History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.
Recently Al Gore addressed a gathering of national media ethicists at Middle Tennessee State University where he asserted that a lack of action on the global warming problem was due to media bias. He contended that "more than half of the mainstream media have rejected the scientific consensus implicitly — and I say 'rejected,' perhaps it's the wrong word. They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen … balance as bias."
Inconveniently for Gore a new study by the Media Research Center shows that the ex-Vice President’s charge simply is not true. They looked at 115 stories concerning global warming presented on the morning news shows of CBS, NBC, and ABC finding that only four, three percent, made any mention at all of disagreement with Gore’s extremist view of the issue.
And, it is not as though there is no credible dissent out there. An example can be found in Newsweek’s April 16th International edition which published an essay by Richard Lindzen the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This scientific expert wrote that "Recently many people have said that the Earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe." Lindzen also asserted that Roger Revelle Gore’s supposed mentor mentioned so reverently in the film An Inconvenient Truth believes that “the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.”
Speaking of myths, there seems to be accumulating evidence that planting more trees in northern latitudes will not reduce greenhouse gases and may increase them. So much for President Bush's "billion trees" tree socialism.
I have no idea what is the best way to go. Once the appropriate incentives are employed, is the best way to determine that.
But he sure as hell wasn't saying what Halderman quotes Lindzen as claiming. Once I discovered what Lindzen has done here I have lost all confidence in his integrity as a scientist until I encounter some evidence that exonerates him.
Geoffrey Allan Plauche -
5/6/2007
It's funny that ethanol is far overshadowing methane, considering Revelle's recommendation.
My wife, however, expressed a concern to me about the strong volatility of methane and its dangerous fumes.
Geoffrey Allan Plauche -
5/6/2007
Not that I believe it without proof, but environmentalists always tell me it is from green energy and he pays off his carbon footprint.
Gus diZerega -
5/5/2007
The story about Revelle changing hois views appears to be a myth, to use a nice word. Even if it is true - and the evidence as you will see if you read this post is that it is utterly false - Revelle died of a heart attack in 1991. Using him to debunk 16 years of research after he died is a sign of ignorance or dishonesty. I can think of no alternative explanation, and my opinion of Dr. Lindzen is not rising. But if you want to check this all out, your googling for evidence won't work unless you spell Lindzen's name right.
Revelle's daughter wrote a rebuttal of these inaccurate or dishoinest statements in the Washington Post. (Sources below). The rest of this post is from her piece till you get to the links.
"Contrary to George Will's "Al Gore's Green Guilt" {op-ed, Sept. 3} Roger Revelle - our father and the 'father' of the greenhouse effect - remained deeply concerned about global warming until his death in July 1991. That same year he wrote: 'The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.' Will and other critics of Sen. Al Gore have seized these words to suggest that Revelle, who was also Gore's professor and mentor, renounced his belief in global warming.
"Nothing could be farther from the truth.
"When Revelle inveighed against 'drastic' action, he was using that adjective in its literal sense - measures that would cost trillions of dollars. Up until his death, he thought that extreme measures were premature. But he continued to recommend immediate prudent steps to mitigate and delay climatic warming. Some of those steps go well beyond anything Gore or other national politicians have yet to advocate.
"Revelle never failed to point out that there are both established facts and remaining uncertainties about greenhouse warming.
"'We're clearly going to have a rise in temperature in the next 100 years because of ... greenhouse gasses ... {but} we don't know how big it is going to be,' Revelle said in a videotaped interview with University of California at San Diego biologist Paul Saltman in December 1990. 'We can't say whether the temperature rise will be 2 or 10 degrees.'
"While avoiding the word 'catastrophe,' Revelle argued that the long-term effect of the predicted warmingwould be 'quite serious because of the effect on water resources. ... We're likely to get a large continental area, particularly in the interior of the North American continent, where it gets drier and drier and drier.' He also thought that a small probability of an extremely adverse event, a 10-degree temperature rise, warranted serious action now.
"So in recent speeches and writings, he recommended several kinds of action, including:
"Change the mix of fossil fuels to use more methane and less coal and oil. "Combustion of methane produces about twice as much energy per gram of carbon dioxide as does the combustion of coal, and about 50 percent more than combustion of oil. It is also a clean, relatively non-polluting fuel. We need to expand greatly and to conserve the world reserves of methane, particularly those of the United States." (American Association for the Advancement of Science, February 1990.)
"Conserve energy. Revelle advocated conserving energy by using the price mechanism (the polluter pays principle) - for example, by increasing the tax on gasoline (Cosmos, 1991). In private, he often spoke of a $1.00 a gallon tax as eminently reasonable, not 'drastic.' Who was the last national politician to advocate a $1.00 gasoline tax?
"Use non-fossil energy sources. In the Saltman interview, Revelle reiterated: 'I want to see us cut down on use of fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - especially coal ... a nasty, dangerous substance.' He advocated instead nuclear energy, which he argued has been safely generated in France because of good engineers and a single design. Again, the switch from coal to nuclear energy was, to Revelle, not a "drastic" step. But who was the last national politician to speak a good word for nuclear energy? Or a bad word for coal? Revelle also recommended that we develop biomass energy from trees, plants and agricultural wastes.
"Sequester carbon in trees. Revelle noted favorably President Bush's proposal to plant a billion trees a year for the next 10 years, which could accumulate substantial amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Revelle would have been happy to see public spending of several billion dollars annually to promote tree growth worldwide.
"All of us remember our father's frustration at the White House award ceremony in November 1990, when he received the National Medal of Science. Told he would sit next to John Sununu, a well known advocate of the 'wait and see' approach, he was delighted at the prospect of bending Sununu's ear. When Sununu failed to appear, Revelle was disappointed, saying, 'I had hoped to tell him what a dim view I take of the administration's environmental policies.'
"Roger Revelle proposed a range of approaches to address global warming. Inaction was not one of them. He agreed with the adage 'look before you leap,' but he never said 'sit on your hands.'
The writer was assisted in the preparation of this article by other members of her family: her mother, Ellen, her sisters, Anne Shumway and Mary Paci, and her brother, William Roger Revelle."
Just to support your point here, the other day I heard a French expert on meteorology, identified as a socialist and advisor to the French socialist party, say pretty much the same as Linzen. Unfortunately I forget his name but he was interviewed on the new French world wide TV news service, France24. He said that the sea was only rising by 2 millimeters per year, which was not very significant, and that global warming, such as it, is mainly natural in its causes and is not in the main man-made. He claimed that there was no reason for panic, yet that there were problems to be dealt with in the future but coolly, rationally and looking towards the long-term, rather than on a short-term emergency basis.
I find it hard to believe in global warming given the rather chilly months of March and April that we went through here in Israel this year, quite chilly compared with established averages for those months. Further, the US too seems to have had chilly weather in March & April of this year. The NE of the US had some heavy snowfall in April this year, if I'm not mistaken. At least in March, if not in April.
Anthony Gregory -
5/3/2007
Al Gore should stop using up thrirty times as much energy resources as the average American, or just shut up.
Geoffrey Allan Plauche -
5/3/2007
What...balance is bias now? Is there no limit to how low he will stoop, to how much he will lie, in order to further his agenda?
While there may be a consensus on anthropogenic global warming, there is no consensus on all aspects of it - such as how much, what the possible effects will be, etc. And, of course, that depends on how you define consensus. Is it simply majority? Or must it be unanimous?
Gore also neglects to tell people just how far from the consensus his own claims are. For instance, he exaggerates likely sea level rise by 2000% (20X) over the "consensus" represented by the IPCC climate report summary.
