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

Eco-satire on the ‘The Goode Family’

Are politically correct environmentalists ripe for mocking?

Maybe tonight’s premiere of “The Good Family” will provide an answer. The animated comedy on ABC pokes fun at a lefty, granola-ish clan.

“You look at them and you say, ‘Oh yeah, I know those people,’” creator Mike Judge, of “King of the Hill” and “Beavis and Butthead” fame, says on a promotional video (see below). “They’re hanging out at every Whole Foods, having a hybrid — just kind of feel forever guilty about being a human being on the planet. … It’s something that I think is pretty relate-able and that the time is ripe for.”

I’m not so sure about that. The dialogue in a couple of clips seems  dated — more like: You hear that joke and you say, “Oh yeah, I’ve know those punchlines.’”

Maybe, I’m being an overly sensitive treehugger. Or maybe I’m being influenced by a not-so-favorable New York Times review:

[T]he show feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s, when it was possible to find global-warming skeptics among even the reasonable and informed. Who really thinks of wind power — an allusion to which is a running visual gag in the show — as mindless, left-wing nonsense anymore?

I’ll reserve judgment until I see the whole thing. It airs at 9 p.m. Eastern time”King of the Hill,” with its stick-figure-ish style and deadpan humor, kind of grew on viewers, and it stuck around for 13 years. Still my sense is that satirizing political correctness is about 20 years past its prime.

Editorials say climate’s ripe for climate bill

The landmark climate-change bill approved by a key House committee may be a whipping boy for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh But the legislation won strongly favorable reviews last week on U.S. newspaper editorial pages.

If anything, the most searing (certainly the most cogent) criticism of the Waxman-Markey carbon “cap-and-trade” bill came from editorial writers who believe it doesn’t go far enough. Among those was Boston Globe:

[I]n an attempt to build broad support for the measure, sponsors Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California have given away too many allowances, reducing pressure on firms to curb their emissions. …

The bill’s supporters say auctioning off all allowances would put too many industries, such as steel, at a competitive disadvantage with foreign rivals. But a strong US climate-change bill would give US negotiators the clout they need in upcoming global climate talks to insist on similar reductions in other nations, leveling the economic playing field.

Favorable editorial treatment during just one step toward passage is just a snapshot. The legislation still hasn’t passed the full House, and in July, the Senate’s expected to become the real battleground over passage. Surely by then the Wall Street Journal will weigh in, as will other papers. Read more