You thought your car was bad for the planet?

Heck with that! Your dog is WORSE!

MUCH worse!

So claimed CBSNews.com Monday in a piece hysterically titled, "Just Blame the Dog for Environment's Ills":

Unlike some Washington Post ombudsmen (ahem, Geneva Overholser), Andrew Alexander deserves credit for raising the question of liberal bias, and reporters’ connections to the liberal movement, even by marriage. But he didn’t tell the whole story. At best, he gets an I for Incomplete. On Sunday, Alexander reported:

Post reporter Juliet Eilperin covers the contentious issue of climate change. Her husband, a noted expert on the subject, coordinates international climate policy as a part-time senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. She has quoted officials from the liberal think tank in her stories, although not her spouse. Climate change is discussed at home, she said, but a "church-state separation" exists for areas where their work overlaps.

This kind of spousal connection would not be easily tolerated by the Post if Eilperin was a married to an expert for ExxonMobil. She would be moved off the green beat. Alexander bows briefly to that notion, but doesn’t really buy it:

If you're a skeptic of climate change or want to educate your child at home Chris Matthews probably thinks you're an oddball. On Tuesday's Hardball, the MSNBC host egged on the former liberal Republican New Jersey governor and former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman to turn to the camera to scold all the global warming non-believers in the GOP as he urged: "Would you tell your Republican colleagues right now – look in the camera and say, 'There is climate change and we have to do something about it?'" And later on in the show Matthews stereotyped all homeschoolers as some sort of anti-social shut-ins that don't want their children to "go to public school 'cause you don't want to mix with other people."

The following exchanges were aired on the November 3 edition of Hardball:

Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer conducted a surprisingly tough interview with Al Gore on Tuesday, pressing him on profiting from global warming and whether or not climate change legislation is pointless in light of pollution-spewing countries such as China. She also forced the ex-Vice President to respond to a challenge from Glenn Beck.

Sawyer even pointed out the amount of methane gas created from the bodily functions of cows, observing that it's "20 times more damaging it is than CO2." The host, who will become the anchor of World News in January, then played a clip of Fox News' Beck mocking Gore:

GLENN BECK: I'm siding with PETA on this one. Once again asking Al Gore if you really want to save the planet, Al, why don't you put down the cheeseburger and pick up the veggie burger? Time for, maybe, soy milk and tofurkey.

Earning a chuckle even from Al Gore himself for the over the top glorification, CBS's Katie Couric opened her “@katiecouric” CBSNews.com Web show interview with Al Gore by extolling: “I'm honored to be joined today by the Godfather of Green, the King of Conservation: Former Vice President Al Gore.” The very friendly 30-minute Monday interview was prompted by the release of Gore new book, 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.'

Monday's CBS Evening News carried a brief excerpt, sans the excessively laudatory introduction: “Today I spoke with someone who knows a bit about Washington politics and the environment, former Vice President Al Gore. He's out with a new book and is on the cover of this week's edition of Newsweek.”

Audio: MP3 clip which matches the video.

"Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes."

For years I have personally challenged mainstream media outlets to admit how much money Nobel Laureate Al Gore HAS and WILL make by spreading global warming hysteria.

On Tuesday, the New York Times will feature a front page story that discusses exactly that.

Readers are strongly encouraged to strap themselves in tightly, for the Times' John Broder is about to take them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams:

TVNewswer reported Monday that Katie Couric “will sit down this afternoon for an exclusive interview with former Vice President Al Gore in advance of the release of his new book, Our Choice, to be released tomorrow. Portions of the interview will air tonight on the CBS Evening News.” Full title of his latest left-wing tract, 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.' Don't count on Couric, however, to challenge any of Gore's premises since she's been more interested in trumpeting his cause.

Back in March and May of 2007, Couric celebrated “a lot of excitement on Capitol Hill. A movie star showed up to testify before Congress -- a movie star named Al Gore” and hailed: “He was once called 'Mr. Stiff.' Now he's known as 'The Goreacle,' the new Al Gore.” With “Gore 2.0” on screen, Couric set up the subsequent tribute by asserting that “no one's getting more attention than the latest edition of Al Gore.”

(Meanwhile, this week's Newsweek cover champions: “The Thinking Man's Thinking Man: Al Gore's New Plan for the Planet.” See cover image below the jump.)

"Al Gore's views on climate change are advancing as rapidly as the phenomenon itself."

Such was Newsweek science editor Sharon Begley's sub-headline of her proselytizing piece "The Evolution Of An Eco-Prophet."

Fortunately for the Goracle's loyal followers, Begley didn't ask him how the planet could possibly have cooled the past eleven years despite his warnings about the plague "carbon dioxide."

