NYTimes' Media Reporter Brian Stelter Takes Up Lefty Climate Cause
New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter put on his climatologist coat in his Saturday Business Section story on a controversy ginned up by left-wing climate change activists, who are complaining a new Discovery Channel documentary isn't alarmist enough: "No Place for Heated Opinions – Discovery's 'Frozen Planet' Is Conspicuously Silent on Causes of Climate Change." Stelter insisted that "The vast majority of scientists agree that human activities are influencing changes to the climate...and believe that the situation requires serious attention."
“Frozen Planet,” the seven-hour series that has attracted millions of viewers to the Discovery Channel in recent weeks, shows Earth in extremis. On this planet, the poles are violently cold, yet are also atypically vulnerable to the warming trends that are endangering polar bear populations and causing huge chunks of ice to break off Greenland and Antarctica.
All of it -- the struggling polar bears, the collapsing ice shelves -- is shown in stunning high definition. It is accompanied by the voice of Alec Baldwin, who narrates the series and says categorically, “The ends of the earth are changing.”
What the series never assesses, however, is why.
The vast majority of scientists agree that human activities are influencing changes to the climate -- especially at the poles -- and believe that the situation requires serious attention. That scientific consensus is absent from “Frozen Planet,” for reasons that shed light on the dilemma of commercial television, where the pursuit of ratings can sometimes clash with the quest for environmental and scientific education, particularly in issues, like global warming, that involve vociferous debate.
....
“Many organizations, and it sounds like Discovery is one of them, appear to be more afraid of being criticized by climate change ‘dismissives’ than they are willing to provide information about climate change to the large majority of Americans who want to know more about it,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
The people who are dismissive of human effect on climate change make up about 10 percent of the American population, according to Dr. Leiserowitz’s research, but they sometimes drown out the broader conversation about the subject, making themselves seem more numerous than they are.
....
One of the seven episodes, “On Thin Ice,” was devoted to climate change. It placed the narrator of the British version of the series, David Attenborough, in front of the camera to show how warming trends are affecting humans and animals in the Arctic. Shown standing at the North Pole, Mr. Attenborough told viewers: “The days of the Arctic Ocean being covered by a continuous sheet of ice seem to be past. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing, of course, depends on your point of view.”
Mr. Attenborough then noted the new opportunities for energy exploitation and commercial shipping. But he did not note that the vast majority of scientists believe that human activities are contributing to the warming trends evident there.
Questionable "climate change" source Bill McKibben earned yet another shout from the Times:
Others said that the series was a lost opportunity for climate change education.
“It’s kind of like doing a powerful documentary about lung cancer and leaving out the part about the cigarettes,” said Bill McKibben, a scholar and climate change activist. “There’s no scientific mystery here: the poles are changing because we’re burning so much carbon.”
McKibben, who wrote a book advocating parents have only one child, is notorious for seeing any odd weather development as a sign of impending doom.
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Comments
A "media reporter" writing in the business section
Submitted by HockeyKid on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 8:04am.
asserts his expertise on AGW?
That's a stretch, even for the NYSlimes.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
They doth protest too much.
Submitted by c5then on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 8:20am.
Scinece actually requires and embraces dissent and disagreement. That's how various theories are tested and we eventually arrive at what we think is a good model for describing the natural world known as reality.
Anyone who says that dissent is unacceptable is NOT a scientist and is coming at the issue from a political or ideological standpoint. Case in point is AGW. We know from historical records that the climate of the earth is always changing and never static. so what makes this change completely different than all the others.
Answer: Their ability to get $$$$ from one viewpoint and make people behave the way they want.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
You can't fix stupid
Submitted by John21 on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 8:22am.
You can't fix stupid, you would assume that a (supposed) professional news organization (gag) would at least assign a semi intelligent person with some amount of experience in the subject matter.
The New York Times has proven that it is not (and probably never was) a professional news organization. A 10 year old mentally challaged child would know much more about this subject than Mr. Stelter. Someone needs to teach him just because you can read the official talking points of the organization it requires at least basic knowledge to be able to lie well. Reading the same old outdated and already reputed theories and suppositions do not prove your case it merely proves you as uninformed and stupid.
"It's not that liberals are stupid, it's just that they know so much that isn't true." Ronald Reagan
Bill McKibben isn't even a scientist, nor is Brian Stetler.
Submitted by drsamherman on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 9:06am.
Funny how journalists who are untrained in anything but in self-promotion and mendacity suddenly become judges of what scientists believe. Funny how we have yet another prostitution of science to serve a purely political agenda. Funny how these journalists and "scholars" (sorry Bill--only EARNED have deep personal and professional interests in keeping AGW theory alive for their own selfish purposes. Funny how that never gets reported.
