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Here’s something you’re unlikely to see in an American newspaper or magazine: global warming might actually be good for the planet and its inhabitants.

This radical idea was advanced Monday by the German magazine Der Spiegel which did something I can’t imagine a U.S. publication having the nerve to do in this highly politicized environment: offer readers a comprehensive, balanced view of the pluses and minuses inherent in a warming earth.

How delightfully extraordinary.

Unlike most American media reports on this issue, Spiegel, in an article ironically titled "Not the End of the World as We Know It," wonderfully began with a little history on the subject to put things in a proper perspective (emphasis added throughout):

 It's so easy, the cave men did it? LiveScience.com staff writer, Dave Mosher, wrote an article on Yahoo.com titled "Climate Change, Not Humans, Trounced Neanderthals" about Francisco Jimenez-Espejo, a University of Granada paleoclimatologist who “says a lack of evidence has left climate change weakly supported—until now. 'We put data behind the theory,' he said, filling in a large gap in European climate records when Neanderthals faded out of existence.”

He concluded from a detailed examination of evidence that Neanderthals disappeared from Earth more than 20,000 years ago at least partially because of climate change. As in global cooling.

The Greensburg tornado disaster was just the perfect excuse for another global warming item on ABCNews.com.

After all, the Associated Press and CNN have focused on an Iraq angle to devastating tornado damage, but finding an Iraq angle to everything is so, I dunno, 2004.

At any rate, on his "Science and Society" blog at ABCNews.com yesterday, reporter Ned Potter set out to find why tornado touchdowns have increased in the past few years.

I called the National Weather Service, which says that as of today it knows of 69 dead in tornadoes since Jan. 1, compared to 49 up to this point last year, and 38 deaths for all of 2005. It's worth looking around NOAA's Storm Prediction Center site; find it HERE.

Is there a reason? Shifting weather patterns? Shifting population patterns? Global climate change? Clayton Sandell was asked to put together some notes.

What's the big story this morning? Both FoxNews.com and CNN.com are still going with the Fort Dix terror suspect arrests as the top story. But as the screencap below (taken at 11:15 EDT) shows, MSNBC.com has "Major Flood: Rising Midwest rivers spark comparison to deadly '93 deluge" as the top story. (screencap included after the jump)

Granted, disaster stories are big news, particularly so close on the heels of the Greensburg, Kansas, tornado. But six immigrants, all of whom are suspected radical Muslims and three of whom are here in the United States illegally, is certainly a more compelling story for a top story.

How many times in the past year as global warming has become a headline issue have you heard a liberal media member or Hollywood elite talk about a consensus of peer reviewed scientists?

So much so that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one, correct?

As an example, pop singer Sheryl Crow during her recent Stop Global Warming College tour would toss the term "peer-reviewed science" around to her audience like a frisbee, as if she had any idea what it actually meant.

With that in mind, a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute, Dr. Robert Higgs, published an article Monday that should be required reading for folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his followers (emphasis added throughout):

In 2005, Bush Derangement Syndrome -- the as of yet inexplicable malady effecting much of the left whereby anything bad that happens on the planet can be tied to the White House -- peaked with continuous press accusations that Hurricane Katrina was the President’s fault.

Almost two years later, and just hours after tornadoes devastated the Midwest, the President is being indirectly blamed for potentially hampering rebuilding efforts in the hardest hit area.

I kid you not.

As reported by the Associated Press late Sunday evening with the headline “Iraq War Hampers Kansas Cleanup” (emphasis added):

Global warming derangement syndrome has taken a disturbing turn for the worse, as The Sunday Times published an article May 6 stating that parents should only have two children in order to avert climate change.

I kid you not.

The piece, despicably titled “Having Large Families ‘is an Eco-crime,'” unbelievably began:

HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank.

Amazed? That was only the beginning (emphasis added throughout):

By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the bee crisis in America. Currently termed “colony collapse disorder,” it is the massive die-off of a bee hive or colony for oftentimes inexplicable reasons.

Of late, this malady has resulted in a 25 percent reduction in colony totals here in the U.S., setting off alarmist media reports like the following from the Associated Press (emphasis added throughout):

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Yummy. Even worse, look at this list of delectable delights supposedly at risk:

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, a goodly number of fallacies about the Kyoto Protocol were identified in Glenn Beck’s “Exposed: The Climate of Fear” special presented on CNN Headline News Wednesday. Not the least of these was that soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore himself stated when he was Vice President that this treaty would not be submitted to Congress for ratification “until there`s meaningful participation by key developing nations.”

