Hannah, Daryl
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oddly blank?
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Directed by Craig Rosebraugh
time capsule
A long time ago I gifted a worn and rather worthless car to a friend. Though he intended to nurse my old hooptie back to life, he wound up abandoning it. Years later I stumbled upon the car, embalmed in bird droppings and wrapped in vines, tucked away in another friend's backyard. Finding it was like finding a time capsule, ripe with artifacts from my prior life, reemerging like a ghost after two decades.
My reunion with my old car offers, at best, a poor analogy for what Buffalo bookstore owner Leslie James Pickering must be experiencing right now. But luckily for me, it's the best one I can come up with. When I try to empathize with Pickering, this is all I have to work with.
Pickering just received a shipment from his prior life, by way of the FBI. A decade and a half ago, Pickering lived in Portland, Oregon. He, along with his friend, Craig Rosebraugh, operated from their house what can best be described as a not-for-profit public relations agency. Their outfit operated much like many large multinational corporate PR agencies, offering press releases and data in support of their clients' positions and actions. The biggest difference, beyond scale and their lack of a profit motive, was in the clients they represented.
Whereas the corporate outfits regularly represent ecocidal companies or warring governments whose actions sometimes result in thousands of human deaths, Pickering and Rosebraugh's primary client was the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).
The ELF was not an organization but an ideological movement, ostensibly inspired by the Deep Ecology movement personified by Earth First! in the 1980s and 1990s. Earth First!'s mischievous tactics of direct action included "monkeywrenching" the machinery of environmental destruction, through actions such as disabling bulldozers and degrading the economic value of old growth trees by hammering large spikes into them, making it too risky and not economically viable to cut them down. The ELF, however, took these tactics to another level, exponentially raising the ante of what they termed "direct action." People claiming the ELF banner, for example, torched a ski resort, McMansions, a condo development, and university laboratories where they believed GMO research was being conducted.
While Pickering and Rosebraugh claim to have never participated in planning or carrying out an ELF action, they were both publicly sympathetic to the movement. Their PR operation, which operated from 1997 to 2002, became known as the "ELF Press Office," maintaining a public address where they received anonymous communiques from the arsonists and vandals behind many ELF-type actions. Pushing free speech to its legal limits, they processed this information for press dissemination, often appearing publicly to contextualize and answer questions about ELF actions, much like corporate PR people do for their clients.
During this period, as the ELF gained notoriety destroying property, the FBI declared them as the nation's top "domestic terror" threat. They issued this designation despite fact that nobody was ever hurt in any ELF action and that more dangerous movements such as the anti-abortion and white supremacist movements were specifically targeting and killing people at that time - albeit while posing much less of a threat to corporate and development interests.
Running the press office made both Rosebraugh and Pickering prime targets for the FBI to investigate. Yet, to date, FBI investigations initiated more than 15 years ago have failed to turn up any criminal connection between Pickering and Rosebraugh and the arsonists and vandals behind the ELF actions.
In January 2000 and again in April 2001, FBI agents raided Rosebraugh and Pickering's home, which also served as the press office. The second raid came shortly after the pair issued press releases in connection with an arson attack that burned 35 SUVs in a nearby dealership. Both times, the FBI agents seized computer equipment, journals, typewriters, photo albums, personal papers, and other assorted items. According to Pickering, the FBI provided no inventory for the 2000 seizure and only a partial inventory for the 2001 seizure. A few months later, a representative from the agency contacted Pickering and Rosebraugh, offering to return their seized property. When the pair turned up to retrieve their belongings, however, agents only offered to return a recycling bucket and its contents.
ELF actions were controversial among environmentalists who questioned the efficacy of their tactics, feared that somebody could get hurt or killed in one of their actions, and argued that these actions could be used by the government to justify further repression of non-violent direct action environmental and anti-corporate movements. While Pickering hasn't waivered in his support of ELF tactics, he left the press office and stopped doing PR for the ELF 14 years ago, roughly one year after the second raid on his home. In 2011, he was interviewed for the Academy Award nominated documentary If a Tree Falls, which told the story of the ELF. He is still an activist today, often lecturing on environmental issues. His bookstore, Burning Books, often hosts activist speakers and films. Pickering has reinvented himself over the past 14 years as a soft-spoken family man and a business owner - whose quiet voice still speaks of revolution.
