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Aug

13

Newsweek Calls Itself Out Over Global Warming Issue

Posted By: 'Okie' | 4:30 pm — 8/13/2007 | 1 Comment See comments below:

[H/t: Big Lizards] I’ve been a bit busy today and was surprised, but stoked, when I saw this item in one of Dafydd’s posts. It seems that Newsweek’s Robert J. Samuelson was not any more enthralled than yours truly with last week’s cover story on Global Warming. In “Greenhouse Simplicities” Samuelson writes:

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week’s NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It’s an object lesson of how viewing the world as “good guys vs. bad guys” can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

If you missed NEWSWEEK’s story, here’s the gist. A “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.” This “denial machine” has obstructed action against global warming and is still “running at full throttle.” The story’s thrust: discredit the “denial machine,” and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.
{…}
But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don’t have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale—as NEWSWEEK did—in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society. [Emph. added]

Wonder what Samuelson will write after he discovers the real surprise that broke last week? That the data supplied by NASA’s crunching of the NOAA readings was, shall we say a bit faulty, and now after being re-evaluated with corrected software, shows that the majority of the warmest years on record were in the 1930s, and that many of the years after WWII have dropped out of the top 100. But, the Warmies won’t care — they work harder to stifle dissent than to discover the truth. Since the MSM as a group has virtually ignored this last revelation, only those that watch Fox News or read blogs realize there had been a problem with the data that incited the most panic among the alarmists.

Been a bad month for anthropogenic global warming believers — they just don’t know it yet!

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Global Warming B.S., Media Doin' It Right. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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  • Glenn Speck

    Gosh, someone at Newsweek does have a few brain cells left. The fact of the matter is, the same story could have been written critical of those on the other side of the issue, citing even larger sources of funding from governments etc. “the believer machine is running full tilt”. Dissent is important to a free society, and the questioning of scientific research and theories is imperative to scientific accomplishment and understanding. This is why I distrust those claiming a scientific consensus of climate change opinion, which there is not, and their censureship of colleagues who dare to differ with the mainstream conclusions on climate change. As an independent scientist, thankfully, I have no such peer pressure.