Bioengineering

New York Times tax reporter David Kocieniewski took advantage of Mitt Romney's admission (blared as Wednesday's lead story, under six bylines) that his personal tax rate is around 15% to fight decades-old tax-cut battles in Wednesday’s "Since 1980s, The Kindest Of Tax Cuts For the Rich." Naturally, he brought up liberals' favorite billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who made waves with an op-ed in the Times calling for higher taxes on "the rich."

It’s not Buffett's first appearance in one of Kocieniewski’s slanted "tax the rich" stories. Kocieniewski also took time to refute the head of the "conservative Tax Foundation" on eliminating the capital gains tax.

Barack Obama's Hope and Change ether appears to be wearing off on Robert Redford.

On Friday evening, the Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist published a rather scathing piece at the Huffington Post about the man Hollywood blindly put all its faith behind in 2008:

On Tuesday's Morning Edition, NPR's Jennifer Ludden all but acted as an proponent of egg donation and freezing to preserve women's fertility, but failed to acknowledge the dangers associated with the donation process, ranging from negative psychological effects to kidney failure and death. Ludden barely touched on other risks to the procedures, such as using them to permit women over 50 become pregnant.

The correspondent began her report by hyping the emotion behind the problem the donation and freezing procedures aim to fix: the declining fertility of women 40 years of age and older:

"For the sake of a cleaner planet, should Americans wear dirtier clothes?"

So comically began a New York Times article on the front page of the Gray Lady's Science section Tuesday ironically titled "When Energy Efficiency Sullies the Environment" (photo courtesy Viktor Koen):

Chris Matthews on Wednesday called Republicans that are skeptical of man's role in global warming Luddites, referring to the 19th century movement in Great Britain that was opposed to changes associated with the Industrial Revolution.

Clearly missing the absurdity in his analogy, the "Hardball" host arrogantly stated (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday, NewsBusters was the first American media outlet to report Nobel laureate Al Gore's admission that he only supported ethanol mandates in the '90s because he thought it would help his presidential ambitions.

As it turns out, with very few exceptions, no major news divisions thought this was at all important:

Nobel laureate Al Gore said this weekend that tax breaks for corn-based ethanol are "not good policy" and that he only supported these subsidies in order to assist his eventual run for president.

Reuters Africa reported Monday the former Vice President made these comments while speaking to a green energy conference in Athens.

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds employed sarcastic irony this morning when he wrote that "Obama’s hate speech is promoting violence against BP." Well, it's at least clear that the blame game out of Washington isn't helping the situation.

Reynolds is referring to a report from TV station WREG in Memphis about an incident involving property damage at a local BP station, and other instances that have occurred in other parts of the country (video is at the link):

Bullets Shatter Glass at BP Gas Station

(Southaven, MS) -- Windows at the BP Gas Station on Highway 51 at Custer Drive were shot out overnight. Folks who work at the store believe the suspects were expressing anger over BP and how it's handling the oil spill.

"I believe that would be the reason," said Alex Saleh. "We don't have any enemies." He said nothing was taken from the store after the windows were destroyed.

The front of Thursday's New York Times Home section is dominated by a photo illustration by Josef Astor of someone in a white hazmat suit, accompanying Penelope Green's long article on detoxifying her home: "Domestic Detox: Cleaning to Extremes." Here's the text box for flavor: "Your lovely scented candles are polluting the air and the shower's spewing pathogens. Now what?"

I kept looking for the wink, the sign that Green was being facetious, or at least half-facetious. It never came. The hook: She invited "building biology" consultant Matthew Waletzke into her home to skillfully play on her sheltered liberal urbanite fears.

When Matthew Waletzke appeared at the door of my East Village apartment to evaluate my home for what he calls "toxic exposure" -- the alternative world's catch-all phrase for potential health hazards like mold, indoor air pollution, household chemicals and electromagnetic radiation (beware your Wi-Fi!) -- I half-expected to see a guy in an "Andromeda Strain"-era hazmat suit.

....

