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Nov. 11, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

THOMAS MITCHELL: Al Gore now arbiter of good journalism

THOMAS MITCHELL
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Is there no discipline, no craft, no field of human endeavor this man has not mastered?

Politician-cum-statesman. Atmospheric scientist. Peace monger. Internet inventor. Logician. And now lecturer on the shortcomings of journalism.

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This past Monday morning, as NBC turned its iconic peacock green and launched 150 hours of propaganda pandering to the perfervid environmentalist crowd, sending correspondents to both poles and the equator aboard carbon-spewing jets for live stand-ups, former Vice President Al Gore, the guru of global warming, was conspicuously interviewed by the network to kick off the whole thing.

To the interviewer's credit, she asked Gore about an op-ed in the previous week's Wall Street Journal by John Christy, one of the scientists who participated in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gore.

"There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why," wrote Christy. "As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations."

He noted that if the whole world adopted California's planned vehicle emissions standard of 43 miles per gallon that it would reduce the "projected" global warming by 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

Christy suggested there are far more productive and effective means to improve the human condition than wrecking the economy with carbon footprint reductions.

"My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short," he concluded. "The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today."

But did Al Gore answer the simple, rational argument about costs and benefits? No. He launched into a lecture on the foibles of journalism.

To wit: "Well, he's an outlier. He no longer belongs to the IPCC, and he is way outside the scientific consensus."

Sounds like he's now an apostate, excommunicated from the global warming faith.

"But, Meredith (Vieira), part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand approach," Gore preached. "There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat, but when you're reporting on a story like the one you're covering today, where you have people all around the world, you don't take ... you don't search out for someone who still believes the Earth is flat and give them equal time."

He then argued that there is "a very strong scientific consensus, that is as strong a consensus as you'll ever see in science, that the climate crisis is real, human beings are responsible for it ..."

There once was a "consensus" that the Earth was flat. Everyone believed it. Until some guy decided to go east by sailing westward. There was a consensus that the Earth was the center of the universe. Until Copernicus and Galileo were proven mathematically correct. The famous recant notwithstanding.

The question becomes: On which side of the consensuses are we now? Besides, how does one op-ed piece constitute "equal time" to 150 hours of preening network programming?

Gore does have some journalism credentials. I'll grant him that. He spent a couple of months in Vietnam reporting for an Army newspaper and spent a couple of years reporting for the Nashville Tennessean before quitting to go to law school and quitting that to run for Congress.

But for Gore to say the debate is over and the press should stop quoting the so-called deniers is tantamount to saying the doctrine is inviolate and anything to the contrary is heresy.

If Christy is an outlier, what is 77-year-old Colorado State University professor Bill Gray, besides being the foremost authority on hurricanes and a man who has studied atmospheric science for more than half a century, who has actually flown into hurricanes?

Gray has labeled global warming a huge hoax and predicts that in less than eight years the planet will begin to cool again. He says there is no direct observable proof of global warming, merely unproven models.

For this he has seen his research funding dry up.

If you don't do penance by going on a fossil fuel fast, you, too, may be shunned.

If journalists who report on the views of the global warming skeptics are polluting the minds of the youth of today, well, pass the hemlock, Socrates.

Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal and writes on the role of the press and access to public information. He can be contacted at 383-0261 or via e-mail at tmitchell@reviewjournal.com.

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Please enter your name Name: Please enter your email Email: Please enter a comment COMMENTS : (word count limit is 300) You have reached the maximum number of words allowed Current Word Count: cowboy_billybob wrote on November 12, 2007 02:04 PM: Thomas how much Petrolatum Jelly do you use in a year on that ridiculous looking handlebar mustache? Keep giving Harry & the liberals hell, Tom! Frank wrote on November 11, 2007 04:06 PM: Gotta love these private jet, multiple huge house's (3), Eco nut jobs. You have to be crazy to tell people how to live an Eco life when your an out of control massive polluter yourself. Checkout one of his houses http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/gorehome.asp http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm Gore is nothing but an elitist fool, that idiots believe in. press2forEnglish wrote on November 11, 2007 12:30 PM: This needs to be addressed why metro views the minutemen as a dangerous gang ? http://www.americans4america.net/uploads/lvmpd_employment.pdf Scroll down to question 57. The question reads: “Have you, your spouse, any members of your family, or any members of your spouse’s family ever been associated with gangs or subversive groups (Minutemen, Aryan Brotherhood, etc.) Marc D wrote on November 11, 2007 12:07 PM: Global warming has become a religion, it left the real science at the door a long time ago, now it is just irration belief that drives the justification and argument. they pump this into our kids at school like it is all proven fact and if you try and explain the actual facts to your kids and then they go to school and bring it up they are ridiculed and told they are being foolish. All this is political agenda driven by panic, Al Gore wrote a book back when he was VP about how we all needed to quit driving cars and ride bikes, of course he wouldn't be one of the bike riders because he is far too important. Man made Global warming ranks right up there with Intelligent Design and Bush's ban on stem cell research,its science corrupted by person beliefs and peoples personal agendas,things that scientific reseach was supposed to be free of. Gore cherry picks facts that fit his argument and dismisses facts that refute it as bad science even when the "bad" facts are far more prevelent and easily found in multiple research papers all over the globe. brooke wrote on November 11, 2007 09:01 AM: I fully agree with this article. Wish more of the media were able to think like this. As someone from a far away state, I am glad that www.polijam.com had a link to this article. Lawrence Hyde wrote on November 11, 2007 08:51 AM: There may or may not be global warming which may or may not be caused by man. My question is, about 20 years ago the big scare was global cooling, was it the same people who claimed global cooling that now claim global warming? Ted wrote on November 11, 2007 06:40 AM: I'm still waiting for Al Gore to explain the global warming phenomenom of 820-840ad when the polar ice caps receeded and sheep and cattle were raised and grazing on Iceland and Greenland. Or again in the decade around 1145. There have been several ice ages, and warming periods throughout history. Bill Gray is right, and only Gore's incredible arrogance could suggest that man can actually alter nature. More to the reality is that it is a high profile money making scam opportunity for Gore and cohorts. Remember the Y2K scare, and how planes would be falling from the sky when all the computers failed? Companies paid billions to needlessly upgrade their systems. To continue to perputuate this hoax, Gore must discredit any and all opposing thought. Mike Sorensen wrote on November 11, 2007 06:40 AM: Great article! I am concerned about global warming. I've read about global warming. I've listened to a Bjorn Borg lecture. I've planted a tree. I've purchase florescent and LED light bulbs. I'm planning a new home with a large array of solar panels, but I still have some questions about warming. Many people believe that scientist are nearly unanimous in there views about global warming. This is simply false. I understand that there is a large group of scientists who believe the planet is warming. There is a somewhat smaller group who believe that mankind is influencing that warming. There is a still smaller number who believe that mankind is the primary cause of warming. There is an even smaller group that group who believe that warming is a bad thing, and there is a yet smaller again number of them who believe warming could eventually have catastrophic consequences. If more members of the media took the same open minded approach approach as Thomas Mitchell and Meridith Viera, more citizens would know more facts. That would be a good thing.