Climate Change, Then and Now
by AndrewMc | 8/24/2009 07:00:00 AM

According to research published in the August 13, 2009, edition of the journal Nature, paleotempestologists argue that the current upswing in hurricanes and cyclones is part of a long cycle stretching back more than a thousand years to the Middle Ages. That cycle peaked around the year 1000. The New York Times has a piece on the article, which for the most part argues that the medieval peak was a probably bigger than what we're seeing today.

Interesting field, paleotempestology. To some degree it relates to history in much the same way that dendrocrhonology does. Perhaps paleotempestology will contribute to some long-standing historical questions in the same way that dedrochronology helped us understand the Roanoke and Jamestown disasters a bit better.

I'm not a historian of the Middle Ages, but I teach Western Civilizations prior to 1648, and I use that period of climate change and some other events that occurred around the year 1000 as a way of tying together some themes that I use throughout the course. Briefly, I have my students think about the massive changes brought on by the agricultural revolution of thousands of years ago, and then place them in the context of the massive change in the medieval period in order to get them to think about change over time, historical context, contingency, etc.

The article in Nature got me to thinking about a comparison between the context of climate change in the medieval period, and the context of climate change today. The parallels aren't exact, but they are somewhat instructive.







Scientists sometimes refer to the period from 800 – 1300 as the “Medieval Warming Period.” While many believed that this was a global phenomenon, new research indicates that the warming effect may have been localized to Europe. Whatever the case, it is well-documented that temperatures rose in Europe, and that rainfall increased to some degree. The warmer, wetter weather made for better harvests.

At the same time that Europe was getting warmer and wetter, Europeans saw a number of “technological” changes that greatly improved their ability to grow food. Two of these improvements, in particular, went hand-in-hand.

The first advance was the gradual replacement of oxen with horses as draft animals. Horses may not seem like “technology,” but in a sense they are a kind of bio-technical improvement. Horses eat less than oxen, but can work faster, longer, and harder than can oxen. For farming they are a vast improvement over oxen, which are slower, require greater care, and eat more.

At the same time, Europeans finally discarded the old Roman-stye scratch plough—called an ard—in favor of an iron plough with a coulter. The scratch plough worked well in the Mediterranean area, where the soil was sandy. The plough, pulled by a team of oxen, scratched the surface, laying open a furrow which could be seeded. But in the heavy soil of Europe, the scratch plough was inadequate, and farmers often had to supplement the scratch plough with extra digging by hand. Use of the scratch plow also tends to cause "panning" where the soil below four inches becomes caked from the repeated disruption of the above soil. This can lead to less water absorption, and can restrict root growth to the shallower areas. Both effects reduce crop yields.

The iron plough—called a carruca—changed things dramatically. The coulter broke the tough soil while the ploughshare lifted the soil and flipped it over. It had the effect of aerating the soil and of bringing nutrients to the top. It was more labor intensive and required a larger team of animals (eight for a carruca, versus two for a scratch plough), but it vastly improved the quality of the soil.

The final improvement is less a kind of technology than a farming practice. Farmers had for many centuries practiced field rotation (not necessarily crop rotation), where crops were grown on one field while another lay fallow. This meant that any one time, half the fields were growing food. Beginning in the Middle Ages farmers began to practice three-field rotation. Spring crops would go in the first field, fall crops in the second field, and the third field would lie fallow. So in any year two-thirds of the fields would be under cultivation. During this period Europeans also greatly increased the amount of land available for farming by clearing vast forests.

So, the warmer, wetter weather in the Middle Ages was accompanied by—or perhaps better said, was coincidental to—a series of innovations and practices that greatly increased food production. The result was a population explosion. Figures are, of course, difficult to come by. But most estimates seem to agree that the population went from something like 30 million Europeans in the year 1000 to about 60 million in the year 1200. Accompanying this were a great number of societal changes that I won’t get into here.

