We have all sorts of laws and regulations that impose threat of prison. But you can buy your way out of this? Nah, not buyin' the hype Joe.
Yes, you guys fight every regulation. And that fight has been very successful.
Scientists noticed something that the public largely overlooked: the most outspoken scientific critiques of global warming predictions did not appear in the standard peer-reviewed scientific publications. The critiques tended to appear in venues funded by industrial groups, or in conservative media like the Wall Street Journal. Most climate experts, while agreeing that future warming was not a proven fact, found the critics' counter-arguments dubious, and some publicly decried their reports as misleading.(123) Other experts, Hansen for one, exclaimed that "wait and see" was no way to deal with the "climate time-bomb." Going beyond calls to limit greenhouse gas emissions, he concluded that "governments must foster conditions leading to population stabilization."(124) On several points open conflict broke out between some scientists, with acrimonious and personalized exchanges.(125)
To science journalists and their editors, the controversy was confusing, but excellent story material. The American media gave climate change substantial coverage through the late 1980s and early 1990s, notably in the New York Times, which still largely set the agenda for other American media. News magazines published many stories, although television gave only light coverage. Many reporters took a skeptical view of the administration's position. Outside a few deeply conservative media like the Wall Street Journal and right-wing talk radio programs, journalists tended to accept that greenhouse warming was underway. Following the usual tendency of the media to grab attention with dire predictions, a majority of the reports suggested that the consequences of global warming could be cataclysmic, with devastating droughts, ferocious storms, waves attacking drowned coastlines, the spread of deadly tropical diseases. The worst consequences were expected for certain vulnerable developing nations, but as usual the America media gave little attention to the rest of the world. Many stories optimistically suggested that technological progress would solve the problem. Journalists did not often emphasize that citizens might have to make hard choices between conflicting values.
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But it is often enough to publicize an idea, however wrong, to leave many people convinced that there must be something to it. An analysis of news reports published between 1988 and 2004 in four influential American newspapers found that more than half of the articles gave roughly as much attention to the small band of denier scientists as they did to the view accepted by the IPCC and all the other rigorous scientific panels. (skepticism about the IPCC's findings and the IPCC itself was represented even better in editorial pages). On television during 1995-2004, more than two-thirds of the news reports "balanced" the opposing views as if they had equal support in the scientific community. The denying scientists quoted in reports frequently had financial ties to corporate lobbying groups, a fact the reporters often failed to mention. The veteran American environmental journalist Ross Gelbspan bitterly accused his colleagues of being duped, bought out, or intimidated by fossil-fuel interests.(136a*)
If so, it was largely an American phenomenon. In most other industrialized nations, oil companies and their right-wing allies had less policy influence. And it was mainly in the United States that they worked hard to push their view of climate change upon the media. The deniers' views, however, were increasingly echoed in other English-speaking countries from Canada to Australia. Journalists elsewhere rarely quoted deniers, and for much of the world climate change never became an intensely polarized political issue.
The Public and Climate, cont.