I had called Mr. Waletzke not because I'd gone all radioactive, like Julianne Moore's character in "Safe," the 1995 movie directed by Todd Haynes about a woman who becomes allergic to her life, but because his specialty seems like an idea whose time has come.

Pollution, we're learning, is personal. Each year brings reports of a new domestic horror, from the medical waste in the municipal water to the carcinogenic bacteria sprouting in your shower head. Your child's sippy cup is leaching the endocrine disrupter BPA into his milk (let's not even think about what's in his nonflammable pajamas), and there are phthalates in your shampoo (also your sex toys). And if your (bleached, pesticide-soaked cotton) bedding doesn't kill you, your clock radio just might, say those who classify electromagnetic frequencies as carcinogens.

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

We have now reached the apex of "heads I win, tails you lose" global-warming alarmism. In his April 18 op-ed for the LA Times, author Eli Kintisch warned that "the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks," global warming consequences could be "profound."

Having painted themselves into an environmental conundrum, Kintisch and climate scientists are left debating how they are going to proceed with sulfate aerosols - a natural and anthropogenic air pollutant believed to have cooling properties on the earth's atmosphere.

"Thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, however, the planet has only felt a portion of that greenhouse warming. In the 1980s, sulfate pollution dropped as Western nations enhanced pollution controls, and as a result, global warming accelerated," Kintisch wrote.

"There's hot debate over the size of what amounts to a cooling mask, but there's no question that it will diminish as industries continue to clean traditional pollutants from their smokestacks. Unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last for a week at most in the air. So cutting them would probably accelerate global warming rapidly."

YouTube is assisting Al "Eco-Prophet" Gore throw a Hail Mary pass to the growing segment of Americans who are "deniers" of the earth's "climate crisis."

This time, Gore and his organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, has issued a call-to-arms for young hipsters to make a video about climate change for a YouTube Video Volunteer contest.

"[A]s we celebrate our 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, we need action on all fronts," Gore said on the weekend YouTube sermon. "We need to build on our individual and family commitments and use this historic moment facing our nation to make a difference in changing our laws and creating a better world for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren."

Gore's message was the same - humans cannot wait another minute preventing the doomsday catastrophe of global warming, and thus America's youth must demand a drastic and immediate overhaul of the entire U.S. economy. 

At Newsweek, the global warming crusade remains an important mission. The magazine's latest push came in an interview by CNN contributor Fareed Zakharia of Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Zakaria threw softballs to Chu throughout the article, as Newsweek showed it was simply a matter of when - not if - the administration should continue to pursue a drastic environmental agenda.

It was revealing which questions were - and were not - asked of the president's Energy Secretary. Zakaria made zero reference to  ClimateGate, the economic consequences of cap-and-trade and alternative energy, and no mention of the actual validity of climate change.

"Do you think that having a price on carbon is crucial?" Zakaria asked.

"I absolutely believe a price on carbon is essential - that will send a very important long-term signal," Chu said. "[But] if it's five years from now, I think it will be truly tragic, because other countries, notably China, are moving ahead so aggressively. They see this as their economic opportunity to lead in the next industrial revolution."

Update: Rush cites this article to rip global warmist hypocrisy.  On today's show, Rush Limbaugh cited NewsBusters and read from this article to demonstrate the global warmists' hypocrisy: "when there is less snow, they say it's because of global warming. When there is more snow, they say it's because of global warming.  Now you cannot have it both ways."  Rush played several clips of Dem senators in recent years attributing the lack of snow to global warming. Listen to Rush cite NewsBusters and blast the warmists here.

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By now, we're all familiar with the global warmists' attempt to explain away the record-breaking mid-Atlantic blizzards.  Take this, for example, from the New York Times [emphasis added]:

"government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture."

So more snow fell from Philly to DC because the temperatures were warmer than normal during the blizzards?  That got me wondering: just what were the temperatures in DC on the snow days, and how do they compare to the norm?  And guess what?

For several years, Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his media sycophants have been telling the nation that a movement away from fossil fuels to biofuels is necessary to save the planet from the Left's bogeyman known as global warming.