But what about today? We have documented global warming. The scientific community is in near-total agreement that the earth is warming. We have also seen about a century or so of technological change that has fundamentally reordered human society. The big difference between the two is that in the 20th and 21st centuries technology isn’t accompanying global warming and environmental change—it is causing it. From increased carbon dioxide levels in the air and the oceans, to warmer weather worldwide, the planet is experiencing a warmer that seems unmatched in human history.

Aside from that, man-made technology, such as synthetic long chain polymers, is causing environmental changes that we don’t yet fully grasp. At the same time, other man-made chemicals in food, in manufacturing waste, and in other products, are causing changes in human DNA.

It’s hard to imagine that the changes of this confluence of technological and environmental change will be positive for humanity. Just as Europeans eventually suffered famines and the onset of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, 21st century humans seem headed for a hard fall.



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The Health Of The Planet: The Road Not Taken
by Real_PHV_Mentarch | 10/15/2007 02:06:00 PM
Google/Blogger has called this day of October 15, 2007, a Blog Action Day with the Environment as the theme.

I thought it might be an opportunity to reflect upon where we are now, as opposed to where we could have been, with regards to global warming.




First, here is a riveting video which drives home the message that "Global Warming is real" - and it does indeed bear repeating over and over:


Now, here is a speech given by Al Gore (then still U.S. Vice-President) on the occasion of Earth Day, back in April 2000, and which merits another read (emphasis mine):
I have worked on environmental causes for more that two decades now. But in all my years of work on this issue, I have never seen a more hopeful sight that the crowd that is gathered here today.

Standing with us are captains of industry; labor leaders and working men and women; Teamsters and auto workers; lifelong environmentalists.

Ten years ago, if you’d told me you were assembling this crowd, I’d have thought it was an episode of Crossfire.

We’ve come a long way. Today, we’re not shouting at one another – we’re standing shoulder to shoulder, working together, meeting our responsibility, doing the right thing.

To see how we have come together, for our economy and for our environment – to see how former adversaries are working together, and planning together, for a cleaner and stronger future – all this gives me a sense of renewed optimism for our country and for our environmental future.

The people in this room have shown that if we make the right investments – if we make the responsible choices – we don’t have to choose between the economy and the environment.

Look at the past seven years. We’re cleaning up the great American rivers. We’ve speeded up toxic waste clean-ups. We’ve worked with industry to strengthen the public’s right to know about chemicals released into their air and water. America is taking strong measures on its own to fight global warming.

Our environment is cleaner than it has been in a generation. At the same time, we have entered the longest period of economic growth in our entire history. America has almost 21 million new jobs. Here in Detroit, you can be proud that after fourteen years of trailing Japan, America has led the world in car and truck production for six years in a row.

Today, we take the next great step forward – to create good new jobs for American families; to keep pollution out of our air and water; and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil at the same time.

It has been seven years since we first joined with the leading auto makers to create the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. Our goal was to work with the best manufacturers to come up with vehicles up to three times more efficient than what we had then -- with no sacrifice in performance, safety, or cost.

From the beginning, this partnership was designed to make our auto industry even more competitive in world auto markets. And it will.

As I announced last month, we can now look forward to a date in the next three or four years when cars with far greater fuel efficiency will be mass-produced, and on the showroom floors, being bought by American families.

We can also look forward to the day when families will be able to buy cars with remarkable new fuel cell technology – engines that run on water, and are likely to increase fuel efficiency by 400 percent. These vehicles will create no greenhouse gas emissions at all -- and the concept cars at this year’s auto show not only got over 100 miles per gallon, they can drive for 500 miles without re-fueling.

Starting next year, we’re going to expand this research partnership to place a greater focus on how we can produce cleaner and more fuel-efficient SUV’s as well as cars.

Today, we take another important step toward a cleaner, stronger future. Together with the nation’s leading manufacturers of heavy trucks and truck components, we are launching a new 21st Century Trucks Initiative – to dramatically improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions from America’s heavy trucks and buses.

