If you haven’t noticed the news media have a definite agenda when it comes to climate change. All media accounts assume on something akin to religious faith that man is responsible for global warming; they ignore or undermine critics, and promote government intervention to save the planet from this threat. Ironically, not many years ago, in the 1970’s, journalists reacted in the same manner regarding global cooling.
Here are just a few examples of the propaganda spewed by inexpert but diehard voices in the public media of which the founder of the “big lie”, Joseph Goebbels, would be proud, courtesy of Business and Media Institute (grammatical errors and all):
"There is an even greater threat that scientists can only speculate about. As global temperatures rise, they may cause the massive West Antarctic ice sheet to slip more rapidly. Then we'll be facing a sea-level rise not of one to three feet in a century, but of 10 or 20 feet in a much shorter time. The Supreme Court would be flooded. You could tie your boat to the Washington Monument. Storm surges would make the Capitol unusable. For Today, Paul Ehrlich in Washington, DC, on the future shoreline of Chesapeake Bay." -- Paul Ehrlich acting as a news correspondent for NBC in May 1989
“Do people here know that very likely in the next – well several decades – all of this is going to be underwater?” -- CBS anchor Harry Smith, February 1, 2007
“Farmers say [truffle] production is down by 50-75% this winter season and they blame global warming, warning that if thermometers keep rising — as many scientists predict they could — France's black truffle will one day be just a memory.” -- Jenny Barchfield, Associated Press, Feb. 25, 2008
“Climate change has already refashioned the geography of the Arctic, melting glaciers that past adventurers – not to mention the Inuit who make their home in the far north – once journeyed on securely.” -- Bryan Walsh, Time.com Feb. 22, 2008
“What’s your best advice to me and families like me who really want to be responsible and pay even more, but do the right thing because we know this is an issue?” -- Ann Curry, NBC “Today” Jan. 31, 2008
“For a base price of about $12,000, you get a lot of pricey stuff – four airbags, electronic stability control and a reinforced passenger safety cage. What you don’t get is amazing gas mileage. According to the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], the Smart manages just 36 miles per gallon in mixed driving.” -- Lester Holt, NBC “Nightly News” Jan. 27, 2008
“I’m on the prowl for victims, converts in our growing movement.” -- Matt Lauer, NBC “Today” Jan. 25, 2008
“Like the warming scientists are seeing in Greenland and the North Pole, the prime suspect behind the melting at the South Pole is global warming. Manmade carbon dioxide and other gases trapping heat that may well be warming the waters in the coldest police on earth.” -- Anne Thompson, NBC “Nightly News” Jan. 14, 2008
"Al Gore, sexy man. The thinking girl's thoroughbred." -- Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, The Washington Post, Dec. 12, 2007
“The human race is doomed.” -- Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone Nov. 1, 2007
“Even global warming may play a role [in allergies]. New plants are moving into areas they weren't before, and this fall has been so warm. So, ragweeds and grasses are in the air and they interact. The allergies you inhale may in fact have an impact on the foods you eat. So, it becomes very intertwined.” -- Nancy Snyderman, NBC “Today” Oct. 25, 2007
"Climatologists say, while we can't blame on fire on climate change, we can say that these factors are combining in that area [Southern California] to set up what could be a century of fires just like what we're seeing now." -- Tom Foreman, CNN “Anderson Cooper 360” Oct. 23, 2007
“In Resolute [in Nunavut territory], the native Inuit are not so sanguine about the benefits of balmy weather. One man invited [James] Graff [London-based senior editor of Time] to watch a videotape of his 16-year-old daughter killing her first polar bear, a rite of passage that is under threat as the melting ice reduces the bear population. For the Inuit, says Graff, ‘the idea that a warmer Arctic would be an easy place to live would occur only to someone from the South.’” -- Richard Stengel, Time magazine Oct. 1, 2007
“Here’s to some global cooling so we get a chance to wear winter’s hot new coats.” -- Marie Claire, October 2007 issue
“Public awareness [about global warming] lagged behind, partly because of a disinformation campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry.” -- Bill Blakemore, ABC “World News with Charles Gibson” Sept. 23, 2007
“There’s great concern about the impact of the melting ice on the wildlife in that area. For example, the loss of Arctic ice could mean the loss of the homeland for polar bears.” -- Sam Champion, ABC “Good Morning America” Sept. 18, 2007
“Climate change could have global security implications on a par with nuclear war unless urgent action is taken, a report said on Wednesday.” -- Jeremy Lovell, Reuters Sept. 12, 2007
“[How should journalists report on climate change?] It depends …When you cover the history of the space program, you don't quote the percentage of Americans who think the moon landings took place on a stage in Arizona.” -- Sharon Begley, Newsweek Aug. 13, 2007
“How about if newspapers abandon their old way of doing things when it comes to the issue of global warming, and turn their influence to good? It just might be that through this issue alone, newspapers revive themselves to some extent. Editors are shirking their responsibility to improve our world, in my view, so let's change that.” -- Steve Outing, column on Editor & Publisher web site
“[G]lobal warming may hasten the destruction of some of the world’s most treasured buildings and heritage sites.” -- Mark Phillips, CBS “Evening News” June 19, 2007
“The business case for going green is increasingly clear, even without Al Gore droning on and on and on about it: where green goes, so does the bottom line.” -- Time magazine, June 7, 2007
“Scientists say the world’s temperature will rise about two degrees in the next 50 years no matter what we do, but if we act now it might level off after that.” -- Bill Blakemore, ABC “World News Sunday” April 1, 2007
"It's surreal to have pre-eminent scientists tell us very seriously that civilization as we know it is over ... The scale is unprecedented. It touches every aspect of life." -- ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore in the Summit Daily News, March 13, 2007 Mar, 14, 2007
“Global warming is not coming; it is here.” -- Alexander Wolff, Sports Illustrated March 8, 2007
“Consider the case closed on global warming.” -- Bryan Walsh, Time magazine Feb. 19, 2007
"Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." -- Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe Feb. 9, 2007 “The top climate experts from all around the world, speaking with one voice, issued a blunt and bleak assessment today on global warning. There was no ambiguity in their words.” -- Charles Gibson, ABC “World News” Feb. 2, 2007
“Do people here know that very likely in the next – well – several decades all of this is going to be under water?” -- Harry Smith, CBS “Early Show” Feb. 1, 2007
“There was a time when we would say ‘global warming’ on television and would be inundated with, like, conservative think tanks and conservative … conservative oil-industry-tied groups whose only job was to try to change the wording ’global warming’ to ‘climate change’ or to get it into something that didn’t suggest that Americans were doing it or that consumers were doing it and that energy companies had any kind of say in it … so we’ve really come a long way on this debate, haven’t we?” -- Christine Romans, CNN “In the Money” Jan. 27, 2007
"Never has good weather felt so bad. Never have flowers inspired so much fear. Never has the warm caress of a sunbeam seemed so ominous. The weather is sublime, it's glorious, it's the end of the world." -- The Washington Post, Jan. 7, 2007
“So I’m running in the park Saturday in shorts thinking this is great but are we all gonna die?” -- Meredith Vieira, NBC “Today” Jan. 7, 2007
"Balmy typically means good things: soothing, mild, pleasant. Yet the word has taken on a more negative connotation lately. People worried that the cause of such a mild December was global warming, and yesterday the joys of wearing short sleeves were tempered with the anxiety of environmental disaster." -- The New York Times, Dec. 27, 2006
"Every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned." -- George Monbiot, The Guardian (UK) Dec. 5, 2006
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