However, there are two other important issues that skeptics raise which the media generally ignore:

• If America participated in Kyoto and met the treaty’s targets, virtually nothing would be accomplished as it pertains to climate change
• Moneys and energies allocated to address global warming could be better spent to solve more pressing international maladies.

With that in mind, Beck interviewed Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg, and asked this pivotal question that Gore and his sycophant followers never want answered:

Video Clip: Real (3 MB) or Windows (2.5MB), plus MP3 (1 MB)

If you missed it last night, Glenn Beck’s skeptical program about anthropogenic global warming, “Exposed: The Climate of Fear,” aired on CNN Headline News.

In it, Beck skewered many of the misnomers advanced by global warming alarmists, especially soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore (full transcript available here).

 

Video (3:05): Real (2.28 MB) or Windows (1.90 MB), plus MP3 (2.83 MB).

One particularly delicious segment occurred early in the program as Beck presented the facts about the Kyoto Protocol that few on the left care to recall, especially former Vice President Gore:

The May 1 Variety reported that Warner Independent Pictures has snapped up the domestic distribution rights to Leonardo DiCaprio’s "documentary" "11th Hour," with Warner Brothers Pictures International scooping the overseas rights. The supposed documentary is produced and narrated by the former teen idol turned environmental activist, and based on what he said at a Natural Resources Defense Gala that I blogged about here at Newsbusters, the “message won’t be diluted by our having to yell over oil-company-funded ‘scientists’ .” It will be another so-called “documentary” disguised as propaganda (docuganda) like “An Inconvenient Truth” that is portrayed as legitimate evidence of anthropogenic global warming. Who needs to waste time endlessly debating AGW, when a slickly packaged promotional movie can change more minds? Variety describes the film:

Docu (sic) explores what it will take for humans to make a difference ecologically before it is too late. A variety of leading scientists, thinkers and leaders are interviewed in the film, including Stephen Hawking, former CIA topper James Woolsey and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

The reader is formally cautioned to prepare his or herself for an alternate reality. You have been warned.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked to find the New York Times asking the following question on a Sunday morning:

But is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?

Is this possibly a sea change in media coverage on this issue, or just an olive branch cynically tossed to create the illusion of balance?

Regardless of the answer, although Andrew C. Revkin’s “Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?” fell short of exposing all the hypocrisies concerning this matter, it was nonetheless surprising to see a Times writer offer the following opinions about such a controversial and polarizing subject (emphasis added throughout, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, England’s fabulous paper the Financial Times has been doing an extraordinary job exposing the scam that is carbon credits, exhibiting an honesty which America’s media sorely lack.

On Friday, FT published another article about this travesty (h/t Glenn Reynolds) which is also almost guaranteed to be ignored by U.S. press outlets far more concerned with glorifying folks like Al Gore, Sheryl Crow, and Laurie David.

In this report, FT exposed how recommendations from the British government bilked companies interested in offsetting carbon emissions out of huge sums of money by advising them to purchase what turned out to be “worthless” (emphasis added throughout):

While scientists in Great Britain try to get the documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” edited to fit their agenda as reported by NewsBusters, Swedish television will air the unedited program Friday.

As NewsBusters reported about this documentary when it was first broadcast in England last month ("Swindle" video available here, emphasis added):

With American media falling all over themselves in unbridled adoration for soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore while they generate totally unwarranted hysteria over climate change, it seems impossible to imagine a televised documentary debunking the junk science surrounding this issue.

This raises an obvious question:

This is really hysterical: a group of scientists has sent a letter to the producer of the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” (video available here) demanding that changes be made to the film before the DVD version is released.

Yet, despite the egregious errors and factual misstatements made by soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore in his schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” no such call occurred when it was released on DVD.

Why the double standard?

Regardless of the obvious hypocrisy, the Associated Press reported (h/t NB member Sick-n-Tired, emphasis added throughout):

It’s conceivable that years from now, America’s media will be reporting one of the biggest frauds in history: the idea that a wealthy person, for instance, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, can purchase “carbon credits” to offset his lavish lifestyle making him quote “carbon neutral.”

Given the media’s love affair with the former vice president as well as advancing man-made global warming hysteria, few American press members have dared to expose this hoax for what it is.