As for all those powerful hurricanes Prophet Al hath foretold, tropical cyclone activity has been at 30-year lows for the last three years.

Even New York Times environmental writer and true believer Andrew Revkin recently noticed that Arctic ice levels have actually been on the rise lately.

But Begley, although being a "science editor," wasn't concerned about anything so mundane as -- ahem -- science in this article. Heavens no.

'Twas much more important to tell parishioners how the eco-prophet looked:

Around the globe, environmental protesters tried “a synchronized burst of more than 4,300 demonstrations, from the Himalayas to the Great Barrier Reef,” according to The New York Times.

The sweeping Oct. 24 protest was to bully developed nations like the United States into a climate change agreement when they meet in Copenhagen this December.

The 350.org protesters, who want to drop CO2 in the atmosphere to that level, were especially critical of the U.S. “You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.”

Oops, that’s wasn’t the eco-nuts, that’s a direct quote from Osama bin Laden in 2002. While al Qaeda and eco-nuts use different tactics, they share a similar enemy.

Civilization.

A columnist for the UK Guardian wants to save the Earth by thinning the ranks of humans that are a cruel blight upon it. By his account, population control is the only viable solution to the destruction of the planet.

"The worst thing you or I can so for the planet is to have children" writes the Guardian's Alex Renton, who advocated in a Sunday column an ambiguous system of system of carrots and sticks to get the developed world to stop reproducing.

Renton cannot contain his loathing of the developed world. "One less British child would permit some 30 women in sub-Saharan Africa to have a baby and still leave the planet a cleaner place," he writes. Renton adds that "a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis."

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):

On Oct. 23 ABC's "Good Morning America" aired back-to-back segments promoting climate change and, strangely enough, slamming hamburgers. First, George Stephanopoulos worried that Americans were becoming too complacent about global warming and discussed possible climate solutions with "Superfreakonomics" author Stephen Dubner. Dubner suggested choosing a kangaroo burger over a beef burger as a possible solution. Then Stephanopoulos interviewed Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and discussed the carbon footprint left behind by a McDonald's quarter-pounder with cheese.

Pollan said that "you're eating oil" when you're eating a burger: "You need oil to make the fertilizer to grow the corn. You need petroleum to make the pesticides to grow the corn. You need oil to move it all around the country."

Factoring in production, processing, and shipment, Pollan claimed that a quarter-pounder cheeseburger amounts to 26 ounces of oil. "What it tells you is that the carbon footprint of that burger is really big," said Pollan. "The result is a product that takes a huge environmental toll and obviously takes a health toll as well."

A new Pew Research poll has much of the left and the mainstream media in a bit of a panic. And at least several media outlets are about to try something new to address it.  

With cap-and-trade legislation stalled in Congress and an important climate change summit coming up in Copenhagen in December, Americans just aren’t as convinced as they should be that a) there’s evidence the planet is warming (57 percent), b) that warming is a serious problem (35 percent) and c) that humans cause it (36 percent). All those numbers have fallen significantly from their peak a couple of years ago.

Luckily, a there’s no shortage of “journalists” standing up to fight this deplorable trend. Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, co-editors of the left-wing magazine Mother Jones, announced on the publication’s Web site that “we’re forging a collaboration with a range of news organizations – magazines, online news sites, nonprofit reporting shops, multimedia operations.’ The purpose? To “synthesize disparate data points” and coordinate coverage of “the most important story of our time.”

Further down, the editors wrote:

We're also part of a team reporting effort focused on the critical Copenhagen talks; visit MotherJones.com for details. And while you're there, create your own climate message: You can make a Mother Jones cover featuring a picture of your child (or grandkid/nephew/cat), add a note [imploring action on global warming], and send it to your friends, your members of Congress, and your president. We'll feature them on our site.

On the Oct. 23 "Good Morning America," ABC's George Stephanopoulos was troubled. The source of his disquiet was a new Pew Research poll released on Oct. 22 that shows "just 57 percent of Americans see solid evidence" of global warming. [Emphasis ours.] This represents a 14 percent drop since last year. Additionally, the number of those who believe climate change is caused by human activity fell 11 percent. To the media's true believers - and those who just like reporting a good scare story - these numbers are upsetting.

GMA in particular has a stake in making sure Americans believe they're destroying the planet, since the morning show has been a tireless purveyor of climate change propaganda. Stephanopoulos referenced the poll in introducing a segment on the new book "Superfreakonomics," which offers "radically different" solutions on how to "save our planet."

