Pollution

President Barack Obama burned roughly 9,000 of jet fuel yesterday, Earth Day, and that only to deliver one speech in Iowa, reports CBS News's Mark Knoller in an April 22 Political Hotsheet blog post.

As if that weren't amusing enough, Knoller notes that the Air Force and the White House wouldn't disclose to Knoller how much fuel the president's plane burns on an average flight, so he had to consult with the manufacturer of the 747, Boeing:

In flying to and from Iowa today, President Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One.

The press office at Andrews AFB wouldn’t give me the fuel consumption numbers for the 747 that serves as Air Force One without the approval of the White House Press Office, which as I write this has yet to be given.

But Boeing says its 747 burns about 5 gallons of fuel per mile. It’s 895 miles from Washington to Des Moines, so a round trip brings the fuel consumption for the fixed-wing portion of the President’s trip to 8,950 gallons. 

Oh for the good old days when West Virginia was full of mountaineers who lived off the land. You know, before those evil coal companies came and enslaved the state to its grimey grasp.

That's the view of Julia Bonds, an environmental activist from the Mountain State whom Newsweek's Daniel Stone featured in an April 21 Web-exclusive interview.

Not once in his story did Stone press Bonds on specifics about how she expected to replace jobs lost due to the anti-mining regulations that she pines for, nor did he raise an eyebrow to Bonds practically suggesting that West Virginians would be better living in shotgun shacks without electricity (emphasis mine):

Don’t you dare go buy that $300 department store satin dress for your senior prom; a Captain Planet costume is more appropriate. Some high school students are entering an online video contest called Project Green Prom in which they promise to create a “zero waste event” for their high school prom.

For the next 25 days, high school students have the opportunity to send in three minute videos describing their ideas to create a more environmentally-friendly prom to the Web site teensturninggreen.com. The contestants can win eco-prom dresses from top designers, “sustainable” beauty products, and the grand prize winner gets a trip to New York City for a full “Green Prom Makeover.”

But the media is not reporting this push to get high school students to incorporate political pressure into what is already a night full of pressure to get the right date, get the right dress, etc. The only places this contest appears are on left-wing, “green” sites like greendaily.com, www.treehugger.com, and mothernaturenetwork.com.

Uniquely among Monday’s broadcast evening newscasts, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams read a short item citing a "disheartening" report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicting that the world is in danger of suffering effects of global warming that will take 1,000 years to reverse unless "immediate action is taken to cut greenhouse gases." Williams: "The folks at NOAA ... say that if carbon dioxide continues to build up unchecked in our atmosphere, then the effects of global warming could be irreversible for more than a thousand years. That could mean severe drought in some parts of the world. Researchers conclude things are not hopeless as long as immediate action is taken to cut greenhouse gases."

Below is a complete transcript of the item from the Monday, January 26, NBC Nightly News, as read by Williams:

More proof that America has been delivered from the eight years of hell that were the Bush administration: Environmentalists are happy again. That’s according to CBS Evening News on Jan. 26.

Reporting on the orders President Obama issued yesterday to overturn Bush Administration decisions regarding automotive emissions, Chief White House Correspondent Chip Reid said, “On Capitol Hill critics said the action could set the struggling American automobile industry back even further, but the change in course delighted the president’s audience, long suffering environmental activists.”

Had it been a Republican president undoing the draconian environmental policies of a Democrat president, would Reid have talked of “long suffering manufacturers?” “Hard pressed entrepreneurs?” “Much put-upon businesses?”

Probably not…

For decades, a consistent media theme has been that liberals are far more concerned about the environment than conservatives.

If such is the case, why did the folks attending Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday treat our nation's capital like a toilet?

Consider the picture to your right as well as the embedded video below while you formulate an answer: 

"The thing I noticed... the smell change.  You can smell the fuel. There's a very large carbon footprint out here. Were we taxing this, it would be expensive," Fox New Channel anchor Shepard Smith quipped to colleague Neil Cavuto, in live coverage from Washington shortly before 4 p.m. on Inauguration Day.