Through the hard work of all the people in this room, we believe we can double the fuel economy of an eighteen-wheeler by 2010. And we believe we can triple the fuel economy of heavy pick-up trucks and large delivery vans in that same period.

This new partnership will save businesses, truckers, and taxpayers billions of dollars a year in reduced fuel costs -- while cleaning the air and helping to combat global warming.

And the United States Army, which owns a quarter of a million trucks and buys them for all our armed forces, will be a strong and central partner in developing the new technologies, in buying them, and in putting them on the road. In fact, since more efficient military trucks can go a lot farther without refueling, this partnership will increase our Army's fighting strength.

Just as importantly, by investing in these energy-efficient trucks and technologies – by encouraging their purchase and their use – we can cut America’s reliance on foreign oil, which will mean lower prices at the gas pump, not just in the near-term, but in the long-term.

This new partnership pursues a strategy against pollution that must reach across our economy, and all around the world in the coming years. A strategy that sees people as allies, not adversaries, in meeting environmental challenges. An approach that builds upon our responsibilities to one another – to the air, the water, and the land that we hold in common, across borders and across the generations.

It continues a journey that many of us have made for many years now. I remember one part of my own journey a decade ago, in a different kind of vehicle – one that moves just a bit faster than today’s showroom models.

The trip was on the U.S.S. Pargo – a nuclear submarine that traveled under the Arctic ice sheet all the way from Greenland to the North Pole.

When we reached the pole, the sub broke through the summer icepack – and as I climbed through the hatch, I caught my first glimpse of the North Pole. The light was stunningly bright; clouds of ice crystals sparkled in the frozen air.

That submarine was part of a U.S. fleet patrolling secret routes under the ice – routes that took our subs and missiles close to the former Soviet Union’s northern border. In the process, the Navy had been collecting data about the thickness of the ice cap – merely to identify spots where subs could break through the ice.

Most of the information that was gathered had no national security purpose – so it was recorded and stored, but never examined or analyzed. It was “exformation” – it existed, but no one knew what it said.

As that submarine returned from the pole, deep beneath the ice, it occurred to me that if we shared this data with scientists, we could map a timeline of the ice cap, and the effects of global warming.

When I returned to Washington, I began to discuss the idea with our military and intelligence agencies. One hundred top environmental scientists gained top-secret clearance to review the data, and scrub it of anything that could compromise our national security. Later, as Vice President, I held a conference with Russian government officials and scientists, where both sides agreed to share our scrubbed data about the Arctic – as well as previously-secret sonar and satellite data about the northern oceans.

The results were startling. We learned that the Arctic ice cap had thinned by 40 percent since the 1970’s – a story that made headlines all over the world. The loss has averaged four inches a year for the past decade.

When I first started working on this issue more than two decades ago, this information was accumulating – but no one had ever seen it. It was easier to make excuses, to ignore the threat altogether, or to attack the messenger.

Now it is increasingly clear that global pollution risks not only our quality of life, but the very fabric of life itself.

Each generation of Americans has its own unique challenge, its own special responsibility.

In this decade, in this generation, we have been given one of the greatest responsibilities of all: saving the environment -- not just for ourselves, not just for our children, but for generations far into the future.

I believe we have to make the next ten years the Environment Decade, in America and around the world.

I believe we can and must turn the tide against pollution and global warming. And the people standing here today are proving that we can save our environment and safeguard human health – while sustaining our economy as the strongest in the world.

We know there are still powerful apologists for pollution – despite the new partnerships we are forging together. Some will always argue that pollution is the inevitable price we pay for our prosperity.

That is false; and even worse, it invites and excuses a politics of environmental irresponsibility. A lot of us have been fighting against this irresponsibility for a long time.

I remember the fierce criticism I got eight years ago, when I wrote “Earth in the Balance.” I expected that criticism then, and I wear it as a badge of honor today.

The critics rushed to assail the idea that we could create cleaner, more efficient cars, and end our dependence on the internal combustion engine over a period of, say, 25 years.

