a leader of a "bike-advocacy" organization.
We will be anxiously waiting for Applebaum, Mallaby, Washington Post editorial writers and those New York Times columnists to announce that they are personally combating global warming by riding bikes to and from work. But like Al Gore, whose "big fat carbon footprint" and frequent airplane travels have been thoroughly documented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we doubt that we'll see the global warming alarmists cutting back on their luxurious lifestyles.
Exposing their hypocrisy won't stop them because while this is a political movement that wants to control our lifestyles through government taxes, it is also religious in nature. Though presented to the public as a Southern Baptist, Gore wrote a book entitled Earth in the Balance, in which he wrote sympathetically about the Gaia hypothesis of an earth spirit. One chapter is entitled, "Environmentalism of the Spirit." Gore believes the Gaia concept is able to "evoke a spiritual response in many of those who hear it." In this context, he adds that "...the simple fact of the living world and our place on it evokes awe, wonder, a sense of mystery—a spiritual response—when one reflects on its deeper meaning."
The Earth Spirit
Some of the leading global warming "scientists" involved with the U.N. also believe in this approach. Gore endorsed a book by Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist who cited the Gaia theory in his own book on global warming. Schneider asked, "...is there a Goddess of the Earth?" He is one of several scientists who contributed to the 2004 book, Scientists Debate Gaia. A description of the book declares, "Despite initial dismissal of the Gaian approach as New Age philosophy, it has today been incorporated into mainstream interdisciplinary scientific theory, as seen in its strong influence on the field of Earth System Science."
This "Gaian approach" demonstrates why the "science" behind the man-made global warming theory, if it exists, has to be considered extremely questionable. What is driving the acceptance of the theory is not science but a mystical or "New Age" view of the world. It is their religion.
LIBERAL TV PERSONALITY ATTACKS AIM
General Electric's slogan used to be that it "brings good things to life." But under GE chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt, that has changed. GE owns a low-rated cable network, MSNBC, which features a wise guy former sportscaster, Keith Olbermann, who has made a spectacle of himself by insulting people, acting like a clown, and consciously imitating famous journalist Edward R. Murrow.
Last October, taking on President Bush as an unprecedented threat for the umpteenth time, Olbermann mimicked one of Senator Joe McCarthy's critics by saying, "Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?" Olbermann was upset that Bush had given a speech identifying the enemy and its apologists as defenders of a form of fascism, and had mentioned an Osama bin Laden letter in which he talked of "a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government."
Olbermann was outraged, having convinced himself that Bush was impugning the patriotism of the news media. And who would entertain such a thought? It's just that the New York Times has done its best to undermine the U.S. Government's most effective counter-terrorism programs. What's more, an NBC military analyst, William Arkin, wrote a column for the Washington Post web site attacking U.S. soldiers in Iraq as mercenaries. He eventually apologized for the smear.
On February 6, Olbermann used his show to identify Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid as "The Worst Person in the World" for drawing attention to the racist comments of Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, who has been leading the opposition to the Bush Administration's troop surge in Iraq, and the media's failure to hold him up to the same standard they apply to Republicans.
Olbermann Attacks AIM
It is tempting to dismiss Keith Olbermann's labeling of various people as "The Worst Person in the World" as a harmless and infantile prank. But AIM discovered that some people watch his show because they think they are getting legitimate news and information on current events. Olbermann has authored a book, cut-and-pasted from his show, on this topic. Most of his high-profile targets are conservatives.
From the point of view of the far-left, this clownish routine might somehow serve a purpose if there was some truth behind the charge. But the attack on Kincaid was based on a deliberate deception.
Kincaid was attacked because he had co-authored a column with AIM writer Andy Selepak drawing attention to the media double-standard on Senator Joseph Biden's racist comments about Senator Barack Obama. Biden had said that "you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." The AIM column said that "If a Republican had condescendingly referred to a black person as 'clean,' 'bright' and 'articulate,' he or she would have been branded as a racist and banished from public life."
Olbermann claimed to have uncovered a double-standard on AIM's part, commenting that, "Same day as Biden's comments came out, President Bush said about Senator Obama, 'He's an attractive guy. He's articulate.' So Mr. Kinkaid [sic], you're saying the president should be branded as a racist and banished from public life? Yikes!"
Olbermann concluded, "Cliff Kinkaid [sic] of Accuracy in Media, it's a brand name, not a description. Today's Worst Person in the World."