Smith and Cavuto were watching the slow-moving presidential limousine make its way down Pennsylvania Avenue to the presidential parade reviewing stand.

There's no pleasing the greeniacs, I suppose. Eco-evangelism knows no holiday as environmentalists take aim at the buses ferrying caravans of Obama fans to the swearing-in.

Perhaps showing that the only criticism of Obama the print media finds worthy of printing is mild critiques from the left, today's "Inauguration Watch" digest in the Washington Post has the story in a 5-paragraph squib printed on page B4:

Environmental advocates are concerned about the impact on air quality caused by the thousands of buses that are descending on Washington.

...

Clean Air Watch Director Frank O'Donnell said the "virtual armada of diesel buses" rolling into town might actually have a positive impact. Black clouds of soot might be exactly what it will take to raise awareness for policy change, he said.

2008 was the safest year ever to be an American miner. The combined number of fatalities from all forms of mining was the lowest ever.

2007 (latest information available) also shows the lowest "all-injury" rate for miners on record by far.

Yet Ken Ward Jr.'s early-January contribution at the Charleston (WV) Gazette to the spate of final-month Bush-bashing pretended that this data doesn't exist. Instead he gave the impression of an opposite situation. Media outlets have been trying and failing to make this case since the Sago Mine Disaster of January 2006 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), even while the safety stats have generally showed nearly continuous improvement.

You'll see that Ward also uses a headline that will leave those who recall Barack Obama's campaign promise to bankrupt new coal-powered plants shaking their heads in disbelief (bolds after headlines are mine):

The good folks at Media Matters for America are displeased with the New York Times having the nerve to point out the hypocrisy inherent in environmentalists destroying the environment.

For those that don't actually care about such things, the Sundance Film Festival began last Thursday, and as the video embedded right demonstrates, the organizers are supposedly going to great lengths to make this year greener than ever.

Unfortunately, such efforts seem to be failing according to an article published in the Times Arts section Saturday.

This didn't sit well with MMA's Eric Boehlert who in a posting at the group's County Fair blog Sunday seemed oblivious to his own hypocrisy:

Climate realists around the world have contended for years that the real goal of alarmists such as Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his followers is to use the fear of man-made global warming to redistribute wealth.

On Monday, one of Gore's leading scientific resources, Goddard Institute for Space Studies chief James Hansen, sent a letter to Barack and Michelle Obama specifically urging the president-elect to enact a tax on carbon emissions that would take money from higher-income Americans and distribute the proceeds to the less fortunate.

The eco-socialism cat was let out of the bag on page five of a PDF Hansen published at Columbia University's website on December 29 (emphasis added, h/t Britain's Guardian, file photo):

Here we go again - another media hit on the dangers of fish consumption due to the possible threat that mercury may have on pregnant women.

A segment on the Dec. 30 "NBC Nightly News" warned viewers to exercise caution when consuming fish because of the potential side effects it may have on newborn children.

"There's no question that fish is healthy," NBC chief science correspondent Robert Bazell said. "But toxic mercury, mostly from coal-fired power plants makes it way into the ocean, where it can end up in the meat of certain fish."

Bazell's report even singled out certain fish that were deemed unsafe and those that were considered safe for viewers.

"So the key is knowing which fish is safest," Bazell said. "Those with high levels of mercury include swordfish, king mackerel and tile fish. Seafood with low levels of mercury include salmon, cod, shrimp, trout and most small fish."

President-elect Barack Obama might have broken Environmental Protection Agency regulations when he tossed the cremated remains of his grandmother into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Nuuanu, Hawaii, earlier this week.

As the website of Hawaiian NBC-TV affiliate KHNL reported Tuesday (video available here):

Secret Service security keeps a close watch as Obama, oldest daughter Malia and sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, among others, make their way down to the rocky shoreline. Together, they spread the ashes of Madelyn Dunham. It's the same spot Obama paid tribute to his mother last August. 