We were told that this process would mean an end to the auto industry. In fact, we all know now that it will mean new, more efficient, more competitive cars and trucks; it will mean new jobs for Michigan, and new business for America.

So let me say to the critics on this issue: the people in this room – the workers, the manufacturers, and the business leaders of Michigan – are proving that the skeptics were wrong.

And I have an admission to make. I was wrong, too, when I thought we could end our reliance on the internal combustion engine in 25 years. Because of our work together, we can do it in less than 25 years – while preserving and creating good jobs.

That is why the companies here today are investing so heavily in cleaner, more efficient engines. They know it’s a smart investment. By seeing to it that America leads the growing market for cleaner cars and trucks with lower gas mileage, we will create jobs, not destroy them – good union jobs for Teamsters, for the UAW, and for all working Americans. We will strengthen industry, not weaken it. We will sell more to the world, not less.

We have heard – and in the months ahead, I’m sure we will hear – every possible scare tactic on this issue. But we will not give in, and we will not back down.

It is not extreme but mainstream to champion cleaner fuels, and energy efficiency. It’s the right thing to do – and it’s the responsible thing to do.

When it comes to our air, our water, and the Earth itself, we all have a responsibility to look not just to ourselves, not just to the politics of the moment, but to future generations.

This weekend, we mark the 30th anniversary of the first Earth Day – and the first Earth Day of the 21st Century.

Earth Day has always been a recognition of our most powerful common link, the air, the water, and the planet we share. This year, on this Earth Day, let us renew our resolve to meet our responsibility –

To achieve strong and sustainable growth that does not undermine human health, or disrupt the climate of the world.

To forge a future where none of our children have to worry whether the water they drink or the air they breathe is safe and pure.

To create a more livable America -- where there are parks and open spaces, instead of endless, cookie-cutter sprawl; where families can walk and bike and play together; where a clean environment and a high quality of life are a source of security, dynamism, and hope for the future.

In the Environment Decade, we must form partnerships with every industry – just like the ones here today, which will produce fuel-efficient trucks that the critics said could never be made.

In the Environment Decade, we have to make the free market the friend of the environment, not its enemy – and the clearest examples are our partnerships for cleaner cars and trucks.

In the Environment Decade, we have to invest more in conservation, in renewable energy, and in fast-growing technologies that combat pollution.

In the Environment Decade, we need to enforce tough, realistic, achievable standards to reduce smog and soot, and protect our children’s health.

In the Environment Decade, we have to expand the right to know to every area where pollution of any kind threatens public health. As we work to clean up abandoned Brownfields and toxic waste sites, parents need to know if a street-corner is unsafe – or if poisonous chemicals can lead to sickness and disease.

In the Environment Decade, we have to protect our forests and our rivers and our precious public lands – so that families have places where they can hike and climb, and reach out toward the stars.

In the Environment Decade, we have to encourage smarter growth, and more livable neighborhoods – so every community will have the chance to grow according to its own values, in a way that preserves its own character.

In the Environment Decade, we must also meet persistent global environmental challenges. We must continue to ban the chemicals that eat away at our ozone layer and expose us to dangerous, cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. If we face this challenge head-on, we have the prospect of completely closing the ozone hole over Antarctica over the next two generations.

And in this time, we must take decisive steps – not just in this country, but everywhere -- against global warming. I believe we have to ratify the Kyoto agreement, which would commit America to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

I know we don’t yet have a consensus on this issue -- and that many in this room may still have disagreements. I feel very strongly that we must move forward. But I pledge to you today: I will work with all of you, to move forward in a way that is good for our economy, good for our environment, and good for the entire world.

We must ensure that all developed and developing nations are committed to doing their part. And I believe we can combat global warming in a way that creates jobs – by aggressively pursuing a global market for new energy technology that is expected to reach $10 trillion in the next two decades.

I know these challenges are not easy. And for me, they have never been without controversy. More than a decade ago, when I set out to write “Earth in the Balance,” I was warned not to do it; that it was politically foolish to make so clear a commitment to environmental protection, written down in black and white, for all to see.

