Environment

For just forty years now, the world has officially been doomed to destruction. Sure, we've always had religious cult leaders pronouncing the death of civilization due to the sin-of-the-moment but 1972 represented a different kind of doom and gloom: a wholly secular kind pretending to be scientific.

Today the intellectual descendants of the people who produced the book The Limits to Growth are still given credibility. It's fun taking a look at what they predicted:

UC Berkeley professor Richard Muller has become a media darling now that he believes in global warming as a result of a study he led on the subject funded by the Koch brothers.

With this in mind, CNN's Fareed Zakaria must have been shocked by what Muller told him Sunday after he asked his guest, "Were [the Kochs] disappointed by the results of your research or have they asked for their money back?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

So eager are the shills at the George Soros-funded far-left website Think Progress to find evidence of global warming that on Thursday they falsely blamed melting street lights in Stillwater, Oklahoma, on the heat.

As originally reported by TP's Stephen Lacey:

Contaminated water, health problems, and now … earthquakes? Fracking, a way to get natural gas out of layers deep within the earth, has been blamed for it all and the liberal news media have been consistently against the method, rarely showing supporters or mentioning any upside of the process.

Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking, is a technique used to get natural gas out of the ground. It’s not new technology — the first use of hydraulic fracturing was actually in 1947 (according to a textbook on Rock Mechanics), but this process has come under fire from the left and the media in the past two years especially.

The Olympic Games, which begin this week, is an exhibition of the sportsmanship, teamwork, and the competitive spirit that make sports so enjoyable. But for many in the media, sports is just another excuse to engage in divisive political commentary. The sports media transform an apolitical past-time into a forum for their own politics.

Progressives have actively attempted to remake the Olympics into a celebration of their own political ideals. From calls to make the summer Games “a forum for the promotion of LGBT rights,” to criticism of the International Olympic Committee as “the 1 percent of the 1 percent,” lefties care less about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat than using the world’s biggest sporting event to pound for their pet causes.

I suppose the Associated Press deserves some credit for what appears to be a grudging acknowledgment that opponents of the oil and gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, aka "fracking," "sometimes mislead the public." Also, Kevin Begos's story does a good job of letting Josh Fox, producer of the fundamentally dishonest documentary "Gasland," hang himself with his own dodgy, reality-denying words.

But the credit pretty much ends there. Begos's report is a largely a study in false equivalence (y'know, everybody exaggerates -- except, Kevin, opponents do so serially while proponents do so rarely) and psychobabble (y'know, everyone uses "facts" they like and ignores the one that don't -- except, Kevin, for the inconvenient reality that opponents' "facts" are largely falsehoods). The problem is best exemplified in the final excerpted paragraph which follows the jump (bolds are mine):

The debate over natural gas extraction continues, but now celebrities are joining the ranks of left-wing environmentalists to try to prevent drilling.

The left claims that hydraulic fracturing, more commonly know as fracking, contaminated the water in Pennsylvania and Colorado, despite University of Texas  at Austin researchers who found “no evidence” of that. Small town support for fracking is rarely talked about in the media.

At a screening of anti-fracking documentary “Gasland” in June, Alec Baldwin even claimed that fracking “causes cancer or can potentially cause cancer to an elevated number of people,” a rumor circulated around far-left sites like Daily Kos and AlterNet.

For some reason, being an actor in Hollywood makes you an environmental expert, and now Beatles legend John Lennon’s own son is joining the fray.

The Jurassic Press is missing much in their reporting on the $50 billion bailout of General Motors (GM).  The Press is open channeling for President Barack Obama - allowing him to frame the bailout exactly as he wishes in the 2012 Presidential election. 

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.”  And the Press is acting as his stenographers.  An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt.  The Press is at every turn covering up - rather than covering - the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

With the scorching heat and the infamous derecho that left D.C. in the dark on June 29, it seems perfectly logical for folks in the Washington area to blame "global warming" as we all bake in the 100 degree heat. In fact, The Washington Post conducted a poll that showed that a majority of Americans believe that world temperatures are rising and that it can be remedied by government action to decrease energy consumption.  