Yet, as reported by the Turkish website SABAH Saturday, such a procedure may not be legal:

President-elect Barack Obama named Carol Browner the "czar" of climate and energy policy for the White House, but CNBC's Joe Kernen was wary of her appointment.

"You can see that even in Europe, some of the climate concerns, given this, this once in a lifetime recession, John - to put someone that, an advocate of such strong measures," Kernen said on "Squawk Box" Dec. 11. "Really I've seen her called Brownies or Brownistas. Um. That's a little scary with what's happening right now."

Earlier Kernen was discussing cabinet appoints with CNBC Washington correspondent John Harwood and pointed to new regulations Browner could institute:

The full "Today" show cast went to "The Ends of the Earth," as a part of NBC Universal's "Green Week," all in an effort to, once again, do the bidding of the likes of Al Gore, to create hysteria about global warming. With live reports from Matt Lauer worrying about reefs off the coast of Belize, Meredith Vieira fearful about drought conditions in Australia, Ann Curry watching the snow caps melt on Mt. Kilimanjaro and Al Roker troubled by glacier extinction in Iceland, the cast pushed the green agenda throughout Monday's "Today" show. Co-anchor Vieira, near the top of the show, set the table for her cast mates this way:

And so, we venture to the most breathtaking sights, threatened by a changing, warming planet, chilling beauty on the verge of vanishing. The depths of a remote ocean paradise. Belize's great Blue Hole, a reef in peril. Down under, the Australian continent dangerously dry. The frigid north, Iceland's vast glaciers melting. And up Africa's highest summit, where the snows of Kilimanjaro are disappearing. The warnings are stark. A vortex of trash twice the size of Texas, toxins bleeding into the ocean, rivers that can not reach the sea, species lost forever. Clouds, rain, storm's fury borne of the ocean, slowly drown distant nations. Islands disappearing and in their wake, a new kind of refugee, so far away and so close to home. Throughout our planet and within our bodies, water flows. We cannot survive without it. Yet, 1 billion people don't have enough. Our new thirst may fuel wars. Is water the oil of tomorrow?

The following are just some of the scarier, introductory teasers from the "Today" cast as they occurred on the November 17, edition of the "Today" show:

Californians by very wide margins defeated two green initiatives that anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts in the media and in legislative houses across the fruited plain should take heed...but will they?

To begin with, Proposition 7 would have required utilities to generate 40 percent of their power from renewable energy by 2020 and 50 percent by 2025.

Proposition 10 would have created $5 billion in general obligation bonds to help consumers and others purchase certain high fuel economy or alternative fuel vehicles, and to fund research into alternative fuel technology.

Much to the likely chagrin of Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his global warming sycophants in the media, these measures went down, and went down in flames:

When Andrea Mitchell says "all of us" thought a certain way, whom does she have in mind?

On her  MSBNC show this afternoon, Mitchell stated that "all of us" originally thought John McCain had made a political mistake when he changed positions and came out of in favor of expanded oil drilling. 

Mitchell was chatting with former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers and Republican strategist Doug MacKinnon.  The subject was the just-announced Dem energy plan, that claims to make some limited provision for expanded offshore drilling.  Mitchell made no bones of the fact that the politics now favor the advocates of expanded drilling, and that Dems were caught off guard.

View video here. 

Update below.

Anecdotal evidence is pretty much useless in science, a discipline steeped in empirical data. But that's no matter to the Associated Press or the Washington Post, which published an August 31 AP article about how "Scientists See Fewer Fireflies." The subheading quickly qualified that the "[e]vidence is anecdotal, but experts fault sprawl, pollution."

Of course some of the quoted experts in Casey's article aren't really experts, they're amateur scientists at best, with sprawl and pollution serving as coded language for faulting capitalism for allegedly raping the environment.

AP writer Michael Casey waited until the fifth paragraph of his Thailand-bylined article to confess that "[t]he evidence is entirely anecdotal but anecdotes abound" about a mass worldwide holocaust of the flying luminous bugs.