McKibben
Submitted by HockeyKid on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 9:15am.
frequently advocates a "post-carbon society". I wonder if he recognizes that NONE of his beloved green energy sources would work without refined petroleum products. Windmills need grease and oil, same with hydroelectric (which he despises anyway on account of the snail darter and other species), solar panels need carbon-based refined compounds, etc.
Ask one of these yo-yos what the world would look like if all the petroleum-based products disappeared in an instant. They think it would be utopia; in reality it would be the end of civilization.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
Back to
Submitted by ahusser on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 10:35am.
Hunting whales.
"Somehow, I told you so, just doesn't quite say it." Will Smith in 'I, Robot.'
ahusser, 30 years ago I met an old clock maker.RIP
Submitted by upcountrywater on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 12:27pm.
He had a glass vial (vile!) filled with whale oil... He used it to lubricate his clock works. What was impressive about the whale oil is that, a drop of it would stay in place on the bearing and not spread out on the surface of the clock frame, to collect dust...
He had that bottle for 50 years.
You Didn't Build That.
these people have an unending hard-*n for CO2
Submitted by merly1 on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 9:16am.
And really, it is bizarre.
I can buy the urban heat island issues that even the Obama administration decried in the early days
of their administration. Our metro area is consistently 2-3 degrees warmer than our suburban area 20 miles to the north.
I have no doubt that thousands upon thousands of square miles of black farm fields absorbing the strong sun of April and May will influence surface temps in middle America as southerly winds blow over these fields.
Yet, these really miniscule atmospheric increases in CO2 (about 1 part per 10000) is allegedly fueling a global
calamity..........I worry more about the data collection, especially at heat islands like airports, metro stations, etc.
Reading how these scientists "account" for the heat island effect seems like a statistical "pretzel" Olympics.
AGW is a Cult
Submitted by ahusser on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 10:46am.
I have been looking for an opportunity to share this quote taken from a recent airing of "Little Ice Age, Big Chill" (2007?) on the History Channel. Now this is a true believer.
In response to a query on why the Little Ice Age ended abruptly over a 10 year period around 1850, Dr. Alan Robock PHD Professor of Climatology at Rutgers University replied:
"The end of the Little Ice Age was caused by fewer volcanic eruptions during that period but also industrialization and by anthropogenic pollution caused by green house gases."
Now this is 1850 we are talking about unless all that horse manure was polluting the atmosphere I doubt humans caused this. 1850 of course is the dawn of the industrial age and we were still using whale oil for light and wood and some coal for heat with the world population maybe just over a billion with only two or three industrialized countries (if that many). This gentleman just slipped this in pretty as you please without a bye your leave or reason for his assertion. The next PHD stated the warming was caused like it always is cause by the out put of the sun and the ocean conveyor.
"Somehow, I told you so, just doesn't quite say it." Will Smith in 'I, Robot.'
Here's a thought, and he's no slouch!
Submitted by HelenS on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 11:21am.
"There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in "cargo cult science." It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
Richard Feynman "Cargo Cult Science", adapted from a commencement address given at Caltech (1974)
Me - "The libs/dems of today are the Quislings of former years - the cowards who would vote a fraud into office in exchange for handouts from the devil."
Burning carbon, now that's a feat.
Submitted by upcountrywater on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 12:48pm.
The joke on you pal, those carbon credits have burnt up your investments in sustainability.
The loss of the insider's sure bet, is why all the warmer zealots are whining.
Keep on shuffling those thermometers, to AC exhaust vents, and placing others over fresh black-top.
Yes it's true the sea levels are dropping....take a bow, bowboy...
Another Iceage is here, storing more ice each year for the rest of our very short little lives.
You Didn't Build That.
It's coming
Submitted by deadeyedan on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 1:00pm.
It's the end - not of the earth but of its detractors:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/15621/Alert-Gaia-scientist-James-Lovelock-...
Amazing how the tree huggers really can't stand planet earth, for having the audacity to be virtually invulnerable to industrious humans.
Mr. Lovelock may be a wee bit tipsy for his notions, but on the AGW issue he (as have others not quite as high profile) has seen the light after long study. Hopefully more will follow his lead.
GLOBAL WARMING - authoritarian, rather than authoritative, science
deadeyedan, A clip from your link
Submitted by upcountrywater on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 2:36pm.
How fitting that a major organ of the man-made climate fear promotion, MSNBC, would deliver one of the final and most dramatic death knells to the climate movement. One of the founders of climate alarm bails out with help from the media that helped hype and propel the movement.
Escape, as the dials start to point to an iceage.
You Didn't Build That.