However, the reason why this story was buried at the bottom of the page A13 today may well be because a whopping 7 out of 10 of those poll opposed hiking taxes on gasoline and other fossil fuels.

Wednesday's CBS This Morning hyped a "groundbreaking" new report from federal government scientists that claims "the first-ever statistical connection between extreme weather and man-made climate change." Correspondent Wyatt Andrews spotlighted how the study "found that man-made heat made the Texas drought roughly 20 times more likely."

Andrews also hinted a connection between climate change and a recent heat wave, even as he explained that "the biggest reason for the record heat is the transition...from the La Nina weather pattern...to this year's warmer pattern, El Nino."

On Tuesday night, all three network evening newscasts ran with stories on a newly released government report blaming man-made climate change for recent extreme weather. ABC's World News led the charge, as anchor Diane Sawyer sounded the alarm: "Hot planet. The world is heating up. And for the first time, a U.S. Government-backed report ties that searing heat, those epic storms, to man-made global warming."

Sawyer cited a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a "major alert about the speed of climate change on this planet" and wondered if the study represented "a tipping point" on the issue. Turning to weather editor Sam Champion, Sawyer hoped there was "still time to do something." Champion proclaimed: "I would say is, now is the time we start limiting man-made greenhouse gases if we're starting to see that that is exactly what other studies are showing."

The Jurassic Press was in full-throated ObamaChorus mode in reporting on General Motors (GM)’s allegedly strong June sales.

Very few failed to receive the sheet music.

Now that Colorado is enduring one of the worst wildfires in its history, liberals are pointing to man-made global warming as the culprit. On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Anne Thompson hyped the "dire" and lasting impact of the fires on the environment and pointed toward man-made global warming as the probable cause.

The "increasingly bigger" fires, Thompson said, are "Leading some to question if this wildfire season is worse because of climate change." One of her experts, a professor from the University of Arizona, proclaimed that “we won’t see these forests coming back in our lifetime or even our grandchildren’s life times.”  [Video coming soon.  MP3 audio here.]

If it weren't so distortive of the political system, liberal media bias would be downright hilarious, particularly when it's manifested in journalists' ability to turn on a dime and engage in rhetoric that they previously condemn when used by others. 

You can't help but smile after reading Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein's attempt to blame a few windstorms and hot weather on global warming (oops) climate change despite repeated proclamations during colder weather that "climate is not weather." None of that matters to Borenstein who procedes to write nearly 900 words of pure speculation as he warns us of the dangers of ManBearPig.

CNN's Carol Costello told guest Bill Nye "The Science Guy" on Monday that climate change skeptics are "politicizing this issue" and "winning." Of course, the two did not admit to the possibility of man-made climate change believers doing the exact same thing.

"But the people who are politicizing this issue, they seem to be winning because not much is being done on the issue of climate change even though President Obama promised that, you know, back in the day, 2008," Costello said. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

For 20 years, the United Nations has warned that humanity will soon face doom if it fails to adopt “sustainable development” policies and protect the earth’s environment. However, U.N. officials seem to think the rules they seek to establish for everyone else are not applicable to them, as their behavior at environmental conferences shows.

A much-hyped 1992 environmental conference in Rio produced a plan called “Agenda 21” which detailed a strategy to promote sustainability. Like many other U.N. initiatives, Agenda 21 has proven to be all talk and no action.

Here’s more proof that the media cynically use the environment as a hammer to whack Republicans: the non-existent response of ABC and muted comment by The New York Times about Obama’s refusal to attend a major environmental conference, contrasted with their fury 10 years earlier over a similar decision by President George W. Bush.

President Obama is not attending the United Nations Environmental Conference on Sustainable Development, informally known as Rio+20, scheduled from June 20 to June 22. Rio+20 seeks “to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges.”

