I like the L.A. Times. They do some of the best reporting on environmental issues. So I'm reading a pretty good piece on how the EPA administrator overruled his science advisers on the recent ozone ruling (more on that in a later post), and I come to this remarkable paragraph that shows how the president himself actually intervened to weaken the EPA regulations:
President Bush intervened at the 11th hour and turned down a second proposal by the EPA staff that would have established tougher seasonal limits on ozone based on its harm to forests, crops and other plants, according to documents obtained by The Times. Federal scientists had recommended those growing-season limits as a way to keep vegetation healthy and capable of trapping carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming.
No, no, a thousand times, no!
Can't the LAT do better than "linked to global warming"? The media use the word "linked" to deal with as-yet-uncorroborated or unproven allegations, as in the NY Times' recent blockbuster: "Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring."
Carbon dioxide has been proven conclusively to help warm the globe -- there is no serious scientific dispute of that. Why do you think scientists and everyone else calls it a "greenhouse gas"? Why do you think your own story calls it a "greenhouse gas"?
Time for the Times to stop soft-pedaling climate science.
[Note to the L.A. Times: I really really hope assume you know that greenhouse gases cause global warming. So were you afraid to say, " ... carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming" because that means you are acknowledging that global warming is a real phenomenon and caused by humans? If so, that is perhaps even lamer.]
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
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Bud Dingler Posted 9:58 am
14 Mar 2008
i believe the theory is real and we should take steps to mitigate.
however the small amount of data and knowledge we have on this topic needs to be expanded.
of course non-science people won't get this concept.
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John B Posted 1:03 am
15 Mar 2008
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tico89 Posted 2:40 am
15 Mar 2008
They're not going to say "a greenhouse gas unequivocally confirmed as responsible for global warming"; neither are they going to say "a greenhouse gas some idiots claim is responsible for this load of %$#* they call global warming".
They're saying what they know--it's linked. It's not like it's the only greenhouse gas.
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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tico89 Posted 2:46 am
15 Mar 2008
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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John B Posted 2:53 am
15 Mar 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 4:34 am
15 Mar 2008
The way it works here in blogland, when dissagreements with a writer come up, it is addressed instantly. The times will not respond on this objection.
Interaction in blogland tends to effect the editorial policy in a symbiotic way that mass media cannot seem to grasp.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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