"Superfreakonomics" co-author Stephen Dubner agreed with Stephanopoulos that global warming "very well may be" a serious problem. But he then argued that "the proposed solution of carbon mitigation as the one and primary path [to combating climate change] will be too little and too late, and it's too optimistic."

NBC's Brian Williams allocated a few seconds Thursday night to how a new Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey discovered the percent of Americans who, in his words, “believe there's solid evidence of global warming...has dropped off significantly” while “the number of people who say they don't believe in climate change at all has doubled in that time.” (If it's a scientific issue, what does “belief” have to do with it?)  

But instead of crediting Americans for recognizing the media-fueled case global warming is a threat has been undermined by reality since global temperatures have not risen an iota since 1998, Williams attributed the change to how “in a down economy, people are less sensitive to the environment.”

Or at least less sensitive to NBC's hysteria. Just a month ago, on the September 20 Nightly News, Lester Holt set up a typically panicked story on how “a new study warns rapidly melting ice in Greenland could result in a colossal rise in ocean levels.” Reporter Anne Thompson ominously warned: “For thousands of years...the Earth's climate has endured changes, but slowly enough to allow humans to adapt. Now, change is picking up speed.”

New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff signed on to environmental apocalypse in his Thursday review of Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront, a research program that he said was "conceived to address the potential effects of rising water levels and apocalyptic storms on the city."

But the program's real subject is frustration with the federal government's snail-like response to global warming, the brutal effects of the financial crisis, wasteful infrastructure projects and squandered intellectual resources. Its aim is to prod government to think more creatively about our nation's crumbling and outdated fabric.

The idea began taking shape several years ago, after the prominent New York engineer Guy Nordenson visited New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and was prompted to study the impact that global warming could have on a seemingly safe coastal city like New York. His findings were alarming: for example, according to a recent study by New York City's panel on climate change, even at current rates of global warming water levels will rise as much as two feet by 2080 as the atmosphere gets hotter. If the ice cap melts at a faster rate, Mr. Nordenson added, the figure could double. In that case a storm surge on top of that could put 20 percent of the city under water.

MSNBC's David Shuster declared yesterday's fake Chamber of Commerce presser at the National Press Club the "Best prank of [the] week" on his Twitter page shortly before 5:30 p.m. EDT today. He added a link taking readers to the left-leaning blog Talking Points Memo.

A group of liberal environmentalist activists punked some journalists by throwing a press conference claiming to represent the Chamber of Commerce. In the fake presser, the pranksters claimed that the Chamber was reversing its opposition to so-called cap-and-trade legislation.

In a follow-up Tweet, Shuster added:

Paul Krugman attacked the authors of the soon-to-be-released book SuperFreakonomics today for their audacious attempts to question the left's conventional wisdom on global climate change. He then touted the danger of attacking conservatives, and contended that liberal-bashing has always been the safer political and professional move.

I have a theory here, although it may not be the whole story: it’s about careerism. Annoying conservatives is dangerous [his emphasis]: they take names, hold grudges, and all too often find ways to take people who annoy them down... [Conservatives] snub anyone who breaks the unwritten rule and mocks those who must not be offended.

Annoying liberals, on the other hand, feels transgressive but has historically been safe. The rules may be changing (as [SuperFreakonomics authors Stephen] Dubner and [Steven] Levitt are in the process of finding out), but it’s been that way for a long time.

Monday’s Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN gave attention to filmmaker Phelim McAleer – whose film Not Evil, Just Wrong premieres this Sunday and challenges Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth – in the aftermath of his recent attempt to get Gore to respond to the British High Court ruling that there are nine factual errors in An Inconvenient Truth. But McAleer’s microphone was cut off as he tried to get Gore to answer for some of these inaccuracies and whether the former Vice President was trying to correct his mistakes. After a report by correspondent Casey Wian – who showed a clip of the exchange between McAleer and Gore, and who also mentioned some of the inaccurate points in An Inconvenient Truth about polar bears and Hurricane Katrina – Dobbs hosted a debate segment between McAleer and Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund.

McAleer pointed out that many of the environmental scientists pushing global warming theory were pushing global cooling theory decades earlier: "And the same environmentalists who are now saying it is warming, 20 and 30 years ago were saying we're going to have an ice age. I'm old enough to be at school and I was told that we're going into a new ice age."

A lefty magazine editor has come up with a list of brilliant solutions to the planet's purported climate change problem: make the recession worse, make goods more expensive, and restrict all intercontinental travel to blimps.

So said Emily Douglas, web editor for The Nation, who, when asked Wednesday how we could "reverse our culture of consumerism," replied immediately "make the recession worse."

She later claimed that her response was a bit "tongue-in-cheek," according to CNS News, but admitted that her magazine "never shies away from doomsday scenarios."