The Progress Report: Mon, 3 Apr 2006

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Mon, 3 Apr 2006 10:54:56 -0400 (EDT)

" American Progress Action Fund "

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Progress Report: Will-ful Deception

 

 

 

 

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AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND

 

 

The Progress Report

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney

Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin

 

 

www.progressreport.org

4/3/06

 

 

ENVIRONMENT

Will-ful Deception

 

On Sunday, conservative pundit George Will used prime space in the

Washington Post and other major papers to suggest that not only is

global warming not the result of human activity, but that global

warming may not exist at all. There is no evidence to support Will's

claim, so he resorted to distortion, misdirection, and outright

deception. This morning, columnist Robert Novak used his regular space

in the Washington Post and elsewhere to suggest that global warming,

if it exists, will only have impacts " so far in the future that

technological advances surely will be available to cope with the

problem. " Question: Given the lack of any factual grounding, is there

a point when printing mythology about global warming is incompatible

with responsible journalism?

 

WILL SUGGESTS GLOBAL WARMING MIGHT NOT EXIST: George Will notes that

global temperatures have risen about one degree over the last 100

years, but that " might be the margin of error when measuring the

planet's temperature. " Embarrassingly, the only support Will provides

for this statement is a crude analogy. ( " To take a person's

temperature, you put a thermometer in an orifice or under an arm.

Taking the temperature of our churning planet, with its tectonic

plates sliding around over a molten core, involves limited

precision. " ) There is not a shred of scientific evidence to support

Will's position that the earth is not warming. Science Magazine

analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming

published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the

scientific consensus that the earth's temperature is rising due to

human activity. The National Academy of Sciences (which the Bush

administration recently called " the gold standard of independent

scientific review " ) concluded in 2001, " Greenhouse gases are

accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities,

causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to

rise. " In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded

global warming is " real and has been particularly strong within the

past 20 years…due mostly to human activities. " The American

Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the

American Association for the Advancement of Science have also " issued

statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human

modification of climate is compelling. "

 

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND GEORGE WILL'S CITATIONS: The highlight of Will's

column is a list of citations from the 1970s of publications that

purportedly warn of " global cooling. " (Nevermind that, even if it were

all true, it does not function as an analytic rebuttal to scientific

evidence of global warming caused by human activity.) The first such

citation is from a December 1976 edition of Science Magazine which

warned of " extensive Northern Hemispheric glaciation. " The use of this

quote is outrageously dishonest. First, the article in question deals

with variations in the earth's climate based on variations in the

earth's orbit over periods of 20,000 years or longer. Second, the

article explicitly excludes the effect of humans on the climate. (The

article states its predictions apply " only to the natural component of

future climatic trends -- and not to such anthropogenic effects as

those due to the burning of fossil fuels.) George Will is clearly

counting on the fact that most of his readers will not have access to

a 1976 edition of Science Magazine.

 

SCIENCE VS. NON-SCIENCE: There was, in fact, a temporary global

cooling trend from the 1940s to the 1970s. A few mainstream press

outlets (notably Newsweek) improperly extrpolated this temporary trend

to make long term predictions. Importantly, however, no scientific

publication predicted " global cooling. " In fact, scientists were

warning others not to do that. So, today, there is an overwhelming

scientific consensus that global warming exists and is being caused by

human activity. Nevertheless, Will claims today that scientists say

" they were so spectacularly wrong " in the 1970s.

 

WILL SAYS THAT EVEN IF GLOBAL WARMING EXISTS, IT MIGHT BE A GOOD

THING: Will says that even if, hypothetically, the globe is warming,

it might be a good thing. Will asks: " Are we sure the consequences of

climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the

Midwest -- must be bad? " Will doesn't mention any of the purported

benefits of global warming. Scientists, however, believe that global

warming is likely to cause severe hurricanes, flooding of coastal

population centers, and the spread of serious disease.