As the science behind the global warming fear machine continues to disintigrate, the many enviro-activist hangers-on who have made hundreds of millions scaring their fellow humans are beginning to realize something: while many politicians like to pretend  in public that they are in favor of stopping the supposed crisis, almost none of them actually ever bother to do much of anything about it. The realization comes in conjunction with the "Rio+20" conference, yet another lavish conference to promote climate alarmism which this time is having trouble getting world leaders to attend:

At the rate things are going, it may be that the list of leading West Virginia Democrats attending the party's convention in Charlotte is going to be shorter than the list of those who aren't.

The Associated Press reported the following in an unbylined item this evening in a terse three-paragraph squib with some pretty amusing attempts at impact-minimizing verbiage (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

It may be a fluke, but it seems too coincidental. What it may be is a leading indicator that the establishment press and international advocates of global wealth redistribution have figured out that "global warming" and "climate change," its deceptive substitute term, have lost their luster thanks to a lack of scientific rigor, scandals, and deception.

What I'm referring to is the fact that in reviewing three Associated Press items which would appear to have been opportunities to bring up the topic of "warming" and "climate" in connection with the U.N.'s latest "earth summit," none of them contained either word. It seems that "sustainable development," a term which has been around for a while and which basically means "stopping most development regardless of merit," is now the go-to term when one wishes to avoid the aforementioned W-word or C-word.

Since the original “Dallas” debuted in 1978, times have changed. Texas has prospered but the liberal agenda against big oil stayed the same. TNT’s “Dallas” remake introduced the Ewing family feud with a twist, and the rest of the season is set for a showdown: Alternative energy against drilling for oil.

John Ross Ewing, son of the long-time “Dallas” villain J.R. Ewing (played by Larry Hagman), has already discovered a major find of oil on Southfork: the Ewing family’s ranch. He wants to drill it, but his uncle Bobby Ewing opposes drilling on the family land. Of course, he’s portrayed as the bad guy, ruthless, conniving and a “chip off the old block.”

Even after being embarrassed by a series of misleading reports from reporter Ian Urbina in June 2011, the New York Times continues to lash out against hydro-fracking, the process of pumping chemicals and water into shale to extract gas.

Metro reporter Mireya Navarro pumped up on Tuesday a controversy manufactured by environmental opponents of fracking in upstate New York: "Institute’s Gas Drilling Report Leads to Claims of Bias and Concern for a University’s Image."

Effete MSNBC host Chris Hayes, in a new Lean Forward commercial airing on the network, can be seen merrily biking around New York City while lecturing Americans that climate change is "the biggest governing challenge I think we've ever faced."

The cable anchor, who on May 27th infamously said he was "uncomfortable" calling fallen military members "heroes," pranced around the city as his voice-over pontificated: "...The scale and scope of [fighting global warming] is every bit as transformational as the industrial revolution or the transition to the digital age." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The $82 billion auto bailout has been a Crony Socialist nightmare mess. We’re going to lose at least $30 billion on the deal.  And that’s only if the Barack Obama Administration’s math can be trusted - a dicey proposition at best.

The Administration eviscerated two hundred-plus years of bankruptcy law, throwing bond holders over the side to over-reward their United Auto Workers shock force buddies.

General Motors (GM) is cutting undisclosed deals with executives’ wives businesses.And on, and on, and on....Haven’t heard most or all of this?  Not surprising - the Jurassic Press ain’t reporting it.

Justin Gillis, the New York Times' s alarmist environmental reporter, was at it again in a post to the paper's "Green" blog, "Are We Nearing a Planetary Boundary?"

Gillis's preoccupation with the alleged dangers of overpopulation and overuse of natural resources are reminscent of the alarmism created by Paul Erlich's book The Population Bomb, which notoriously predicted in 1968 that 65 millions Americans would die of starvation in the 1970s (more like dieting).

Former Democratic Michigan governor turned Current TV commentator Jennifer Granholm got a much-needed education Sunday about the difference between Mitt Romney's involvement with Bain Capital and President Obama's forays into green energy investment.

"When Bain invested," said George Will on ABC's This Week, "it invests money that it gets voluntarily to be invested. When the president throws a half-billion dollars away on Solyndra, it's money taken away by the police power of the federal government from unwilling taxpayers" (video follows with transcript and commentary)