Last week the magazine Newsweek published a cover story on global warming suggesting global warming “deniers” were well funded, influential and unscrupulous. This week the magazine has essentially debunked its own story.
Contributing Editor Robert J. 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…
“Against these real-world pressures, NEWSWEEK’s “denial machine” is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn’t have lent it respectability…
“The mainstream media have generally been unsympathetic [to the skeptics] … The first NEWSWEEK cover story in 1988 warned the greenhouse effect. danger: more hot summers ahead. A Time cover in 2006 was more alarmist: be worried, be very worried. Nor does public opinion seem much swayed. Although polls can be found to illustrate almost anything, the longest-running survey questions show a remarkable consistency. In 1989, Gallup found 63 percent of Americans worried “a great deal” or a “fair amount” about global warming; in 2007, 65 percent did.
“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.”
Read the complete column by Samuelson here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226462/site/newsweek/page/0/
Read Marc Morano’s comments here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=58659aa0-802a-23ad-49d7-3d18075e69c3&Issue_id
Many thanks to Marc Morano for alerting me to the article by Robert J. Samuelson entitled ‘Greenhouse Simplicities’.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
If the ‘science’ underpinning climate alarmism was robust, then much less time would be spent trying to smear the so-called ‘sceptics’ or ‘deniers.’
Interesting to see the libertarian philosophy has gone out the window and this place is now a fully fledged news outlet for the CEI and Inhofe.
When will we get Morano’s next polemic.
Hi Luke,
Marc sends me something most weeks – so expect a post about each week.
In the short time I have known Marc I see a tremenous knowledge and dedication to the issues he believes in.
I am more than happy to post more from the other perspective, but quality information is not being send to me, or it has already been reported extensively in the mainstream media. This blog is a bit of a niche for important information that is not likely to be widely reported in the mainstream media.
PS In the above post I am quoting a Newsweek editor, Robert Samuelson, not Marc. Do you also disagree with Robert Samuelson?
Jen – one cannot leave one’s post long enough to write something when we have mongol hordes coming over the parapets in such numbers. 🙂
I thought Newsweek was taking sides against itself, but it just appears to be prepared to publish a columnist who takes sides against it. Samuelson makes some good points. I hadn’t heard of the IEA study into what alternative energy sources were capable of doing at the moment, but it confirms the reason why governments put their big savings targets as far out into the future as they can – the alternatives don’t exist at the moment to do too much. (And there’s got to be a limit to how much we can avoid by planting trees when you’ve only got one planet to plant them on!)
Jen, I read your Samuelson link quickly and I concluded that his main thrust was there is much concern and confusion about the solution. How clever then of you to try to transpose that concern to concern on whether there is a problem. Tell me pls if I have got you both wrong because the only way I can rationalise (to myself) time on your parade is being quick and hopefully not too dirty.
Bazza,
My post was essentially all quotes from the article – no/very limited commentary. I didn’t think I was being “clever” at all.
You are perhaps boxing at shadows.
To All,
Mr. Samuelson does make some good points, but he didn’t go far enough. He did not point out what Jennifer reported concerning the total disregard of the vast difference in funds provided to the pro AGW crowd vs funding provided to those skeptical of AGW. Also, the hype concerning the “Global Cooling” scare in the ’70s that Newsweek participated in was also not mentioned. Further comment could have been make about a British scientist on the IPCC panel who said in so many words that exaggeration of scientific results in favor of a political viewpoint is the moral duty of a scientist (I guess he thinks Orwell’s “1984” is a how to manual rather than a warning). I am happy that Mr. Samuelson is taking his colleagues to task on a very biased and shoddy news story, but sadly he hasn’t gone far enough. The average person will still not realize that he/she is being deliberately deceived by the press on this issue.
Thanks for the article. I picked it up on Google when I read a post referring to “bad” article in question.
The drew my attention because it alleged that the global warming “deniers” had vast quantities of monies from which to draw from to combat the righteous crusade against global warming. However, I had read either in the Economist or the New York Times (in the last 2 weeks) that the global warming industry was a vast $20 Billion industry (the exact number I am unsure of but it was large) which is many times larger than that of the global warming “deniers” industry.
Its fascinating how I never come across an article that blasts the commercialism and cultist sense this crusade, jihad (whatever) has picked up.
If anyone else knows what I am talking about please let me know some more facts.