Joe Conason: Fair and Balanced (and Phony) Science

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fair_and_balanced_and_phony_science_20091209/

Fair and Balanced (and Phony) Science

Posted on Dec 9, 2009

Climate change is already too real for many around the world, from the citizens of the Maldives and Bangladesh, whose countries are on the verge of drowning, to the residents of Southern California, who now must routinely cope with wildfires.

By Joe Conason

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Should we trust the science reporting of a network so challenged by basic arithmetic? Perhaps that question is unfair—or it would be if Fox and the propagandists of climate skepticism had not indulged in so many earlier episodes of fakery.

Consider the career of Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the leading skeptic and former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who has vowed to travel to the Copenhagen Climate Conference as a one-man “truth squad.” Back when he still chaired that Senate panel, Inhofe sent out a press release with the following bold headline in huge typeface: “Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007.” Described as a U.S. Senate report, this release claimed to debunk the scientific consensus on climate change.

When examined more closely, however, the Inhofe report was exposed as an amateurish fraud. Those 400 prominent scientists included more than 80 who had received funding either directly or indirectly from the oil and coal industries and more than 90 who had no scientific expertise in climate science, along with 49 retired scientists and 44 television weathermen.

The Oklahoma senator’s attempt to obscure the verdict of actual scientists reflected the advice of Frank Luntz, the GOP public relations adviser and pollster who authored a notorious 2002 memo telling Republicans that they could “win” the global warming debate only by doing exactly that. Over the past several years, Republican allies in the fossil fuel business have funneled millions of dollars into that effort, while often concealing the true sources of funding behind the studies that question warming and its causes.

Meanwhile, the scientific consensus remains unshaken and profound. From the thousands of scientists who participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the National Academy of Scientists, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Royal Society and the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies published over the past 15 years, the findings are plain enough. Global warming is real, with serious consequences for humanity. Hiding from the truth won’t change it.

Science is implacable. It doesn't go in and out of fashion, or change out of a fear of boredom. It is relentless. You either go with science, or you go down.

majored in "Political Science"?

Climate change, reproductive rights, health care, war, and so on. Everything they say & do is to garner money and votes - the truth has no relevance in their world.

Meanwhile, Big Media is so corrupt that they present every ridiculous claim by the wingers as "differing opinion"