And the FBI still keeps an eye on Pickering. In the summer of 2012, the Buffalo office of the FBI allegedly started asking questions about him. In April of this year, the Eugene office of the FBI contacted Rosebraugh, telling him they were ready to return what they seized from his and Pickering's Portland home 14 years ago. Or at least they were ready to return the portion of the seized property that they actually inventoried, which, according to Pickering, amounts to about one SUV of material, from a seizure that filled at least three government SUVs.
The email from the FBI listed an inventory of the property they were returning: Mac, Dell, "Mini-Tower" [sic.] and "Domino tower" [sic.] computers, a computer mouse, a monitor, a keyboard, a Canon printer, a Brother fax/scanner, a Umax scanner, a cell phone, and IBM, Royal, and "Underwood Five" typewriters, which Pickering claims he was using as part of a book arts project. An FBI forensic examination of these artifacts provided what the agency terms "no useful info."
Michael Kuzma, who currently serves as Pickering's attorney, suspects the equipment was seized "by design to cripple the press office and crush the First Amendment rights of these activists," adding that, "The FBI is no fan of free speech." Kuzma suspects that his client's property was not actually being studied as evidence for the past 14 years but was "collecting dust." The seizure, he argues, "fits in with the purpose of the FBI - historically to monitor and disrupt political organizations they deem to be subversive." It's being returned now, Kuzma suspects, because "Leslie's public speaking activities, such as his recent European speaking tour, has embarrassed the FBI - an embarrassment because during his PowerPoint presentation he shows images of the agents actually seizing the equipment 14 years ago."
Pickering argues that the FBI "seems to be this uncertain mix of extreme bureaucracy and extreme incompetency." Hence, he explains, "I'm not really even asking myself why they would suddenly release this junk after 14 years," adding that he's not "tormenting" himself by "searching for any more unanswerable questions." He does point out, however, that his property was ostensibly confiscated as part of the SUV arson investigation, yet that crime was solved almost a decade ago.
Unlike my car, which sat and rotted under birds and vegetation, we don't quite know where these artifacts traveled over the past 14 years, who they touched, and what they had to say. What did forensic investigators think of the zeros and ones that populated the seized hard drives and painted pictures of the lives of Pickering, Rosebraugh, and their roommates? What did they learn from the computer mouse? Whose DNA coated it? What sort of detritus was left on the printer? What resins clung to the monitor?
These 14 years have not been kind to Rosebraugh and Pickering's property, rendering all but the typewriters, which were already obsolete, as antiques. On the other hand, you could say these items have instead aged like fine wine, starting their incarceration as worn equipment but aging into historic artifacts. Put together into a collection, as the FBI agents unwittingly curated them, we can see something more than obsolete junk. Together, this curated collection gives us a tactile reminder of a political time, place, and tactic, representing both the revolutionary fervor of the ELF and the reactionary abuses of the FBI.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
MICHAEL I. NIMAN
Dr. Michael I. Niman is a professor of journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College. His previous columns are archived at www.mediastudy.com and are available globally through syndication.
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http://www.exposethebastards.com/bastards
Here are some of the key individuals that have played a role in the attack on the science of climate change:
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The Koch Brothers - David and Charles
Charles Koch and David Koch are the majority owners of Koch Industries, an oil and gas conglomerate which ranks as America's second largest privately-held company. With operations in nearly 60 countries and annual revenues pushing $100 billion, David Koch likes to say, "we're the biggest company you've never heard of." Read more about David and Charles Koch.
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Tim Phillips
Tim Phillips is the president of the non-profit organizations Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Prior to to AFP, Phillips co-founded Century Strategies, a political and corporate consulting firm. Phillips describes himself as "one of the nation's premier grassroots organizers." Americans for Prosperity (AFP) was started by the oil billionaire David Koch and is the third largest recipient of funding from the Koch Family Foundations. Read more about Tim Phillips.
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Christopher Monckton
Christopher Monckton is the third Viscount of Benchley, a hereditary title in the United Kingdom. Contrary to Monckton's claims, he is not a member of the House of Lords in the Parliament of Britain. He is also not a scientist. Read more about Christopher Monckton.
