Post by DEERTRACKS on Jun 7, 2007 5:43:49 GMT -5
Media blackout buries NASA chief's comments on global warming
Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
June 6, 2007
The mainstream news media are being accused of ignoring the many scientists who share NASA administrator Michael Griffin's skepticism of whether manmade global warming is a real threat to the planet.
The NASA chief recently drew criticism for telling National Public Radio he doubted global warming is "a problem we must wrestle with" and argued it is "arrogant" to believe we know how to control the climate and what the optimal climate would be. Robert Ferguson, executive director of the Science and Public Policy Institute, says a number of reputable climatologists, geologists, and physicists are backing Griffin's comments -- but one would never learn that from the mainstream media.
"We polled a bunch of scientists from around the world [about] what Griffin had said, and got a large number of positive comments back, very rational comments," Ferguson notes. "We did a press release on this, and as far as I know, the mainstream press hasn't picked it up at all. They just simply don't care."
That press release, distributed on June 1, documents supporting comments from scientists in Australia, Canada, and the states of Kansas, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The latter is a Harvard physicist who characterized Griffin's comments as "sensible" and encouraged the NASA administrator not to buy-in to "cheap and soft pseudoscientific propaganda such as the 'fight against climate change.'"
Ferguson says while there is consensus the atmosphere's carbon dioxide concentration has risen since the Industrial Revolution and global temperatures have risen a bit since the mid-1800s, there is a wide spectrum of opinion on whether that rise in CO2 caused the rise in temperature. He laments that that fact is not being reported by media outlets, and implies they have caved to such global warming proponents as former vice president Al Gore.
"What's happened is [that] Gore has demanded, and some of the people in the mainstream press have demanded, that to even give voice to any [so-called] 'skepticism' -- which is the essence of science; how it moves forward -- is to harm the world," says the Institute spokesman. "So when you put it in more religious terms of evil versus good ... it's sort of like they're saying, 'If you even listen to Satan's voice, then this is evil.'"
Ferguson says by vilifying global warming skeptics with ad-hominem attacks and equating them with Holocaust deniers, many in the media are trying to convince Americans that such skeptics are "wackos outside of the consensus of science or bought and paid for by industry."
Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
June 6, 2007
The mainstream news media are being accused of ignoring the many scientists who share NASA administrator Michael Griffin's skepticism of whether manmade global warming is a real threat to the planet.
The NASA chief recently drew criticism for telling National Public Radio he doubted global warming is "a problem we must wrestle with" and argued it is "arrogant" to believe we know how to control the climate and what the optimal climate would be. Robert Ferguson, executive director of the Science and Public Policy Institute, says a number of reputable climatologists, geologists, and physicists are backing Griffin's comments -- but one would never learn that from the mainstream media.
"We polled a bunch of scientists from around the world [about] what Griffin had said, and got a large number of positive comments back, very rational comments," Ferguson notes. "We did a press release on this, and as far as I know, the mainstream press hasn't picked it up at all. They just simply don't care."
That press release, distributed on June 1, documents supporting comments from scientists in Australia, Canada, and the states of Kansas, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The latter is a Harvard physicist who characterized Griffin's comments as "sensible" and encouraged the NASA administrator not to buy-in to "cheap and soft pseudoscientific propaganda such as the 'fight against climate change.'"
Ferguson says while there is consensus the atmosphere's carbon dioxide concentration has risen since the Industrial Revolution and global temperatures have risen a bit since the mid-1800s, there is a wide spectrum of opinion on whether that rise in CO2 caused the rise in temperature. He laments that that fact is not being reported by media outlets, and implies they have caved to such global warming proponents as former vice president Al Gore.
"What's happened is [that] Gore has demanded, and some of the people in the mainstream press have demanded, that to even give voice to any [so-called] 'skepticism' -- which is the essence of science; how it moves forward -- is to harm the world," says the Institute spokesman. "So when you put it in more religious terms of evil versus good ... it's sort of like they're saying, 'If you even listen to Satan's voice, then this is evil.'"
Ferguson says by vilifying global warming skeptics with ad-hominem attacks and equating them with Holocaust deniers, many in the media are trying to convince Americans that such skeptics are "wackos outside of the consensus of science or bought and paid for by industry."