A new study by the Marine Biological Laboratory raises series questions about this premise.

According to MBL's Thursday press release, "Carbon emissions caused by the displacement of food crops and pastures may be twice as much as those from lands devoted to biofuels production."

Beyond this, "increased fertilizer use for biofuels production will cause nitrous oxide emissions (N2O) to become more important than carbon losses, in terms of warming potential, by the end of the century" (h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Terry Jeffrey, editor-in-chief of CNSNews.com, writes that the Associated Press issued a dispatch that was remarkably incorrect. When it comes to the prospect of "therapeutic cloning" – creating human clones in a lab only to exploit them like lab rats – President Obama hasn’t been as clear as the AP suggested:

Obama’s Monday announcement that he was reversing President Bush’s policy of denying federal funding to stem-cell research that requires killing human embryos included what may be the most cynical of all Obama’s carefully crafted self-contradictions.

This one was designed to build political cover for promoting research that clones human beings for the specific purpose of killing them.

The headline and lead paragraph on an Associated Press story conveyed exactly the impression Obama desired to create. The headline said: "Obama calls cloning ‘dangerous, profoundly wrong.’" The lead paragraph said: "President Barack Obama says human cloning is ‘dangerous, profoundly wrong’ and has no place in society."

But this headline and lead are false. Obama said no such thing.

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta filled in as host on Larry King Live on Wednesday, six days after ending his bid to be Obama's surgeon general. Despite his medical training, he did not see fit to correct former President Bill Clinton after he repeatedly referred to human embryos as not being fertilized.

During his initial question, Gupta referred to Clinton as “someone who studied this,” but after he made his erroneous assertion the first time, Gupta only asked if the former president had “any reservations” to stem cell research that would destroy human embryos. Clinton would go on to make this false characterization five more times in his answer to Gupta’s lone follow-up.

Gupta's interview with the former president was devoted mainly to health care reform. The brain surgeon brought up the issue of embryonic stem cell research after he observed that Clinton’s finger sometimes shook when he pointed it. When Clinton clarified that he had consulted with a doctor, who told him in wasn’t Parkinson’s Disease, Gupta asked the former president about President Obama’s decision to remove the limitations on federal funding for the embryo-killing research: “There was a federal -- an order today providing federal money for embryonic stem cell research. First of all, let me just ask you, as someone who studied this, is this going to always be as divisive an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation, or are people going to come around?”

During a segment on Friday’s Newsroom program, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen heralded the FDA’s approval of the first human clinical trial involving embryo-destroying stem cell research. Cohen then gave a soft interview of the president and CEO of the company involved in the trial, who made the bizarre claim that new medical breakthroughs, including corneal transplants and anesthesia for women in childbirth, were supposedly “always met with concerns from the Religious Right” in the past. Cohen did not follow-up to this statement by the CEO.

The segment, which began 17 minutes into the 11 am Eastern hour of the CNN program, began with anchor Tony Harris trumpeting how the FDA’s approval of the embryonic stem cell clinical trial represented “major milestone in this field of research.” He then asked Cohen to “explain to us how significant a day this is.” The correspondent gushed in reply, “This is a big day, and I will tell you, I interviewed Christopher Reeve many times about stem cells, and I think he would probably be smiling if he were here to see this day.” She did not bring up the moral objections to embryo destruction in her explanation of the breaking news item which followed, just that “some say that some of this research has been overblown, and a it’s not quite as promising as many people say.”

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:

When Tony the Tiger gets fired, we'll know biofuel mandates have taken their toll.

Correspondent Susan Koeppen said on "The Early Show" Oct. 23 consumers would be "paying more and getting less" for some food products they buy because companies are downsizing their products.

"It's called downsizing," Koeppen on the CBS broadcast. "More and more companies are going to start shrinking their products."

Ice cream consumer Yalanda Medina said she felt companies didn't think she was "smart enough to notice" she was getting less. In short, Medina felt "duped."

Koeppen went to "consumer advocate" Edgar Dworsky, who told her that downsizing is "a sneaky way to pass on a price increase."