This after quoting one Preecha Jiabyu, a tour guide on Thailand's Mae Klong River, who dropped an unsubstantiated statistic for readers. "The firefly populations have dropped 70 percent in the past three years," insisted Preecha, whose entomological credentials Casey failed to establish for readers.

Editor's Note: This post originated on our sister publication BusinessandMedia.org.

It's not often that you can point to The Washington Post as the voice of reason, but the paper has its moments. One such was the August 12 oil drilling editorial that debunks three major "‘truths' masquerading as fact" about offshore drilling.

The piece, headlined "Snake Oil," showed how groups like the liberal Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) misconstrue the issue in their opposition to expanded drilling. The NRDC has recently taken out ads in the Post and other papers detailing its opposition to drilling - downplaying the amount of oil available offshore, claming existing leases are going unused and maximizing the environmental "danger" of drilling.

While the editorial argued against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) because it "should be preserved," the Post went on to explain why drilling offshore makes sense.

The paper explained how the estimates of 18 billion barrels of oil offshore are based on old measurements. Data from the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) are out of date. In a similar situation, the Post wrote, the department estimated 9 billion barrels were beneath the Gulf of Mexico. "By 2006, after major advances in seismic technology and deepwater drilling techniques, the MMS resource estimate for that area had ballooned to 45 billion barrels."

Maybe it is because NBC has the broadcast rights for the Summer Olympics being held in China, but big gas-guzzling, greenhouse gas-emitting automobiles made by General Motors are seen as a plus for the communist nation's embrace of capitalism.

The August 6 "NBC Nightly News" featured the Chinese people's love of troubled U.S. automaker General Motors (NYSE:GM) - an indicator interpreted as an acceptance of capitalism.

"What would Chairman Mao think?" CNBC correspondent Phil LeBeau asked. "Six decades after the Communist Revolution, China has become the hottest capitalist engine on earth. And ironically, some of the most revered symbols of success in today's China are Cadillac, Buick and Chevrolet."

Could the NBC honchos be a tad touchy about criticism of the Beijing Olympics—especially when it comes from its own talent pool?  Was there a kernel of truth in Mika Brzezinski's light-hearted warning that MSNBC's Morning Joe crew would "get a call" if it persisted in its mocking of the games for whose broadcast rights the Peacock Network has over the years paid billions?

When the subject of the Olympics arose during the opening segment of today's show, the panel went into an extended coughing fit, coupled with cracks about tanks in Tiananmen Square.  Mika joined in the joshing for a while, before finally putting her foot down . . .

View video here.

Mika touched things off with a news item about the Olympic torch.

In our ongoing series "What's Happening at the Washington Post," today's "I Can't Believe I Saw This There" moment is a rather lengthy article by Joel Achenbach, conspicuously placed on the cover of Sunday's section B, and conspicuously skeptical about the liberal bogeyman known as global warming.

Maybe more surprising, Achenbach took on media representatives that feel the need to blame every catastrophic weather event on climate change.

In fact, without naming names, he even picked on our friend at Newsweek, Sharon Begley, totally debunking her claim that global warming was responsible for the June floods in Iowa (emphasis added):

In 2003, Showtime's Penn & Teller program with a name not appropriate above the fold -- unless, of course, you're a member of the Netroots! -- marvelously exposed what's behind the global warming and environmental hysteria in America today.

The videos have just come available on YouTube.

In part one (embedded right), the comedy team accurately depicted environmentalists as political and social activists who use green rhetoric to "cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-corporatism, anti-globalization, anti-business, and very little to do with science and ecology."

Exactly. Parts two and three are embedded below the fold with a warning that these videos contain mild vulgarity. Actually, it's typically one word that most shouldn't find too offensive for it properly characterizes what's behind all this nonsense:

The New York Times, while fawning all over Barack Obama's European sojourn, just couldn't resist taking potshots at John McCain who remained here in the United States -- you know, campaigning for the votes of people that can actually vote for him:

On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, cheered by as many as 200,000 people, Mr. Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and shared history. In contrast, just before he spoke, Mr. McCain, was sitting in Schmidt’s Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, having a bratwurst, and saying grumpily that he would prefer to speak to Germans when he is president, not before.

