RATCHETING UP THE RHETORIC IN SCOTLAND

If anywhere could do with warmer weather, Scotland could

Global warming is a bigger threat to the world than Hitler, a leading historian has warned. Dr Jim Hunter told a conference on renewable energy that it would finish the job of the Highland Clearances Dr Hunter, former chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said Scottish communities would be obliterated over the next two generations by climate change. He said: 'Global warming is a more insidious and longer-term danger than Hitlerism,but it's one that could be far more deadly

Dr Hunter added that windfarm objectors in the Highland and Western Isles were missing a very serious point. He said: 'In 1940, the notion that an airbase should be resisted because of the way it would irrevocably alter the nature and the character of the community that hosted it would have seemed patently absurd. 'The Nazi threat was deemed, correctly, to be a greater hazard to our way of life than the concrete and the tarmac being spread across the landscape.'

Dr Hunter, director of the UHI Centre for History in Dornoch, was speaking at a conference being hosted on the Knoydart peninsula.

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ENVIRONMENTALISTS CAN DO NO WRONG IN THE PRESS

Schellenberger and Nordhaus may overstate the case that environmentalism is dead, but the upcoming event in Los Angeles suggests it is gravely ill. One thing keeping it on life support is a compliant media. Most environmental groups, no matter how radical, get kid-gloves treatment from the press. When I reviewed news stories about the Ruckus Society for an article I wrote recently, I noticed that none mentioned its radical politics, and only one, in the Seattle Times, mentioned its involvement with the 1999 protests-cum-riots in Seattle. U.S. News and World Report recently noted that the Ruckus Society will hold training camps this summer to teach activists the art of disrupting U.S. Army recruiters. Given the way the press views the military, don't be too surprised if this new tactic wins Ruckus Society the moniker "mainstream."

It appears the media prefer to reserve the term "radical" for violent groups like the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). This week William Jensen Cottrell, a graduate student in physics at CalTech and self-proclaimed member of ELF, was convicted for his role in acts of arson and vandalism in August 2003 that destroyed 125 SUVs at various dealerships. The Associated Press story dubbed ELF "radical." The Los Angeles Times called ELF "militant." That was when the press bothered to mention Cottrell's association with ELF. No mention of ELF in the Reuters account or in this blurb from the San Jose Mercury News. Perhaps it is too impolitic to mention violence by environmental extremists just before Earth Day.

Of course, what can you expect from the San Jose Mercury News? The tone for its coverage of environmental issues was set by its now-departed editor David Yarnold, who became executive vice president of Environmental Defense. Yarnold claimed he was joining "one of the nation's most accomplished and respected environmental advocacy non-profits." That it is also a very liberal organization, has vehemently opposed many of the Bush Administration's environmental policies, and has extensive ties to Teresa Heinz-Kerry apparently mattered not a whit. Indeed, one can infer from the lack of media coverage over Yarnold's career change that the mainstream media considers an editor of a large daily newspaper going to work for a liberal advocacy organization no different from a second baseman being traded from the Giants to the Yankees.

Finally, while the Associated Press may have gotten the ELF connection right, its bias was on full display in a story about an Energy Information Administration (EIA) study purporting to show that mandatory limits on greenhouse gases "would not significantly affect average economic growth rates across the country through 2025." The article can't help but note that the EIA study "runs counter to President Bush's repeated pronouncements that limits on carbon dioxide and other gases that warm the atmosphere like a greenhouse would seriously harm the U.S. economy." But while observing that Bush rejected the Kyoto treaty, it ignores the Senate's 95-0 vote against Kyoto because the agreement's provisions let developing countries off the hook. And what about the critics of the EIA study? Well, the AP story doesn't mention any. You'll have to read Joel Schwarz's piece in Tech Central Station for that.

"Environmentalism" may now be little more than yet another than a special interest, but environmental groups have little to fear. Sympathetic press coverage can prop up a movement long after its moment has passed. And few causes currently receive better media treatment than environmentalism.

More here

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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, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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