Global warming 'over-hyped'?[/

[Logan13]

Global warming 'over-hyped'?
Washington Times
12/07/06

Sen. James M. Inhofe, in one of his final actions as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, yesterday held a hearing to investigate whether press accounts have "over-hyped" predictions of global warming.
"The media often fails to distinguish between predictions and what is actually being observed on the Earth today," the Oklahoma Republican said. "Rather than focus on the hard science of global warming, the media has instead become advocates for hyping scientifically unfounded climate alarmism."
Mr. Inhofe will lose control of the environmental panel next month when Democrats assume the Senate majority, and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California will assume the gavel. She promises extensive hearings on global warming, and yesterday chastised Mr. Inhofe for scrutinizing global-warming coverage.
"In a free society, in what is the greatest democracy in the world, I do not believe it is proper to put pressure on the media to please a particular Senate committee view, one way or the other," she said.
The two are polar opposites when it comes to climate change -- Mr. Inhofe has called global warming "the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people," while Mrs. Boxer has advocated efforts to significantly reduce greenhouse gases.
Mr. Inhofe, vilified by environmental groups for his position, said yesterday he fears "poorly conceived policy decisions may result from the media's over-hyped reporting."
The hearing was an opportunity for Mr. Inhofe to strike back at his critics, citing "overwhelmingly one-sided" reports on CBS, ABC and CNN and by Time, the Associated Press and Reuters.
He accused reporters, including former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, of failing to interview climate-change skeptics, and of omitting scientific data that contradicts global-warming theories. He also said reporters are motivated by money, quoting a French geophysicist who says alarmism "has become a very lucrative business."
Dan Gainor, director of the Business and Media Institute, testified that 30 years ago reporters tried to convince the public "we would all freeze to death" in a predicted new ice age.
"In more than 100 years, the major media have warned us of at least four separate climate cataclysms," he said, adding there is a "media obsession" with former Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
Australian climate-change researcher Robert M. Carter said the press employs "Frisbee science" that is "invariably alarmist in nature."
Naomi Oreskes, a professor of science studies at the University of California at San Diego, told the panel yesterday that while scientists still argue over the details, "there is a consensus" the climate is changing.
David Deming, a geologist at the University of Oklahoma, disagreed.
"There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty," he said. "It would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria."
Mrs. Boxer cited comments from oil and bank executives who say global warming is a real occurrence, and promised Congress can "do what it takes to change course and protect the future for our children and grandchildren."

[Logan13]

Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming

"The Public Has Been Vastly Misinformed," NCPA's Deming Tells Senate Committee

12/6/2006

Contact: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6481 or [email protected]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

"There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed."

The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

/© 2006 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

[Kärnfysikern]

I totaly agree that media has lost all its sense when it comes to global warming. They are overhyping the most uncertain predictions.

[Logan13]

I totaly agree that media has lost all its sense when it comes to global warming. They are overhyping the most uncertain predictions.

I honestly believe that most of the media could not give a shit about global warming, they just want to sell their newspapers and such.

[Kärnfysikern]

I honestly believe that most of the media could not give a shit about global warming, they just want to sell their newspapers and such.

yupp as with all other big stories, they milk it untill they have squeesed every drop out of it and then go on and blow up another issue.

Something is the big story for a couple of weeks and then media goes on and everyone forgets.

People are shortsighted and stupid and like to read about bad things. The media is expert at taking advantage of that. The bad thing is that nothing ever gets done this way.