While most of the country was watching the Green Bay Packers play the New York Giants, CBS aired an hour-long, severely one-sided special about the threat of global warming.
The special was hosted by CBS's Scott Pelley. In January 2007, Pelley was asked why he refused to include global warming skeptics in his reporting. He responded, "If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?"
The January 20 CBS special attacked the Bush White House for not being willing to sign the Kyoto Protocol after he was elected - furthering the common misconception that Bush has been alone in his opposition to it, as the Senate actually voted 95 to 0 to reject Kyoto earlier.
Pelley took a very conspiratorial tone.
"Dozens of federal agencies report science, and much of it is edited at the White House before it's sent to Congress and the public," Pelley said. "It appears that climate science is edited with a heavy hand. These drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal climate change science program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening."
The White House declined comment, and Pelley didn't include anyone else to answer allegations or scientific claims.
Pelley's hour-long special didn't offer a single scientist who was skeptical of these catastrophic global warming claims. However, a report released by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee December 20 has revealed more than 400 prominent scientists questioning the hype.
The special also warned of cataclysmic consequences if global warming wasn't addressed.
"Tremendous redistribution in where one would be able to have agriculture, tremendous changes in storm patterns. You could very well see sea level rises on the order of several feet and perhaps even several tens of feet," Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, said. "If sea level were to rise it would be tremendous changes, immense migrations."