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.

Today on Neil Cavuto, Monica Showalter of Investor's Business Daily was on, speaking about their editorial on Nanny Pelosi called "Feckless to Reckless." It's about Nancy Pelosi's recent reckless call to drain the strategic oil reserves in an attempt to answer our problems and pains at the gas pumps, short term. Needless to say, IBD was not impressed; in fact, the article calls for her resignation. You can read about it and watch the video interview at MsUnderestimated's site here.

In February of 2007 a small group named the Tennessee Center for Policy Research published an interesting little story that made Al Gore, the king of global warming alarmism, look a tad foolish. The report that TCPR sent out showed that Al Gore's own home was an energy hog. The TCPR report revealed that Al Gore's Tennessee mansion used more energy each month than the average American household uses in an entire year. In a response to this report, Gore claimed that he was diligently working to make his home more green, but now it looks like Gore is being gored again because a year down the line his energy use hasn't gone down. It hasn't even stayed level. It actually increased by 10%. How will the media handle this bloated increase despite Gore's claims of trying to improve?

In 2007, to a sensational reception the TCPR noted that the Gore family burned through energy at an amazing rate saying, "Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh -- guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359."

Gas prices got you down? Ride a horse, says MSNBC.

On a "MSNBC Live," report on "sky high gas prices" anchor Tamron Hall relayed the story of one man who is using a horse rather than a vehicle, but did not explain some important reasons why prices have soared.

"The high prices have led ... one Tennessee man to find a more fuel efficient way to get around town in Bradley County: The guy is riding a horse," Hall said on the May 9 broadcast. "It is cheaper to maintain a horse than it is to fill up a gas tank. He says that it costs $150 to $200 a month to ride and feed that pony."

Dan Gainor appeared on Fox News's "Fox and Friends" to talk about the latest issue of Time magazine, which had a Photoshopped cover of World War II Marines raising a tree instead of the American flag at Iwo Jima.

Gainor told viewers of the Saturday morning broadcast April 19, "Time magazine basically tried to co-op an icon of American heroism to push their global warming agenda. They're trying to claim that their war against global warming is similar to what our veterans endured during WWII."

He went on to say that there were 28,000 casualties and more than 6,000 people killed at Iwo Jima, exclaiming, "That's real war."

You're going to need a few extra bucks to pay for those corn flakes every morning.

CNN's senior business correspondent Ali Velshi let viewers in on an underreported fact about rising commodities prices: the government mandate for ethanol production is making corn and other agricultural products more expensive-making inflation a top priority for Americans.

"Several years ago, we made some decisions about how corn is going to be used to make ethanol, which is added to our gasoline," said Velshi on "American Morning" April 4. "A number of people think that that was meant to reduce our dependency on crude oil. What is does is it takes what is fundamentally a food source and makes it into a gasoline source. That's caused corn to go up."

Color me pleasantly surprised, given the media's past treatment of the issue. The June 7 Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today all gave prominent play to news of a stem cell breakthrough that may make moot the embryonic stem cell ethical dilemma.

I don't have a hard copy of the LA Times, but I know the other papers featured the story on their front pages.

Of course, it appears that the New York Times couldn't let the good news go without a separate Debbie Downer article as counterbalance. Here's an excerpt, portion in bold is my emphasis:

Did you hear about that report released last week from a Stanford University atmospheric chemist demonstrating that the tailpipe emissions from cars using E85 ethanol are actually more dangerous than those using normal gasoline? You didn’t?

Hmmm. What a shock.

Anyway, Environmental Science & Technology reported Wednesday (emphasis added throughout, h/t NB member Dahlia Travers):

When Mark Jacobson heard a venture capitalist tout ethanol fuel as a solution to air pollution last year, he was surprised—and intrigued. Jacobson, an atmospheric chemist at Stanford University, knew that air quality got worse during Brazil's big ethanol push in the 1970s and that the reason was still unclear.

You don’t hear a lot about Brazil’s pollution woes, do you? Well, Jacobson’s instincts were quite strong: