Journalist's Ignorance Promotes Global
Warming Hysteria
by Bob Webster, Editor-at-Large, OpinioNet
A
recent AP story by Matt Crenson (Louisiana Sinking) provides a good illustration
of how bad journalism misleads the public about global warming and its likely
consequences.
"Global warming" is referred to in only eight of the 43 paragraphs in Crenson's story, yet the reader is led to believe that global warming is key to the problems and potential disasters that threaten Louisiana's coastal lowlands. Remove those eight paragraphs and the true picture of coastal Louisiana's problem emerges.
In reality, global warming presents little threat to lowland areas whose problems stem from over development and poorly conceived attempts to thwart the natural processes that have shaped the land for millennia.
Crenson's use of the much-abused phrase "global warming" confuses natural climate change with assumed warming due to anthropogenic (human-induced) climate warming as the result of fossil fuel burning since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. Crenson's abuse of terminology either is born of his ignorance of the subject or is simply a tactical ploy used by those who desire to regulate human industry but who cannot produce reputable scientific evidence that human activity has any meaningful influence on climate warming.
Yet, either as a demonstration of his ignorance or a ploy to mislead the reader, Crenson takes a perfectly good story about the unique characteristics of coastal Louisiana and salts it with global warming nonsense from a discredited report by maverick elements of Whitman's EPA that vastly overstate the magnitude of human-induced climate warming and its likely effects.
In the article, Crenson makes no distinction between anthropogenic global warming and natural global warming. This is a key distinction that is often omitted by global warming alarmists who lack credible scientific evidence for the existence of a significant human component to the small (and perhaps temporary) climate warming observed or anticipated.
Further alarming the reader, Crenson vastly overstates the estimated magnitude of sea level rise due to global warming (whether natural or induced by human activities). He sites a "worst case scenario" that suggests sea level will rise 44 inches in the next 50 years. This estimate is based on discredited scenarios from early (and now obsolete) IPCC analyses. [Note: the IPCC is the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]
Sea level rise due to global warming is comprehensively examined in chapter 8 of The Satanic Gases, Clearing the Air about Global Warming, by Patrick J. Michaels (UVA) and Robert C. Balling (ASU), where Michaels and Balling conclude "using the IPCC's 'plausible' scenarios, the best guess range of sea-level rise during the next century would be about 5 to 11 inches ...." In typical alarmist form, Crenson presents a wholly implausible estimate of nearly 4' of sea level rise in half a century when, a realistic estimate would put the actual 50-year figure at 2½" to 5½"! Further, estimates of sea level change reveal nothing about the origins or likelihood of the assumed climate warming that would produce them.
Too often journalists mislead the public by suggesting natural coastal erosion and barrier island evolution are the effects of rising sea levels from purported global warming (for a blatant example, see Time magazine's issue of April 9, 2001). In the article, Crenson misleads the public by weaving the suggestion that fossil fuel burning creates a threat to the already endangered coastal lowlands of Louisiana. Whether by design or by ignorance, Crenson discredits both his credentials and what would otherwise have been an excellent story about a unique problem to coastal Louisiana.
If you are among those who have been led to believe global warming is caused by human activity and you fear the consequences will be dramatic, then you ought to follow the advice of Frederick Seitz, past president, National Academy of Sciences, who wrote of The Satanic Gases:
"This lucid book by two climatologists dealing with the present status of our understanding of global warming should be read by every scientist and layman who has an interest in the topic, particularly if they have been led to believe that we face a potentially enormous catastrophe of human origin. Michaels and Balling demonstrate that the ongoing influence of human activity on climate will probably lie well within manageable bounds." ***
© 2002 Bob Webster
COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN. All writers retain rights to their work.
Home | About Us | Archives | Forums | Links | Resources | Submissions | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer