Fox and foreign press find fault but climate bill is progress

This week’s Media Mayhem column from the Mother Nature network.

I was so proud of the House of Representatives for its recent passage of legislation to tackle climate change. Finally.

Right-wing media’s overheated response to warming bill

You knew it would happen. But Fox News and talk radio have become a big unhinged over House’s vote Friday in favor of the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

It’s a Wall Street conspiracy. It’s a commie plot. It’s treason. Every year, it’ll cost each family 500, 750, 1,500, 3,000 dollars.

Sometimes, the talking points are a bit inconsistent. But that’s what makes them entertaining … in a slow-motion train wreck kind of way.

Media Matters, the left-wing watchdog site, has steadily pushed out clips of the talking heads, which I’ve annotated for your viewing convenience.

Fox’s Glenn Beck (June 29) issues a “Wanted for being a cap and traitor” poster for eight Republicans who voted for the bill:

More clips after the jump. Read more

27 GOP’ers run risks with ‘no’ vote on climate bill

Since Friday’s House vote, there’s been a lot of political reporting about how risky a “yeah” on the climate change bill would be for Democrats in conservative districts, or in districts that depend heavily on coal for their electricity.

If you take the climate vote in isolation, however, it seems more likely that more Republicans who voted against the bill will be vulnerable in 2010.

As the National Journal’s Ron Brownstein points out, 20 of 49 House Democrats from districts that Republican John McCain carried last November voted for the climate change bill. The vote could be used against Democrats in districts that lean Republican already, especially in states that are dependent on coal.

The reverse, Brownstein notes, is true for more Republicans:

In contrast with the Democrats from split districts, 27 of the 34 Republicans from Obama-districts held with their party and voted against the legislation. California crystallized that trend: Of the eight Republicans there in districts that Obama carried last year, only Mary Bono Mack from Palm Springs supported the bill.

When it came to the Republicans, however, Brownstein didn’t take that observation to the next level: Read more

Wait a sec’ … who’s biasing science around here?

The climate-change denial camp argues that “alarmist” scientists, industrialists and politicians are grotesquely biasing the debate because they stand to make so much money from legislation to limit greenhouse gases.

Well, if you stand to make money on something, and if you have the means to influence the debate, it stands to reason that you’d spend a lot to make a lot more on down the road. How else could you bias things?

Surprise. Surprise. The interests that stand to gain from doing nothing  about climate change (or close to nothing) are spending five to 10 times as much as the interests that want the country to take aggressive action. At least, that’s the case when it comes to lobbying expenditures. Read more

Climate contest — $175 reality vs. $3,100 fiction

In a rational world, the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that the Waxman-Markey climate bill will cost the average American family only $175 a year by 2020 would deflate arguments that the legislation is horribly expensive.

Well, better late than never for the CBO, I suppose. Last week’s study did get coverage in major news sources — except, of course, in Fox.

But I’m skeptical that the actual estimate of $175 will become the accepted number in popular culture.

For weeks, industry groups, anti-solution politicians and professional crisis deniers have been throwing around two numbers — $1,600 per year and $3,100 per year — as scare tactics. Read more

Al Gore texts me about his finances

Al Gore seems to have a target on his back. The former vice president is the symbol of “global warming alarmism” to those who want to block the U.S. from taking effective action on climate change.

Whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or the Heartland Institute or a backbench Republican congresswoman or a blog run by a guy who cut his teeth by swift-boating John Kerry, Gore is the bogeyman. They want answers, I tell you! Yeah, we know — he’s a private citizen. But what has he got to hide?

OK, then. I sent him some questions — mostly questions that the right-wing journal Human Events said somebody ought to ask him. I think he was about as candid as one could expect from a private citizen. What do you think?

(For a fuller discussion bogeyman/hero status, check out this week’s Media Mayhem column, by yours truly, on the Mother Nature Network.)

Ken Edelstein: You are a partner in the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins and a co-founder of the United Kingdom-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management, each of which stands to gain financially from greenhouse gas regulation. Please describe any other financial interests that you have in any other businesses that stand to profit from greenhouse gas regulation.
Al Gore: As a supporter of “sustainable capitalism” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584367114799137.html) I have made long-term investments in “sustainable” companies in Europe, Asia, North America and South America, the vast majority of which are not directly involved with efforts to solve the climate crisis. I have also invested in some companies that have attempted and will continue to help solve the climate crisis.

Ken Edelstein: In October 2008, the New York Times Magazine featured a cover story on how Kleiner Perkins had invested $1 billion in 40 companies that would profit from new environmental and energy laws and regulations. What will be your share of any profits from these ventures? Read more

Heartland ads a last gasp for climate deniers?

This week’s newspaper ad campaign by the Heartland Institute is a last gasp in the losing efforts of climate-change skeptics, argues Mitchell Anderson of DeSmogBlog.

Let’s hope so, but I’ll only believe it when I see it.

Heartland is among the most prominent in a herd of “free-market” think tanks — often funded by the fossil fuel industry — that’s peddled the argument that there’s no scientific consensus on climate change.

Today, the organization wraps up three straight days of full page ads in the Washington Post in which it claims, among other things, that “politicians, environmental advocacy groups, and the media routinely ignore and silence the scientists, economists, and other experts who say global warming isn’t a crisis.”

The ads are designed to influence debate while Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. If they were all you read this week, you’d think that recent studies had poked holes in climate change science. Read more

Climate change polls may be misleading

Americans have a more nuanced view of climate change than news reports about recent polls suggest, according to a Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media article by environmental journalist John Wihbey.

Wihbey, a former environmental reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger,  is addressing a supposed trend trumpeted over the last few months by the mainstream media: Despite mounting scientific evidence to the contrary, people seem to be getting more skeptical of climate change.

Wihbey makes a good case that the trend isn’t at all definitive, but the article doesn’t entirely convince me that public perception isn’t headed in the wrong direction. Read more

OK. This is my last ‘Apocalypse Now’ headline

Freeman Dyson: Patron saint of climate skeptics

Officials at climate-change-skeptical think tanks, including the founder of one, responded earlier this week to my Mother Nature Network column on such think tanks. The column argued that they’re closer to PR organizations than research institutions.

First up was David J. Theroux, founder and president of the Independent Institute, a free-market oriented think tank has published the work of skeptic S. Fred Singer:

You fail to even mention, much less examine, the empirical findings discussed at [last week's Heartland Institute] conference that indicate that climate alarmism is unfounded and has far more to do with environmental religion and interest-group politics than science. Instead, your article is just more dismissive punditry, with the obvious point that while Lord Monckton may not be a scientist, neither are you or Al Gore.

In contrast, here is a new interview with Nobel Prize Laureate physicist Freeman Dyson that actually discusses some of the pertinent matters that you will not address: http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151 As for the matter of corporate interests determining the debate, perhaps the following will be useful regarding what is now the eco-corporatist Climate-Industrial Complex: http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2217 David J. Theroux Pres[i]dent The Independent Institute

Anti-environmental polemicists have been bringing up Dyson a lot recently. Read more

Next Page »