Michael Kinsley once said that the problem with journalism today is that reporters have to interview an expert just to say 2+2=4. And then, for balance, they have to interview another "expert" who will claim that 2+2=5.
I was reminded of that yesterday when Reuters released this elephant-in-the-room story, "Climate Change Behind Summer Heat Waves?" Here's an excerpt:
“As ever, you cannot say any one weather event is caused by global warming,” said Asher Timms of Britain’s Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research. “But globally, it seems that there’s quite a shift in our weather patterns.”
Skeptics of the global warming theory, which predicts droughts and floods this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, say the media play up hot summer days for dramatic effect.
Bill O’Keefe, a board member of Washington think tank the George C. Marshall Institute and a consultant to the oil industry, said the record heat could be seen as part of a natural cycle of highs and lows.
Now, as I sit in the 100-degree heat waiting for my new solar-powered swamp cooler to arrive, I ask you this:
Who gives a rat's ass what Bill O'Keefe thinks?! Bill O'Keefe is not a scientist! Bill O'Keefe's last job was shilling for the American Petroleum Institute! I know the article says he works for the oil industry -- and good for them -- but the average reader (i.e., Peggy "Blame the Scientists" Noonan) will take these remarks as evenly weighted and conclude there is not yet a, you know, consensus about climate change." She may not even get to the pair of sentences that comes a few lines later:
U.S. space agency NASA says 2005 was the warmest globally in more than a century and that the preceding three years were also the warmest since the 1890s. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center said the first half of 2006 were the warmest six months since records began in 1895.
Add to this Newsweek's despicable "Green Issue" portrait of George Bush, so riddled with outright lies I can't even start: Okay -- he did not propose the "first-ever cut in mercury emissions from power plants"; the Clinton administration's "Maximum Achievable Control Technology," had it remained in place, would have reduced power-plant mercury emissions by an estimated 92 percent by 2007; Bush's "cap-and-trade" plan aimed at mercury would reduce mercury emissions from a current 48 tons per year to 34 tons by 2018. The plan was shredded by everyone from Sen. Jim Jeffords to Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. That Newsweek, which used to be a decent magazine under the late Maynard Parker, would suggest otherwise is unconscionable.
And after all that, you can hardly blame Peggy for her confusion. I mean, really.
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