Check out this hilarious article on the right-wing news site CNS News. It seems the wingnut faction is upset that Fox News is running a documentary on global warming -- and it's not even pretending the science is controversial! They're only presenting the "liberal" -- that is, scientific -- side! Worse yet, there are some actual environmentalists involved.
A Fox News Channel documentary on "global warming," set to air Sunday night, provides only the liberal take on the controversial issue and was approved after environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reportedly "dragged" Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to a lecture by former Vice President Al Gore, "kicking and screaming."
Love the scare quotes around "global warming."
It seems that Laurie David got to Roger Ailes, Fox News president (as revealed in our own Amanda Griscom Little's article in Outside). Amazingly, he seems to have seen the light on warming.
Even his own producer is a bit confused:
Clay Rawson, the Fox News Channel producer of the hour-long special titled "The Heat Is On: The Case of Global Warming," told Cybercast News Service Wednesday that the project "was a little bit different for us.
"Often on Fox News Channel, we present both sides, according to our 'fair and balanced' motto, but this is the global warming story," Rawson said. "We do make it clear that this is one side of the issue through inclusion of a disclaimer," he added. The documentary is said to ignore scientific skeptics who believe that human activity is not responsible for catastrophic climate change.
Fox is abandoning it's legendary integrity and balance! I feel faint.
So, yes, we know about the thousands of scientists who say global warming is real and caused by humans -- for instance, every practicing climatologist -- but what about these skeptics? Are their feelings hurt by being left out?
But Chris Horner, senior fellow with the free market environmental group, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), is among those arguing about the theory of "global warming."
...
"While it is unfathomable that a reputable news network would air so blatantly a one-sided program regardless of any disclaimer, that the 'fair and balanced' network would put itself in the position of suspending its motto is stupefying," Horner said.
I must say, I too find it slightly stupefying that Fox is doing this.
CEI plans to deliver a letter to Ailes on Thursday morning, complaining about the documentary.
"I hate to draw attention to a Sunday night 'filler' program, but it is important to expose this disgraceful excuse for journalism, particularly by the so-called 'fair and balanced' crowd," Horner said. "Maybe a special on the 10,000 dead in New Orleans could follow."
Man. Even Fox is on board. The professional-skeptic crowd must be sweating. Exxon's going to cut them off soon if they don't start winning some battles!
Comments
View as Flat
Lisa Hymas Posted 4:52 am
11 Nov 2005
Watch for yourself
Tune in to Fox News (now there's a phrase I don't write often) ...
"The Heat Is On: The Case of Global Warming"
Sunday, Nov. 13, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET
See a preview clip, a behind-the-scenes photo essay (with Laurie David and RFK, no less), a reporter's notebook, and even a page of action tips with links to NRDC and the Sierra Club.
Weird.
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OutdoorsPro Posted 1:56 pm
13 Nov 2005
A couple points
I watched the show on Fox News about global warming tonight, and i just had a couple observations:
I realize the point they were trying to make, but standing near the terminus of a glacier during the summer, pointing to the streams of meltwater as an example of how badly the glaciers are melting is a little bit disingenuous. In the summer time, temperate glaciers will ALWAYS have some impressive streams, creeks and rivers flowing from them. They're glaciers. It's what they do.
Glaciers, especially valley glaciers, have two primary zones: The accumulation zone, where snowfall exceeds snowmelt and the glacier is actually built. Lower downhill is the melt- or ablation zone, where the ice melts. Without a melt zone, the glacier would only build, and build, and build--eventually the glacier would cover the entire Earth. Thank goodness glaciers melt, eh?
A glacier may advance or it may retreat. It may even be static, but unless something is really going wrong, they always melt at the bottom, even during an ice-age. Actually, the only difference during an ice-age is that it doesn't melt as fast as it builds, BUT IT STILL MELTS.
At one point during the show, they were standing on the Mendenhall Glacier, only about a mile from the very bottom, pointing to surface melt (a mill creek) as an example of how the glacier was melting and retreating. I know that spot well, because i spent most of last May within a quarter of a mile of that spot, on the other side of the ice. Let me tell you, if there isn't a serious amount of melting and water flow on that spot during the summer, you better not plan on moving to Juneau, 'cause it won't be there long!
Yes, yes, most of the glaciers in Alaska and around the world areretreating. Yes, the average surface temps on the planet have been increasing over the last couple hundred years. But another example they gave is equally silly:
They had some great shots of the Hubbard Glacier, used to illustrate the type of flooding that often occurs with glaciers. They sometimes damn up creeks, rivers and other waterways, often their very own meltwater. Since ice floats on water, eventually all the lakes created will get deep enough to float their ice-dams and break free. This happens on the Hubbard and is causing much controversy up there as people debate whether or not we should do something about it.
But here's the one key piece of information they left out of their report: The Hubbard Glacier has created its dam because it's ADVANCING. Again, filling and draining lakes is what glaciers do! If they advance or retreat, they will always dam waterways, then release them. Actually, without that very type of action (on a much grander--nay, biblical scale) we wouldn't have had the Missoula Floods, which formed the Willamette Valley and one of the richest farming areas on the West Coast.
But that type of accurate information would have probably distracted from the sensational point they were trying to make.
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jda Posted 7:20 am
15 Nov 2005
It is FOX after all
Even if they are acknowledging that there is global warming, you have to realize that FOX still has a obligation to misinform their viewers.
Do you realize how many exploding heads there would be if the average FOX viewer got a whole show worth of accurate information?
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