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There is climate change censorship – and it’s the deniers who dish it out
George Monbiot, The Guardian
The drafting of reports by the world’s pre-eminent group of climate scientists is an odd process. For months scientists contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tussle over the evidence. Nothing gets published unless it achieves consensus. This means that the panel’s reports are conservative – even timid. It also means that they are as trustworthy as a scientific document can be.
Then, when all is settled among the scientists, the politicians sweep in and seek to excise from the summaries anything that threatens their interests.
This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the rightwing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is conspiring to exaggerate the science. ..
In a recent interview, Martin Durkin, who made Channel 4’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed he was subject to “invisible censorship”. He seems to have forgotten that he had 90 minutes of prime-time television to expound his theory that climate change is a green conspiracy.
What did this censorship amount to? Complaints about one of his programmes had been upheld by the Independent Television Commission. It found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part”. This, apparently, makes him a martyr. ..
(10 Apr 2007)
Also at Common Dreams
A Tale of Three Interviews
Gavin Schmidt, Real Climate
The release of the IPCC Working Group II summary report (on climate change impacts) lead to a large number of stories on climate change in the media and, inevitably, lots of requests for media appearances for climate scientists on the journalists’ Rolodex. On the same day, there was a short article in Science on the ‘framing’ of science communication.
I was asked to do three TV appearances to discuss the upcoming report: CNN (World News Tonight), Bloomberg Media (Peter Cook’s Money and Politics) and the Weather Channel. Each interview was very different – CNN and the Weather Channel pre-taped them, Bloomberg was live. CNN’s interview was from a news reporter who knew the basics, who asked questions that she was interested in and ended up with answers that were comprehensible at the level of the average viewer. ..
The Bloomberg producers (who come with a very ‘Wall Street’ focus/attitude) however, still see this as a partisan political debate and while they had a brief factual intro from their reporter, they followed it with a spokesman from CEI, Christopher Horner – author of the “Incorrect guide to climate change” (I’ve possibly got the book title slightly wrong), – and then me. ..
(9 Apr 2007)
Labor Confronts Global Warming
Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith, Common Dreams
The reality of global warming and its catastrophic consequences are today beyond debate. But American labor is caught in an internal stalemate among those who fear job loss from efforts to deal with global warming, those who have not considered global warming an important union issue, and those who see the climate crisis as a call for immediate action and an opportunity for sustainable economic development. ..
It’s not every day that employees risk the wrath of their superiors to blow the whistle on acts of public irresponsibility. So it must have been something important that led union representatives for more than 10,000 workers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to petition Congress to take immediate action against global warming. Their warning should serve as a clarion call not only to the Congressional committee to whom it was addressed, but to American workers and their unions. They wrote:
We, the undersigned, are Presidents of 22 Local Unions representing over 10,000 United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) environmental engineers, environmental scientists, environmental protection specialists and support staff. We are writing to protest the lack of progress in addressing global warming…
… A long standing tradition of organizational solidarity has sometimes meant that the immediate sectoral interests of member unions has trumped broader class interests. It’s a genuine conundrum. After all, the reality is that workers join unions to protect their jobs and immediate economic interests and unions join federations to further their organizational interests through mutual support. American labor’s position on global warming has been a tragic case in point of a failure to resolve this tension. ..
Some unions, however, are now seeking an approach to global warming that reflects the needs of all workers, indeed all people, for protection against this menace. For example, a number of unions are working with the Cornell Global Labor Institute on a “North American Labor Assembly on Climate Crisis: Building a Global Movement for Clean Energy” May 7 and 8, 2007 in New York City. ..
Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello and Brendan Smith are the co-founders of Global Labor Strategies, a resource center providing research and analysis on globalization, trade and labor issues.
(11 Apr 2007)
Why I think Diesel’s global warming adverts call for a boycott
Mel Young, New Consumer
Diesel makes me sick. The latest advertising campaign by the fashion giant encourages people to keep up with their current lifestyles despite the consequences of global warming – and it’s puerile in the extreme.
The accompanying video starts by asking ‘are you global warming ready?’ It then goes on to show images of the effects of global warming and talks about the increase in carbon dioxide being a bad thing. Fine. Then it suddenly says ‘hold on, global warming cannot stop our lives’ and flashes images of sleek models in trendy jeans with swish watches against a background of skyscrapers drowning in water and so on.
The message is very clear to me. Global warming may be here but, to hell with it, let’s get on with the way we are living and bugger the consequences. So, if you are selfish, ignorant person who just doesn’t care about anything then go and buy Diesel goods. If you are sane, then I think you should stop buying Diesel goods and tell everyone else to organise a boycott. ..
(5 Mar 2007)
ConocoPhillips: The anti-Exxon
Marc Gunther, Fortune
The Texas-based oil company breaks with the other U.S. majors to support mandatory national regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
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Here’s yet another sign that the debate over climate change has shifted decisively: ConocoPhillips today becomes the first U.S.-based oil company to support mandatory national regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
In so doing, ConocoPhillips breaks ranks with the two biggest U.S. oil companies – ExxonMobil (Charts) and Chevron (Charts) – as well as with the Bush administration. With revenues of $188 billion in 2006, ConocoPhillips (Charts) operates in 40 nations around the world from its headquarters in Bush country – Houston, Texas.
James J. Mulva, the chairman and chief executive of ConocoPhillips, announced the change at a meeting with reporters in Washington, where congressional hearings or industry forums on climate issues are happening almost daily. It’s become almost impossible for big companies to stay out of the fray.
Mulva said no particular event caused ConocoPhillips to step forward. “We believe that the science is quite compelling,” he said.
(11 April 2007)
