global warmin

[Guest guest]

The whole truth

 

 

Though the scientist took every possible opportunity to reiterate that

global warming is real, their words were misrepresented and

misinterpreted by lazy journos, empty-headed pundits and oil-industry

biostitutes, so as to put forth the image that Al Gore is a big

unreliable poopyhead, who eats panda-burgers and smokes lead cigars in

his Hummer.

 

 

 

>by Chris Parry

June 26, 2007

 

Politics is complex. There's so much going on, so much to report on,

so much to explain, and the average reader has a limited attention

span. This is why Paris Hilton's driving record makes page one, while

the Conservative government of Canada hiring a Chief of Staff who has

denied global warming exists, compared Ottawa to Nazi Germany and been

quoted as saying that it's " high time that Muslims show the world that

theirs is a religion of peace rather than a religion based on threat,

intimidation and terrorism, " warrants only passing mention.

 

Yes, there's a lot of ground to cover in the world of political

reporting, but when something is missed or someone gets an issue

wrong, people don't tend to die as a result.

 

But that's not the case in all areas of journalism. Environmental

reporting, for example, is an area that tends to get left to Larry the

Weather-Guy, even though it's a beat that documents our impending

doom.

 

" Expect tsunamis, long-term drought, flaming rivers, birth defects and

highs of 265 degrees overnight. And a big hello to Doris McClintock

from Flin Flon, who turns 99 years old today! "

 

We've had about five years of solid " he said/she said " on the topic

of

global warming in the North American media, and though you'd have to

be a flat-earther to still deny that there's a problem, all that

hemming and hawing could - and should - have been put to rest with one

simple, undeniable statement: If climate change doesn't exist, and we

spend lots of money cleaning the air, water and land, in the end we

still have clean air, water and land. But if climate change is real

and we do nothing to stop it, we die.

 

That, right there, should be the start, middle and end of every

environmental debate. No oil-company lobbyist could defeat that logic,

and no environmentalist has reason to. And yet, who among us has ever

seen those words spoken by a TV reporter, or heard them out of a radio

personality, or read them in big print?

 

Earlier this month, Philip Mote, a climate researcher from the

University of Washington, and Georg Kaser, a glaciologist from the

University of Innsbruck, put out a report that could have been titled,

" Al Gore got something wrong in a slideshow. "

 

In essence, their work suggests that Mount Kilimanjaro, the oft-

mentioned example of a shrinking glacier in Gore's film, isn't

actually receding due to global warming but because of a unique

topographical situation that prevents new ice from finding purchase.

 

On this point, there is little dispute: Gore got one wrong, but the

scientists behind the report take great pains to say he could have

used any of thousands of other ailing geographical landmarks as a

replacement example, and he'd have been right on the money.

 

They even put out a press release to say so. And Hell was thus

unleashed.

 

The enviro wonks walked into a threshing machine of PR lies and

distortions and copped a beating from all sides. Though Mote and Kaser

took every possible opportunity to reiterate that global warming is

real, their words were misrepresented and misinterpreted by lazy

journos, empty-headed pundits and oil-industry biostitutes, so as to

put forth the image that Al Gore is a big unreliable poopyhead, who

eats panda-burgers and smokes lead cigars in his Hummer.

 

Take this Fox News article, penned by Brit Hume, former Republican

speech-writer and now nattering nabob of negativity on a news network

so widely discredited everywhere but the U.S. that you basically have

to buy the cable package that includes Al Jazeera just to get it on

your Canadian TV screen. Nowhere in the piece does Hume mention that

Mote and Kaser believe global warming to be a major problem. Rather,

he repeats the keywords and framing that all bought-and-paid-for

journalists and orc-like lobbyists love to throw out: that " global

warming isn't the cause " and " fluctuations are nothing new, "

before

finishing with the overarching tenet that Al Gore is fat and didn't

invent the Internet; praise be to Jesus Christ of Corporate America.

 

Of course, to misuse scientific research in such a way, especially at

such an important time in our modern history, is weak - the kind of

thing that should get journalists thrown out of the Press Club and

banished to... well, what's worse than Fox News?

 

But what is even weaker is that the Left (or as we often call

ourselves, the reality-based community) was right in the thick of that

same intellectual dishonesty, spinning harder than the corpse in Tommy

Douglas's grave as they called Mote and Kaser tools of the oil lobby

and/or naïve idiots who will have blood on their hands when the seals

become desert-dwellers and Nunavut becomes a Club Med.

 

Man, talk about shooting the messenger! All these guys wanted to do

was make a minor point about the legitimacy of image #962 in Al Gore's

slideshow, and suddenly they were being accused of taking a paycheck

from Exxon. It's an embarrassment for all concerned, mostly because

none of it matters, and serves only as a diversion from what really

does.

 

But what if the point wasn't a minor one? What if the point was that

the production of the batteries and twin engines used in the Toyota

Prius require such metals as nickel to be mined in great quantities,

which devastates the environment even before the finished product has

had a chance to give you great miles-per-gallon? Should we not talk

about that, lest we harm the environmental cause?

 

What if the inconvenient truth was that too much soy causes health

problems in children, or that free-range organic eggs have limited

health benefits, or that the energy required to recycle your plastic

bottles is far greater than that required to incinerate them? What if

removing fluoride from the water causes a great rise in dental

problems in children? Do we not talk about it, lest we help out the

" other side, " who'd love nothing more than to discredit the Prius,

soy

milk, recycling and clean water? And if we do talk about these things,

will we be branded as traitors by those we call allies?

 

This isn't how it's supposed to work. When you're on the side of right

(as opposed to The Right), you have to question everyone and

everything - not just the other side, but your own as well. If we're

to hold the corporate world to a standard of truth that requires them

to be honest and open about the potential death of our world,

shouldn't we hold ourselves, and our allies, to that same exacting

standard?

 

The small details like those of the Kilimanjaro question shouldn't be

something a scientist fears bringing to the public, because we, the

people, should have the smarts enough to be able to say, " Thanks for

that, Brainiac. Duly noted. "

 

And if some representative of Death Inc. dares stick his or her head

up in the press to abuse and misuse that information, that head should

be taken off with outrage, righteousness and the sort of factual

counterargument that leaves him or her lying in the dust.

 

In the end, give me honesty, or give me death. Because, frankly, as

far as the environmental debate goes, those are the only two options

we have.

 

 

Chris Parry is an Australian writer who decided five years ago that

snow was better than flies, and thus staged a one-man invasion of

Vancouver, which he now claims as sovereign land. He writes for a

variety of magazines and websites, most of which are owned by military

industrial complex, thus making him a hypocrite of immense

proportions. His favourite colour is purple.