However, on Wednesday, an impeccably reputable publication, the Financial Times, published an article that is a deliciously inconvenient truth for folks like Gore, Laurie David, Sheryl Crow, and all the rest of the alarmists that are actively involved in what years from now will be considered one of the biggest scams ever (emphasis added throughout):

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is training people to give his global warming slide presentation at places like “schools, Rotary clubs and nursing homes” around the country.

I kid you not.

As reported by USA Today (emphasis added throughout):

Meet, no, not Al Gore, but Gary Dunham, 71, a grandfather from Texas who was the first of 1,000 Americans Gore trained to deliver his Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth slide show to schools, Rotary clubs and nursing homes around the nation.

Scared yet? Well, brace yourselves, for it’s much worse than you can imagine:

In addition to asking ABC's chief climate alarmist Sam Champion about the snow-laden wind farm he surveyed today and what it says about "global warming," NewsBusters would love to hear the "Good Morning America" personality chalk 100 trapped sealing boats in Canada up to Americans who use too much fossil fuel and thereby warm the planet.

Here's just a few news sources covering the story:

Canadian seal hunters trapped by ice (BusinessWeek, April 19)

As a Canadian environmental consultant, Dr. Timothy F. Ball isn’t a household name in America...yet.

However, his writings, speeches, and television appearances concerning the science and lack thereof surrounding anthropogenic global warming make him a distinguished member of the growing list of skeptics around the world desperately and passionately fighting to inject some facts into this contentious debate.

On Thursday, I received an e-mail message from Dr. Ball addressing the dangers inherent in the current global warming alarmism being exhibited by the media and folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore, and how “incompetent” and possibly “malevolent” scientists are unfortunately aiding in the misinformation campaign.

What follows is a partial text of his e-mail message presented with his permission (emphasis added):

Mother Nature must have a wicked sense of humor. She forced ABC's Sam Champion to report on anti-global warming initiative . . . . while standing in a field of snow in late April.

Champion was there as part of Good Morning America's "Planet Earth 2007" segment, in which reporters chimed in from around the globe on various environmental initiatives. Diane Sawyer [badly alarmed by a warm spell in January] introduced the segment with a little bit of enviro-alarmist cheerleading, declaring it was "good news" that as per a recent Stanford poll 94% are ready to make a change to help the planet and that 73% are already taking steps to reduce energy consumption.

A few weeks ago as the world awaited the release of the most recent report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, some well-known scientists were quoted as saying that the media’s sensationalistic coverage of the issue was interfering with a reasoned discussion on the topic.

Their thinking was that the more the press and Hollywoodans suggest that the problem is so dire that the world is coming to an end, the more likely the public will develop a sense of futility about the issue, and just begin to ignore it.

A fine example of exactly what these scientists were talking about was published in the most recent issue of New York magazine (h/t radio host Mike Church). In fact, Kurt Andersen’s article sounded such hyperbolic alarm that he had the gall to suggest that “fat, spoiled, 21st-century Americans” only have a 50-50 chance of possessing the “requisite gumption and discipline” to solve the problem (emphasis added throughout, apologies in advance for Andersen’s vulgarity):

Are those combustibles, potables, and sharp objects still in a safe place? Good, because the Silly Saturday Snowstorm Stories continue.

As reported Saturday morning by the Associated Press (emphasis added):

WILMINGTON, N.Y. -- Skiers unfurled a protest banner in April snow on Whiteface Mountain on Saturday to kick off a nationwide day of demonstrations aimed at drawing attention to global warming.

The skiers fear long-term temperature increases promise trouble for native plants, wildlife and people in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York state.

Why is this funny? Well, because a massive snowstorm is heading directly to this area threatening to drop more of the white stuff ever seen in this part of the country in April. (Update: Winter storm warning issued for Wilmington, NY.) As reported by AccuWeather (emphasis added):

Don’t remove combustibles, potables, and sharp objects from safe stowage just yet, sports fans, for the news this morning continues to provide chuckles that could prove dangerous to computer equipment and other consumer electronics.

And I'm loving it!

There is supposed to be a global warming rally in Salina, Kansas, on Saturday. However -- as if totally on cue! -- a record snowstorm for this late in the season is threatening to turn this green celebration white!

You really can't make this stuff up!

As comically reported by the Salina Journal (emphasis added throughout):