Propaganda, Self-Censorship and Climate Change. Think the world needs an alternative to corporate media?
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Truthout and keep independent journalism strong. A stump from a pine tree cut down after being attacked by the mountain pine beetle in east of Missoula, Montana, July 7, 2011. Some scientists are increasingly worried that as the warming accelerates, trees themselves could become climate-change victims on a massive scale.
(Photo: Josh Haner / The New York Times) Scientist Bruce Melton argues that it's time for the environmental movement and environmental journalism to state the full truth - loudly and often - to counter denialist propaganda. That would entail using the four "poison" words: climate change and global warming. Climate change messaging is changing these days. Contrast this with about 97 percent of climate scientists believing Earth is warming and caused by man. Why did this happen? The story has changed today, but only a little. Frontline: Did the Climate Deniers Win? On Tuesday Night, PBS's Frontline aired an hour-long special on the climate saga over the past four years—focused centrally on the skeptics themselves, whom PBS's John Hockenberry depicts as victorious in stopping any policy action.
Touring Heartland Institute conferences, hearing plentiful sound bites from the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell, we learn that these folks are basically high-fiving right now as the presidential campaigns studiously ignore the climate issue. And yes, they really do think the science is on their side, and that they're winning on the intellectual merits. Not that Hockenberry agrees—one of the gems of "Climate of Doubt" is a deft explanation of how climate skeptics come up with the bizarre assertion that the planet hasn't been warming lately. Hockenberry then steps in with a wonderful analogy: Skeptics, he explains, are "going down the up escalator.
" But what if you change the endpoints of the analysis? Climat: après le maigre accord de Doha, les négociations tournées vers 2015. David Attenborough: US politicians duck climate change because of cost. One of the world's leading naturalists has accused US politicians of ducking the issue of climate change because of the economic cost of tackling it and warned that it would take a terrible example of extreme weather to wake people up to the dangers of global warming.
Speaking just days after the subject of climate change failed to get a mention in the US presidential debates for the first time in 24 years, Sir David Attenborough told the Guardian: "[It] does worry me that most powerful nation in the world, North America, denies what the rest of us can see very clearly [on climate change]. I don't know what you do about that. It's easier to deny. " Asked what was needed to wake people up, the veteran broadcaster famous for series such as Life and Planet Earth said: "Disaster. It's a terrible thing to say, isn't it? Neither Barack Obama or Mitt Romney mentioned climate change in three TV debates, despite a summer of record temperatures and historic drought in the US.
Climate scientists are losing the public debate on global warming.