 

JUSTIFYING INTRANSIGENCE: As thin as Will's argument is, it's winning

out in the White House. As the world moves forward to address climate

change, the United States, " which is home to less than 5% of Earth's

population but produces 25% of CO2 emissions, remains intransigent. "

President Bush abandoned the Kyoto protocols, broke his " campaign

pledge to control carbon output to the relaxation of emission

standards, " and gave " recent rhetorical nods to America's oil

addiction. " And his praise of alternative fuel sources such as

switchgrass have yet to be followed by real initiatives. The National

Academy of Sciences debunks Novak's contention that there is time to

wait. In 2005, it signed a joint statement with 10 other national

academies which said, " The scientific understanding of climate change

is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. "

 

 

GOOD NEWS

 

Americans have expressed their appreciation to reporter Helen Thomas

for grilling President Bush during a recent press conference. " The

roses kept coming - and coming - and coming - to the Hearst Newspapers

office in downtown Washington on Thursday, until they filled a large

conference room to overflowing. "

 

 

STATE WATCH

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Mercury levels in some freshwater fish have declined by

32 percent, thanks to the nation's toughest mercury emission laws for

incinerators

 

ILLINOIS: Farmworker advocates protest McDonald's, " demanding better

wages for the people who pick the tomatoes used by the fast-food giant. "

 

NEW YORK: New York City's African-American population is declining,

for the first time since the draft riots during the Civil War.

 

 

BLOG WATCH

 

THINK PROGRESS: CNN reports Scott McClellan " next on the chopping block. "

 

THINK PROGRESS: Video: Zinni calls on Rumsfeld to resign for

" disastrous mistakes " in Iraq.

 

POLITICAL ANIMAL: Media ignore the latest pre-war Iraq memo.

 

DAILY KOS: Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) says Western Europe has " nothing

to live for. "

 

 

DAILY GRILL

 

" There's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created

because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad. It's not all the

work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making

progress towards rebuilding Iraq. "

-- Vice President Dick Cheney, 2/26/06, repeating the talking point

that the media doesn't report the good news from Iraq

 

VERSUS

 

" I think the American media is being made a scapegoat for what's going

on out there. ... It's hard to dwell on the good things when the bad

things are so overwhelmingly traumatic and catastrophic. "

-- Gen. Anthony Zinni (Ret.), 4/2/06

 

UNDER THE RADAR

 

ETHICS -- 'COINGATE' REACHES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Ohioan Thomas

Noe gained notoriety in his home state last year for his role in the

" Coingate " scandal, charged on 53 counts, including money laundering,

theft, forgery, and tampering with records. Noe oversaw Ohio's

$50-million rare coin investment, eventually stealing more than $10

million from the fund. Noe raised more than $100,000 in 2003 for the

Bush-Cheney campaign and was indicted separately in late 2005 for

allegedly laundering $45,400 to the campaign. The Treasury

Department's inspector general has now opened an investigation into

Noe's " role as a member and chairman of the Citizens Coinage Advisory

Committee, a panel that advises the Treasury secretary on themes and

designs for coins and congressional gold medals. " A Toledo Blade

report notes that the White House played a key role in establishing

Noe as the chairman of the powerful committee. In 2003, President Bush

signed legislation that said the chairman of the new committee would

be chosen by the treasury secretary, rather than by members of the

committee. " I think it was a very directed way of moving a candidate

of the administration's choice into the chairmanship by changing the

way in which it had been traditionally done and mandating it

legislatively, " said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). While on the

commmittee, Noe also used his " post to influence policy and seek

access to inside information that could benefit him as a rare-coin

dealer. "

 

RADICAL RIGHT -- MCCAIN SAYS JERRY FALWELL NO LONGER AN 'AGENT OF

INTOLERANCE': Yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, Sen. John McCain

(R-AZ) declared that right-wing Rev. Jerry Falwell is no longer an

" agent of intolerance, " as McCain described him in 2000. (Watch the

video.) The comments were further evidence of McCain's effort to

jettison his image as a moderate. Last week, it was reported that

McCain had agreed to give a graduation speech at Falwell's Liberty

University and that he had expressed to Falwell his support for a

constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which he previously

opposed. McCain's remarks yesterday also tarnish his image as a

" straight talker. " Back in 2000, when McCain was asked whether he

stood by his description of Falwell as an " agent of intolerance, " he

said, " I must not and will not retract anything that I said in that

speech at Virginia Beach. It was carefully crafted, it was carefully

thought out. "

 

POVERTY -- AMERICA SHOULD FOLLOW BRITAIN'S LEAD ON CHILD POVERTY:

