PBS Still Insists That Climate Change Is Debatable

No matter that the United States has been hit by four hurricanes in just a little over a month, or that northern California is burning up right before our very eyes. In the interest of fairness to the predatory polluters of unfettered capitalism, PBS gave a platform to the worst of the worst on its News Hour Tuesday night.

The occasion was the Trump administration's announcement that it will "scale back" the Obama administration's own largely aspirational and relatively weak rollback of carbon emissions from existing power plants by the year 2030. The modest goal was merely to reduce emissions to 66 percent of 2005 levels.

PBS had originally invited EPA Director Scott Pruitt to appear on its program to help sell asthma, emphysema, cancer, black lung disease and other maladies to the public in a balanced attempt to counter the science facts offered by former EPA Director Gina McCarthy. But since Pruitt was allegedly either on another private jet junket or holed up in his soundproof bunker, he couldn't make it. And since the prospect of appearing on any TV network containing the word "public" probably makes him feel like vomiting, his notorious coal baron pal Robert Murray appeared in his stead. You could tell that it was on very short notice by the way Murray stumbled all over the script of talking points he was handed at the very last minute.

Here's Thumb In Your Eye, Proles!

His funniest talking point of all was that since "poor moms on fixed incomes" can't afford clean energy (or anything else, for that matter), we should at least let them stay warm with his cheap, dirty coal-fired energy.

 Murray wheezed:

 My stand is that the endangerment finding needs to be repealed, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
I have 4,000 scientists that tell me that it is not a pollutant. A lot of people, John, have made money off of promoting the politics of climate change and the politics of the Democrat Party, in promoting their windmills, their solar panels, and all other restraints and alarmist restraints on low-cost reliable electricity. And they have. And so we’re trying to put it back now and put it right. I believe that there needs to be a lot of discussion as to what the effects are of any climate change on the society, on our standard of living. We have an energy poverty problem. We do not have a climate change problem.

His claim of "4,000 scientists" advising him was not challenged at all by PBS personality John Yang. Nor was Murray asked about much money he himself has made from dirty fuel. Nor was he asked to explain how there can be climate change without it being a climate change problem.

   JOHN YANG: You don’t see climate change as an issue or a problem at all, despite what other scientists say?

 BOB MURRAY: I do not. I do not, because I listen to 4,000 scientists, and who tell me that mankind is not affecting climate change.

 JOHN YANG: Robert Murray, the founder and chairman of Murray Energy, thank you very much for joining us.

Perhaps Yang and his PBS employer are afraid of the litigation-happy Murray, and censored themselves rather than practice anything remotely resembling adversarial journalism. Murray most recently sued comedian John Oliver for daring to make fun of him, not only for his greed and mendacity, but for "looking like a geriatric Dr. Evil." Even before the show aired, Murray had threatened a lawsuit. The coal baron, who might as well be named an official member of the Trump administration, did not want the story of nine of his employees dying in a Utah mine collapse mentioned, even though a government investigation concluded that Murray's company was to blame. Murray still insists that an earthquake was the cause of the disaster, despite no seismic activity being reported at the time. Maybe the 4,000 invisible scientists he has in his pocket told him what he wanted to hear.

As the ACLU warns broadcasters and other media outlets, "you'd better stick to Bob Murray's script unless you want to face him in court." So when Scott Pruitt sent Murray to PBS to fill in for him, it was an offer that PBS apparently could not refuse.

Bob Murray is the Harvey Weinstein of the pollution lobbying industry. One dirty old man is just like another dirty old man, especially when he's as filthy rich as sin and has the power to spook politicians and the media into a state of total and abject complicity.