But for me, a commitment to the environment has always run deeper than politics. We have to do what’s right for our environment, because it involves all of our lives – from the simple security of knowing that our drinking water is safe, to the more ominous thinning of the ice caps at the top of the Earth.

One hundred years from now, when our great grandchildren gather to mark the first Earth Day of the 22nd Century, I want them to know that we were thinking of their time with the same vision, the same dedication, and the same commitment that we applied to our own time.

I want them to know that their future meant more to us than the irresponsible pursuit of short-term gain.

For the earth is in the balance. Save it we can, and save it we must – for this is the great responsibility of our generation. Now let us resolve to finish the job.
Al Gore made this speech looking back on the preceeding 8 years as his days as Vice-President waned, while he sought the higher office of the U.S. Presidency.

Al Gore spoke these words with optimism and rightly so - because back in 2000, some eight years ago to this day, things did look optimistic with regards to the environment and the potential technological and economic solutions that would not only slow down global warming (at the very least), but furthermore ensure continued employment and economic growth.

That was the road which lied ahead of us some eight years ago.

Instead, we ended up with the Bush administration, the death of Kyoto, an increased reliance on fossil fuels, wars in the Middle East, and a worsening of global warming overall.

Some eight years after that speech by Al Gore, the electric cars have long disappeared mysteriously while George W. Bush is still pushing for his duplicitous "voluntary measures", supported by his equally environmentally-inept, disassembling and procrastinating Canadian (neo)conservative emulator, Stephen Harper.

Some eight years ago, thanks to decicated leadership on the part of Al Gore, industry, unions, workers and environmentalists had begun working together. Business was at least seeing the potential for profits and sustained economic growth in "going green".

Again - thanks to dedicated leadership.

Some eight years ago, Al Gore called our then-coming decade the Environment Decade. In lieu of its promises of a better and healthier world in the eight years since, we have instead been reaping the rotten and dead fruits of a complete absence - if not actual deficiency - of leadership as we find ourselves actually having regressed beyond the eight years spoken of in 2000 by Al Gore.

Hence, over sixteen years, we find ourselves back to square not one, or even zero, but minus one. We find ourselves in our very own Semi-Dark Ages.

That is the most eloquent and damning argument against "voluntary measures" I will ever hear, read or see.

Without leadership, you have laissez faire.

And with laissez faire, you have what we have today.

This is the road we have been riding on since January 2001.

How often I wonder about that other road not taken ...


(Cross-posted from APOV)


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A Coup For Junk Journalism
by Real_PHV_Mentarch | 10/13/2007 02:33:00 PM
(Updated below)

Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

As expected, the smear attacks and indignant cries of right-wingers, global warming denialists and all assorted anti-Gore maniacs have been flooding the blogosphere.

Incidentally, the same thing is going on in numerous MSM outlets.


Just this day, I found four columns from so-called news columnists/editors - each one repeating the same barbs, same lies and same global warming denialism.

Four different columns, each one equally displaying utter junk journalism.

Let us begin with Terence Corcoran's piece in the National Post, titled "A coup for junk science". Here is the opening line of Mr. Corcoran's opus:
Global warming theory has been in political and scientific trouble for some time.
Yawn. The same type of blatant lie as the one pushed by creationists/IDists with regards to evolution. Same quack tactics - not surprisingly, because what else can deniers do in the face of an established scientific consensus among an overwhelming majority of scientists?

In any case, this opening line from Mr. Corcoran's column is quite telling of the kind of incompetent news columnist that he is.