Since 2000, the number of American children living in poverty has

risen 12 percent -- to 13 million. By contrast, British Prime Minister

Tony Blair has succeeding in reducing child poverty by 17 percent --

approximately 700,000 kids -- over the past five years. Despite the

ongoing U.S. economic expansion, the poverty rate for children keeps

rising, largely because the benefits of the recovery have flowed so

disproportionately to families at the top of the income scale. " But in

the United Kingdom, the policy-driven focus on reducing child poverty

has helped to ensure that economic growth is reaching those at the

bottom of the income scale. " Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at

the Economic Policy Institute, and Mark Greenberg, the executive

director of the American Progress' Task Force on Poverty, argue that

the British formula for success has been to boost the incomes of

working parents, mainly through subsidies to low-wage earners. They

have raised the minimum wage regularly, instituted programs to develop

healthy and school-ready children, and launched a government agency

that specifically tackles the conditions afflicting poor families. In

calling for the institution of targeted goals here in the U.S. to

reduce child poverty, the authors write, " The more you learn about

[the British] initiative, the more you realize just how far off track

we've gotten. "

 

BUDGET -- BUSH STAYS THE COURSE ON DEFICITS: During his weekly radio

address on Saturday, President Bush again called on Congress to

permanently extend his tax cuts. " The debate in Congress over taxes

ultimately comes down to this, " Bush said, " Who knows best how to use

your money - the politicians in Washington or you? " Recent news

reports show that Bush clearly does not know how to handle taxpayer

money effectively. According to the Center for Budget and Policy

Priorities, making Bush's tax cuts permanent and extending Alternative

Minimum Tax relief would cost the Treasury $3.3 trillion over the next

ten years (with interest included). Last Monday, Agence France Presse

reported that the U.S. national debt was rising so quickly that " the

last four digits of a giant digital signboard counting the moving

total near New York's Times Square move in seemingly random increments

as they struggle to keep pace. " The clock's owner is now working to

add an extra digit to the clock as the debt closes in on $10 trillion.

Along with decreased revenues, the debt is booming because federal

spending under Bush is " outstripping economic growth at a rate unseen

in more than half a century. " The spending growth represents " the most

rapid growth during one administration since Franklin Roosevelt. "

 

THINKFAST

 

NASA administrator Michael Griffin recently said to a Houston

audience: " The space program has had no better friend in its entire

existence than Tom DeLay. … He's still with us and we need to keep him

there. " Griffin now denies that statement was an effort to solicit

votes for DeLay because, under the Hatch Act, a partisan endorsement

cannot be made by a federal employee acting in an official capacity.

The Office of Special Counsel is investigating.

 

President Bush's new Medicare drug plan is so confusing " even the

parents of the Michael Leavitt, secretary of the Health and Human

Services (HHS) Department, ended up picking a plan that put their

retiree medical coverage at risk. And this after Leavitt helped his

parents in making their initial selection. "

 

An official British " narrative " about the events leading up to last

year's July 7 London bombings states that Iraq war was a " contributory

factor. " The report, ordered by home secretary Charles Clarke, claims

that the war radicalized the bombers and has provoked extremism among

British Muslims.

 

Civil war watch: " Nearly eight times as many Iraqis died last month in

execution-style sectarian killings as in terrorist bombings carried

out by insurgents, new US military statistics show. "

 

Meanwhile, " more Iraqis than ever have been buying, carrying and

stockpiling weapons, adding an unnerving level of firepower to

Baghdad's streets. "

 

After receiving a $200 million contract during the " flush, early days

of reconstruction in Iraq, " U.S. construction firm Parsons Inc. has

finished only 20 of the 142 primary health clinics they were hired to

build over two years. The project was " expected to lay the foundation

of a modern health care system for the country. "

 

1,000: The number of internal e-mails Rep. Tom DeLay gave to federal

prosecutors as a " Christmas present " for their ongoing corruption

investigation. The " prosecutors are far from finished " with the probe,

and " it's unclear if the e-mails will clear or help implicate DeLay. "

 

As many lawmakers resist the administration's plans to establish

permanent bases in Iraq, the Pentagon is already spending millions of

dollars to establish at least six " enduring bases " in Iraq.

 

With hurricane season two months away, President Bush has been

struggling to recruit a new federal emergency management chief after

seven candidates turned the job down. Acting FEMA director David

Paulison is reportedly expected to soon be named Michael Brown's

official successor.

 

And finally: Condoleezza Rice has banned Playboy and Penthouse from

State Department newsstands. " Alerted by an aide that the skin

magazines, partially clad in brown paper covers, were placed beside

newsmagazines and close to candy, nuts, and stuffed animals, she said,

'I want them out.' "