The Facts
Here's the background to Olbermann's false claim: On Fox News, Bush was asked by Neil Cavuto, "How do you think the troops would feel about a President Obama?" His response was, "Oh, I don't know. He hasn't gotten elected yet. He hasn't even gotten the party's nomination. He's an attractive guy. He's articulate. I've been impressed with him when I've seen him in person, but he's got a long way to go to be president."
Anybody familiar with the facts knew that Bush had not referred to Obama being the "first" mainstream black candidate to be articulate, attractive and "clean." That is how Biden described him, and that is why Biden, not Bush, had to apologize. Bush had not made the comments in a condescending manner, drawing a contrast with other blacks.
Nevertheless, several people had fallen for Olbermann's misleading attack, thinking that AIM was somehow guilty of failing to hold Bush to the same standard that it had applied to Biden.
One blogger, insisting that Olbermann had made a profound observation, said that "Olbermann pointed out that George Bush made similar comments about Obama the same day as Biden and wondered if Kincaide [sic] meant Bush should be labeled a racist." Another told me in an email that Olbermann was "promoting true accuracy in the media when he showed that Bush said the same thing as Biden."
It turns out that Olbermann was not the first to raise this phony comparison. New York Times blogger Kate Phillips had done a story about the Bush comments, saying that Bush "obviously had not been told about the controversy surrounding Senator Joseph R Biden Jr.'s take on Mr. Obama…"
This was an attempt to falsely suggest that Bush's remarks about Obama were similar to those of Biden, and that Bush, therefore, should be subject to the same kind of criticism leveled at Biden.
Biden's comments were significant not only because he singled out Obama, comparing him favorably to other black candidates, but because his comments were not the first racist remarks he had had made. Last year he made a disparaging comment about Indian-Americans, saying, "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."
As AIM noted in the commentary that provoked Olbermann's ire and false attack, Biden's rhetoric suggests that he pays close attention to how members of minority groups look, smell or sound. However, it is also important to note that Biden did not really suffer politically for what he said. He apologized for the remarks but retained his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
By contrast, when then-Republican Senator and candidate George Allen called an Indian-American a "macaca" during a campaign rally, he was hounded by the media to the point where the controversy contributed to his eventual defeat. Republican Senator Trent Lott's joking comments that one-time segregationist Strom Thurmond would have been a good president were covered so extensively by the media that Lott was forced to step down from his post as Senate majority leader.
This was really the main point of our column—that Biden was NOT going to suffer the same fate as Allen or Lott because Biden was organizing opposition to the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq and his position had to be protected and maintained. For our media, destroying the Bush policy in Iraq takes precedence over making an issue of Biden's racism.
In attacking Kincaid for drawing attention to this double-standard, Olbermann was practicing damage control for one of the leading lights of the national Democratic Party.
What You Can Do
Please send the enclosed cards or cards and letters of your own choosing to GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt, NBC chief Jeff Zucker, and Senator James Inhofe.
CLIFF'S NOTES
by Cliff Kincaid
DEAR FELLOW MEDIA WATCHDOG: February 14, 2007
THE NEW YORK TIMES RAN A FRONT-PAGE STORY ON FEBRUARY 8 about Mitt Romney's Mormon religion being an issue as he runs for president. Mormons are Christians who have a view of the life and legacy of Jesus Christ and the nature of the church that is different from other Christians. Of course, Protestants and Catholics have different views on that as well. I will say this: Mormons are some of the most conservative, pro-family and pro-American people you will ever meet. In my mind, the issue of Mormonism is a distraction to the major issue, which is that one of the leading Democratic candidates for president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, has a background in the religion of Islam, some of whose adherents want to murder our families and destroy America. The Associated Press wire service ran a story saying that Obama spent "his childhood years in the Muslim faith" but this was changed in a later version to say only that "his childhood years" were spent "in a largely Muslim country." This was a clear attempt to play down the fact that Obama studied the Koran in school.
THE CBS 60 MINUTES SHOW, ON FEBRUARY 11, RAN A STORY NARRATED BY STEVE KROFT on Obama that could have been mistaken for a campaign commercial. It didn't even mention the controversy over his religious background. It said the "skeletons" in his closet consisted of admitting to having used marijuana and cocaine. A minute or so was spent on Obama trying to kick his smoking habit. Kroft acknowledged that Obama's campaign for president has been propelled by the media, including Oprah Winfrey, who has endorsed him. Kroft's 60 Minutes story was another chapter in that campaign. We expect more of this kind of coverage from 60 Minutes and the rest of the major media.