And if that wasn't enough, on a back page story of the previous day's edition, the Times ignored their own story located elsewhere in the paper, and in the process impugned John McCain's call for more oil drilling (along with taking a few more cheap digs at the GOP presidential nominee):

On Monday, comedian Stephen Colbert had a fabulous interview with the Sierra Club's Carl Pope (h/t Ecorazzi). Enjoy:

Updates at end of post: Schmidt responds to (and ignores!) NBers' questions.

Last Saturday, one of the nation's leading climate alarmists -- a government employee with a history of attacking people that don't agree with his views on anthropogenic global warming -- wrote rather disparagingly about a somewhat satirical NewsBusters piece.

Despite claiming he typically doesn’t comment on things “written about climate change in the more excitable parts of [sic] web,” NASA’s Gavin Schmidt took time out of his busy Saturday schedule to respond to something he described as “probably the most boneheaded article that I have seen in ages.”

Was this an effort by one of the founding members of RealClimate – the world’s leading website specializing in climate change hysteria – to correct errors he felt existed in my article? Or, was this a predictable attack on a popular conservative blog that not only regularly exposes the one-sided nature of media reports about global warming, but also frequently brings attention to studies that go counter to RealClimate’s, and maybe more importantly, Schmidt’s views?

After all, to climate alarmists like Schmidt, media shouldn’t be reporting the realist (nee “skeptical”) side of this issue as was made perfectly clear by Nobel Laureate Al Gore during an interview with NBC’s Meredith Vieira during the November 5, 2007, installment of the “Today” show (photo via NPR):

As my fellow NewsBuster Amy Ridenour accurately reported, global warming obsessed media are predictably gushing over Nobel Laureate Al Gore's call for America to completely convert all of its electricity production to solar, wind, and other renewable sources by 2018 (photo courtesy AFP).

As they gush, fawn, and genuflect, will press members dare to point out that Gore is heavily invested in companies which manufacture that which he's recommending America convert to?

After all, as NewsBusters reported on April 11, Gore admitted his financial stake in such things to an audience in Monterey, California, back in March (video available here, relevant section begins at minute 15:00):

Although media reports on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) usually contain majestic pictures of animals frolicking, few mention the financial benefits and public support for drilling there.

“[T]he 1.5-million-acre tip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is critical for the health of an ancient caribou herd,” weatherman Sam Champion said on the May 6 “Good Morning America.”

“It’s a safe haven for calving every spring. The same area is valuable for another reason. Underneath it lies billions of barrels of crude oil, as of yet untapped. Oil companies say drilling can be done without danger, but environmentalists disagree. They think drilling would devastate the land and its wildlife,” said Champion.

The Biz Flog, the video blog of the Business & Media Institute, for July 16 focused on what it would take to drill in ANWR and how long it would take the financial benefits to get back to consumers.

In today's "People Can Prove Whatever They Want If They Really Try Hard Enough" moment, Swiss scientists claimed early this week that efforts to clean the air over Europe the past three decades are responsible for at least half of that continent's 1°C rise in temperatures since 1980.

In an interesting chicken and the egg conundrum, scientists in America claimed Thursday that global warming causes smog.

So, cleaning the air causes global warming -- which ends up leading to higher levels of smog?

Let's start with the Swiss study reported by NewScientist Wednesday (emphasis added, photo courtesy Reuters):

Two weeks ago, a parent-teacher council blamed the online research source Wikipedia for falling test scores in Scotland.

On Tuesday, Canadian columnist Lawrence Solomon blamed Wikipedia for helping to spread global warming hysteria around the world.

The connection? Oftentimes "inaccurate or deliberately misleading information" published by Wikipedia being taken as fact by unsuspecting readers.

In the case of climate change, such inaccurate or deliberately misleading information acts to solidify the myth being espoused by Nobel Laureate Al Gore as millions of people across the globe believe Wikipedia is a purely factual resource.

As the Scotsman reported on June 21, such an assumption carries risks (emphasis added):