But it gets better. Then comes the (expected) parroted barbs and sneers against the actual value of the Nobel Peace Prize:
Rescuing and rewarding the obscure and the absurd has been a Nobel sideline for some years. The award has gone to half a dozen fringe movements and futile causes (the Gameen bank, Mother Teresa, nuclear disarmament, land mine activists, peace negotiators), ineffectual United Nations agencies and personalities (including KofiAnnan and the UN itself ), occasional warmongers (Yasser Arafat), plus an international assortment of minor and woolly-headed players on the world stage (Wangari Masthai, Jimmy Carter).
From there, Mr. Corcoran goes for the jugular:
Onto this heap of forgotten causes and marginalia the Nobel has just tossed Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's official climate science group. What a blow the award must be to the IPCC, self-proclaimed home of scientific rigour, to now be lumped in with Reverend Al and his Travelling Snake Oil Road Show and Climate Terror Machine.

If history is any guide here, the IPCC is now doomed to slide into obscurity, joining the list of similarly feted UN agencies that beaver away in relative obscurity and ineffectiveness, their Nobels rotting on shelves: The International Atomic Energy Agency (2005), United Nations peacekeeping forces (1988), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (1981), the International Labour Organization (1969) and the UN Children's Fund (1965).

The first task of the IPCC now, one would think, is to craft a statement disavowing any link with Gore, whose film and book, both titled An Inconvenient Truth, deserved a Nobel for science fiction rather than peace. Not that the IPCC is squeaky clean on the science of climate accuracy. Even the Nobel committee's statement on the IPCC captured the agency's primary role as political shaper of opinion and builder of consensus. IPCC scientific reports have "created an ever-broader informed consensus" about man-made global warming. The Nobel committee said it wanted to "contribute to a sharper focus" on climate change around the world.
This illustrates well the intellectual vapidity and dishonesty of Mr. Corcoran.

First, he casts aspertions on the IPCC for its scientific rigor because, well you know, that is all ignoramuses like Mr. Corcoran can do in order to reassure themselves that their intellectual sloth-driven "beliefs" are sound - nevermind if you have no idea what science and the scientific method are all about. Hence, in Mr. Corcoran's primitive mind, the scientists affiliated with the IPCC must be suspect in their scientific rigor and, consequently, wrong about global warming. Yeah - that's the ticket!

Second, Mr. Corcoran can't help himself but spit literally on Mr. Gore by seeking to ridicule him.

Hence, what we have here are two classic tactics of right-wing nutterers, denialists, fundamentalists and other assorted madhaters: refuse to recognize competence in, and heap ridicule upon, those who "threaten" your ignorance-based beliefs and ideologies.

Typical incompetent human behavior.

Then, of course, Mr. Corcoran perpetuates junk journalism by parroting junk journalism from elsewhere, with regards to that recent ruling by a U.K. judge concerning Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth:

Just hours before the Nobel announcement, Gore was busy spinning his way out of a devastating United Kingdom court case that found nine substantial science errors in the film version of An Inconvenient Truth.

The nine errors, listed on Page A19 of this newspaper, are truly major. But Gore's office, in true political form, tried to turn the science disaster into victory, claiming he was "gratified" that the U.K. court had not totally banned distribution of his film in British schools. Instead, it would have to circulate like a package of cigarettes, with a warning label: Children watch this movie at peril of being politically manipulated by Al Gore into thinking what they are watching is true.
Mr. Corcoran is referring to another article in the same journal where he contributes, which in turn draws exclusively from the same misinterpretations of other (mostly) conservative-leaning newspapers from the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

As I am fond of saying: garbage in, garbage out.

To this effect, do take the time to read the actual ruling of this U.K. judge here. You will notice this very telling passage:
In the event I was persuaded that only some of them were sufficiently persuasive to be relevant for the purposes of his argument, and it was those matters - 9 in all - upon which I invited Mr Chamberlain to concentrate. It was essential to appreciate that the hearing before me did not relate to an analysis of the scientific questions, but to an assessment of whether the 'errors' in question, set out in the context of a political film, informed the argument on ss406 and 407. All these 9 'errors' that I now address are not put in the context of the evidence of Professor Carter and the Claimant's case, but by reference to the IPCC report and the evidence of Dr Stott.
As someone else puts it: "if you noticed the quotation marks around 'error' (...) Burton is not saying that there are errors, he is just referring to the things that Downes alleged were errors".