ROLLING STONE, THE ROCK AND ROLL MAGAZINE, HAS A STORY, "THE RADICAL ROOTS OF Barack Obama," in its issue dated February 22. The author, Ben Wallace-Wells, says that Obama's "radical feeling" about America comes through in the two books about himself, and that Obama believes that the exercise of America's wealth and power "has been grossly unjust." However, this story also glossed over the issue of his education in Indonesia, misreporting that the Washington Times had alleged that he had attended an Islamic madrassa there and that Obama had denied it. In fact, it was Insight magazine which reported that researchers connected to the Hillary Clinton campaign were looking into that matter. Insight is associated with the Washington Times but is editorially separate. The story of Obama's religious upbringing won't die. There is no religious test for public office in this country and there should not be. But the public has a right to know about Obama's exposure to a religious ideology that can be used to justify the conduct and behavior of those who want to bring unspeakable terrorist acts to the shores of America. This is the issue, not Romney's Mormonism.
WHY, YOU MIGHT ASK, AM I READING ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE? WHEN I WAS RECENTLY in Cleveland for a speaking engagement, I went through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. It features some old guitars, memorabilia, costumes and interactive kiosks where you can listen to some old rock and roll songs. A ticket cost $20 and got me a free year's subscription to the magazine. I bring this up also because I discovered that this place was subsidized to the tune of over $1 billion in earmarked federal funds. Now that the liberals are in control of Congress, President Bush said he wants to get a handle on federal spending. He could start by making sure the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum gets no more federal dollars. In its new budget, the Bush Administration has proposed some minor cuts to public TV and radio. But that's too much of a reduction to MoveOn.org, the radical liberal group that wants Congress to "save NPR and PBS once and for all" and "guarantee permanent funding" for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is part of the game plan of those behind the resurrection of the fairness doctrine. They want to destroy successful conservative radio and TV shows while pumping more federal money into liberal-dominated programs that don't attract much of an audience.
OBAMA'S WARM RECEPTION WAS DISRUPTED BY AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER JOHN Howard, who criticized him for proposing a pull-out of U.S. forces from Iraq by March of 2008. "I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilize and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory," Howard said. "If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama but also for the Democrats." Obama apologized for saying that the lives of U.S. troops who died trying to establish a free and democratic Iraq were "wasted." Make no mistake about it. The liberal-controlled Congress is moving toward cutting off funding for our troops, precipitating a complete U.S. withdrawal.
WHILE THE DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE IS DEFEATIST, WE ARE SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE BUSH Administration's approach. We have consistently made the point that this is a war that cannot be won on the military battlefield alone, especially when the U.S. fails to take the fight to the foreign states like Iran and Syria which are blatantly interfering in Iraq's internal affairs. The other problem is that we are losing the information war, at home and abroad. Robert R. Reilly, a former director of the Voice of America and senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Information during Operation Iraqi Freedom, has written a column in the Washington Post lamenting that we lack successful broadcasting strategies to spread American ideas of freedom in the Muslim world. He says U.S. radio broadcasting to the Arabic world features pop music, not news and information. He places blame on State Department official Karen Hughes, who is in charge of "public diplomacy." As we have noted several times, she is behind the disastrous policy of putting U.S. officials on Al-Jazeera. The Iraqi government has just recently renewed its criticism of the channel, saying it is spreading "death and destruction" in Iraq.
YOU WILL NOTICE THAT BOTH OF THE ARTICLES IN THIS AIM REPORT ARE CRITICAL OF General Electric and its broadcasting properties. An AIM supporter contacted me to say that he worked for GE in the 1960s when the motto was "Progress is our most important product." Now, he says, the company's motto seems to be, "Progress is our most important problem." It is tragic that a company like GE is now in bed with radical environmental groups pushing for international action on the issue of global warming when the "science" is questionable. Equally troubling, the GE-owned MSNBC-TV network employs a character assassin by the name of Keith Olbermann. Please send the enclosed postcards to Jeffrey Immelt, the GE chairman, and Jeff Zucker, president and CEO of NBC Universal. At the same time, please send Senator James Inhofe the other postcard. He is standing virtually alone in the Senate in refuting and confronting the global warming alarmists and their fears. His aide, Marc Morano, is doing an excellent job of getting out information about the other side of the story—the side the media are suppressing. We will work with him in the critical months ahead, as congressional liberals move toward adoption of a carbon tax. It's sad to see Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post endorsing such a proposal. She used to be one of the paper's better thinkers. Her acceptance of it shows how the major media are marching in lock-step. With your help, we will stand against the tide.
For Accuracy in Media,
Cliff Kincaid
Editor
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