Wednesday, October 11, 2017

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 My stand is that the endangerment finding needs to be repealed, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.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.

4 comments:

Anne said...

Big surprise, not.

PBS, the Propaganda Broadcasting System, is a corporate propaganda vehicle. Look no further than all the ads they carry and who their big donors/sponsors are. Surely the Kochs aren't donating to them generously out of the goodness of their hearts.

Ditto for NPR, National Propaganda Radio.

Viewers and listeners, mostly liberal establishment Democrats, staunchly believe they're getting real news and balanced views from NPR/PBS, but do they ever hear Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Bacevich, Ralph Nader, Karen Garcia!, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Hudson, Edward Snowden, and other serious, independent thinkers on these networks? No, because those 'public' networks have to be careful about who and what ideas they might empower, lest major funders pull their plug. So much for protecting, promoting, and defending freedom of speech and thought. Viewers and listeners don't even realize what they're missing because those alternative voices have been silenced for so long by traditional media.

Since I haven't actually watched or listened to either one in a long time, I'm not up on their coverage, but do these outlets regularly interview the most respected politician in America, Senator Bernie Sanders? He identified climate change as being the greatest threat to national security.

Btw, I've been using 'annenigma' by habit since my NYT days, but I'm leaving both behind.

Jamie said...

Climate change is debatable. Statistical projections of a chaotic system cannot be settled science. I do not believe you can terraform a planet by simply raising carbon to 400 PPM.

Many on the left who don't understand statistics have been duped by this warmist lie of settled science -- a term more fit for the middle ages and their critique Galileo. In reality the warmists are being lied to, just to set up cap-and-trade, trillions of dollars of value extraction for the ruling class:

California's recent cap and trade illustrates the scam. It is simply a giveway to the energy sector:

"it gives loopholes and tax breaks to corporate polluters that could actually result in more, not less, emissions."

“The bill, heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry, makes California’s flawed cap-and-trade system worse by allowing excessive allowances to pollute and preventing local regulation of greenhouse gases,”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/07/big-oil-spent-10-8-million-to-pass-jerry-browns-cap-and-trade-bill/

Here is another article by the Rolling Stone which illustrates the billions Goldman Sachs and others have given to promote warmism and their trillions in free money that will result from cap-and-trade:

"Goldman started pushing hard for cap-and-trade long ago, but things really ramped up last year when the firm spent $3.5 million to lobby climate issues."

"we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405

My advice to snowflakes:

1. Learn statistics then you can pierce the false veil of 'settled science' regarding time-series and regression techniques.

2. Follow the money.


Karen Garcia said...

I think it is actually possible to accept evidence of anthropogenic climate change and global warming as well as reject cap and trade as any kind of legit solution. I agree with what Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical in that regard. Financialized globalist so will seize upon any social problem or catastrophe to squeeze every last buck out of it.

spam bucket said...

Re Jamie, thanks for your post. Agreed, snowflakes don’t do the math on climate change. But here’s what I don’t understand. Photographic and other evidence shows the polar ice caps are melting. The sea level is rising. Temperatures are rising. Mountain ice is melting. Mount Kilimanjaro "... has been the subject of many scientific studies because of its shrinking glaciers and disappearing ice fields." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kilimanjaro

Also see, Mount Washington Observatory, "Climate Change and Air Pollutant Impacts to New England's Rare Alpine Zone"

https://www.mountwashington.org/research-and-product-testing/past-projects/climate-change-and-air-pollutant-impacts-to-new-englands-rare-alpine-zone.aspx

"Our climatic analysis challenged our second hypothesis. Though trending warmer, we found no statistically significant temperature trends over the period of record (past seven decades) at the higher elevations, unlike the surrounding lower elevations. Our results (Grant et al. 2009; Seidel et al. 2009) correct an earlier paper on climatic warming on Mount Washington (Grant et al. 2005). Our results contrast with the predictions commonly suggested in the literature that the northeast's sub-alpine and alpine ecosystems are immediately threatened by and are rapidly undergoing warming."

So what accounts for phenomena that suggests climate change / global warming?

Also agreed, FOLLOW THE MONEY, especially when Goldman Sachs is involved.