In other words: junk journalists like Mr. Corcoran and all others of his ilk have been listing without thinking (or perhaps knowingly indeed) nine instances put forth by the plaintif which the complaint deemed "scientific errors" and yet not recognized by the U.K. judge, because the judge himself ruled that it is essential to appreciate that the hearing before him did not relate to an analysis of the scientific questions!

Hence, the judge never outlined errors in Gore's movie and never ruled them as errors!

(For more on this blatant excercize of incompetence on the part of journalists with regards to the ruling of this U.K. judge, read this excellent article).

So, once again, what we have here is another display of stenographing and amplifying outright falsehoods through MSM outlets - thanks to incompetent journalism.

But this doesn't stop Mr. Corcoran from ripping away at Al Gore, his movie (and even his 1997 climate change book as well!), leading to his conclusion:
Given his science gaffes, and his political liabilities, the Nobel may be more of a liability, not just to Gore but to the entire global warming community. The prize has elevated junk science, gross exaggeration and outright misrepresentation to high international stature, the most prestigious award in the world, discrediting all who work honestly to find the facts and do the right thing.
Actually, what we have here is another blatant excercize of junk journalism - nothing more, nothing less.

And as I mentioned at the beginning of the present article, Mr. Corcoran was not alone in displaying utter incompetence today.

Indeed, we were also graced with the "serious, thoughtful and knowledgeable" David Warren, with his piece "If only there were a Nobel prize for deception" in the Ottawa Citizen. I've already discussed Mr. Warren's utter ignorance of all things related scientific. Suffice it to say that his column of today is a mere mirror image of Mr. Corcoran's column discussed above, complete with the same displays of shameless ignorance, vapidity, inanity and parroting of falsehoods (once again, especially with regards to the ruling from the aforementioned U.K. judge). And since three's company, the "serious, thoughtful and knowledgeable" David Frum likewise penned a column on the very same subject in the National Post (again), titled "Honouring a panic-monger", filled to the brim with the same falsehoods, sneers and blatant display of intellectual sloth-driven ignorance and incompetence.

A fourth column, an editorial by The Gazette and titled "Al Gore is out of his league", proved to be somewhat of an exception today. Indeed, the editorial does not dispute global warming but could not help itself in seeking to demean the value and significance of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to (gasp!) Al Gore while mentionning the now-robotic misinterpretations of the U.K. judge's ruling on his movie. But considering the sad and tragic current state of journalism, credit must nonetheless be given where credit is due - I therefore do so by outlining the ending of this editorial:
Despite all this, however, nobody could deny that Gore has done much to spread the word about climate change, a problem with the potential to create resource conflicts in many parts of the world.

Gore's co-winner of the Peace Prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was lauded by the Nobel committee for scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."

Gore's crusade has helped the world understand those reports. The challenge now, for all of us, is to find sensible ways to slow down emissions and cope with those effects that are already inevitable.
Again - although this is far from constituting a call for mobilization to fight global warming, at least we do not have yet more climate change denialism on display in an MSM outlet.

All in all, and considering the offerings we were served today, I can only conclude that Mr. Gore's Nobel Peace Prize constituted an opportunity for duplicitous, mendacious, ignorance-based and/or outright sloppy journalism to rear its ugly head again.

(Where Mr. Gore and global warming are concerned - nothing new here, unfortunately)

In short: today was a veritable coup for junk journalism.

But truth be told - days like today seem increasingly like just another typical day in MSM Land.

Sadly enough.

Yet another truth laid bare - applicable anywhere.


Update: 10/14/2007 - Faux News hosts and commentators keep reacting like shrilling and sniping, utterly ignorant tweenies with regards to Mr. Gore's Nobel Peace Prize - again, not surprisingly. You can read more on the junk journalism about this subject here. On a related note, you can read another exhaustive and reality-based analysis of the U.K. judge's ruling on An Inconvenient Truth here. Enjoy.


(Cross-posted from APOV)

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