JOURNALISTIC IGNORANCE

I have borrowed this entire post from Commonsense & Wonder. See the original for links

The NYT Book Review is in overdrive with global warming hype this weekend.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes editorials for The Times, says, "Several significant new books on the environment are ... about to appear ... and they could settle the debate" about global warming "right now -- if people take the trouble to read them. They range from anecdotal, first-person accounts of vanishing Peruvian glaciers and Pacific islands slipping beneath a rising ocean, like Mark Lynas's 'High Tide' ... to profoundly sobering studies, like James Gustave Speth's 'Red Sky at Morning.'"

According to the authors of the updated "Limits to Growth," writes Klinkenborg, "the ecological burden of humanity had already outstripped the carrying capacity of the earth two decades ago -- as the first edition of this book, originally published in 1972, warned it would." "What is news is the nature of the evidence. There are signs that global warming and environmental degradation are accelerating much more quickly than anyone expected even 10 years ago."

Ross Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor, "argues that on matters of scientific fact, journalists employ an essentially unfair idea of 'balance' -- treating global warming as though it were still a matter of open conjecture."

"One With Nineveh" reports that "we are well past the threshold of inevitable change and on the cusp of climate destabilization," says Klinkenborg.

Firstly, I've never read anything in the NYT or any other mainstream press which refers to global warming as anything other than accepted, written in stone fact, contrary to Mr. Gelbspan's assertions. The big problem is that there is a complete lack of balance on the issue. Evidence against global warming as a phenomena or as a natural as opposed to human caused phenomena or if it exists whether or not it will be a disaster or a boon is almost entirely lacking in the press. And as for the authors of the updated "Limits to Growth" and the Ehrlichs, how frequently and consistently must people be wrong before they are no longer paid any attention to. I guess if you preach the leftist gospel of imminent doom which requires massive government interference to halt, then 30 years of bad opinions aren't enough. For some balance and a few alternate viewpoints you can look here, here, here, here, here, here, here or here.

Now, this is not to claim that global warming doesn't exist or even that it may not be a problem. I am not a climate scientist, but I was trained as a physicist and know enough about science and its processes to know that when someone, particularly a reporter like Mr. Gelbspan who was most likely a journalism major and never took a science course in his life, claims that something as vastly complicated and with so many unknown (and unknowable) variables as climate science is not subject to debate, that he is full of shit and has not a clue of what he is talking about. And as for Ehrlich who received his degree studying the structure and genetics of butterfly populations has proven time and again that he is full of shit. Even if warming is a real secular trend and not just a transitory effect or merely and reversion from a unusually cool period there is no evidence that a slightly warmer earth would not generate large benefits in increased food production, larger species diversity, etc... as it has in past warmer periods (can you say Renaissnance?). So before we engage in massive, growth and technology limiting restrictions we better be damn more sure than NYT and other reporters think we are about the actual parameters of the problem. Because one thing I do know for sure is that lower growth rates and less technology will mean more future deaths, shorter lives, more health problems and worse living conditions for many if not most of the people on the planet.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

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