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Rex Tillerson
Rex Tillerson is the Chairman and CEO of the world's largest oil and gas company, ExxonMobil. According to Forbes Magazine, Exxon is the most profitable publicly traded company in world history -- generating more than $1.6 trillion in revenue between 2009-2012. Exxon is so notorious in its climate denial funding that Greenpeace created ExxonSecrets, a website to record the oil giant's activities to discredit climate science. Read more about ExxonMobil and Rex Tillerson.
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George W. Bush
The Bush family has made its living from oil since the early 20th Century, so it comes as no surprise that George W. Bush's presidency was filled with pro-oil industry policies, while major environment policies were either rejected or ignored. Read more about George W. Bush.
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Dick Cheney
Often referred to as the most powerful Vice President in American history, Cheney was a key decision-maker in the Bush White House. Largely focused on defense and security, he also pried himself into energy issues as well. Read more about Dick Cheney.
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Philip Cooney
Philip Cooney works for ExxonMobil. His previous employment includes a 15-year tenure working for the American Petroleum Institute as a lobbyist and as the organization's "climate team leader." Read more about Philip Cooney.
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Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas has served as a Supreme Court Justice since 1991, when he was nominated by President George H. W. Bush. Upon his appointment, Thomas supplanted Antonin Scalia as the most conservative member of the high court. Read more about Clarence Thomas.
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Marc Morano
Marc Morano, the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, is one of climate denial's most prolific media-heads. In 2012, Morano was named the Climate Change Misinformer of the Year by conservative watchdog group Media Matters for America. Read more about Marc Morano.
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James Inhofe
Senator Inhofe is one of the most conservative members in the U.S. Congress. In regard to climate change, he is the most outspoken critic of the science, and frequently uses the Senate floor as platform to spread misinformation about climate change and to oppose any action from the U.S. government to address global warming. Read more about James Inhofe.
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Myron Ebell
Myron Ebell is the director of energy and global warming policy at the conservative think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Read more about Myron Ebell.
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Jay Lehr
Jay Lehr is a Senior Fellow and Science Director at the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. Also a prolific national speaker on environmental and agricultural issues, Lehr earned America's first doctorate in Ground Water Hydrology back in 1962. For more than 20 years, Lehr has maintained environmentalists are fear-mongering zealots. Read more about Jay Lehr.
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David Bossie
David Bossie is the President of Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group. Prior to assuming his position with Citizens United in 2000, Bossie worked as a Congressional investigator. Read more about David Bossie.
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Ian Plimer
Ian Plimer is a professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is also the director of seven mining companies, with at least two having coal interests. Mining industries, particularly coal, would be adversely affected if governments enacted climate legislation. Read more about Ian Plimer.
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Here are the people that have dedicated endless hours and, in many cases, entire careers, studying climate science and policy solutions.
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James Hansen
Dr. James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and is Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Read more about James Hansen.
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Jim Hoggan
Jim is the co-founder of the influential website DeSmogBlog, chosen as one of Time Magazine’s Best Blogs for 2011 for its work exposing corporate misinformation campaigns. Read more about Jim Hoggan.
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Connie Hedegaard
Connnie Hedegaard is a Danish politician, journalist, and intellectual. Currently, Hedegaard is the Commissioner for Climate Action in the European Union (EU). She has held this position since 2010. Prior to this, she served as Denmark's climate and energy minister. Read more about Connie Hedegaard.
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Kert Davies
Kert Davies is the Research Director at Greenpeace US, based in Washington, DC. Kert and his team launched the landmark 2010 report, Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine, which put a spotlight on the Koch brothers and broke open the story of the network of organizations they fund to influence American politics and public policy. Read more about Kert Davies.
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Michael Mann
Dr. Michael E. Mann is a Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). Read more about Michael Mann.
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Rick Piltz
Rick Piltz has worked as an educator, writer, and policy analyst and advocate since the 1970’s, in federal and state government, academia, and nonprofit organizations. Read more about Rick Piltz.
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Achim Steiner
The Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the Under-Secretary-General of the UN. Read more about Achim Steiner.
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Henry Waxman
Henry Waxman is the U.S. Representative for California's 33rd congressional district, serving in Congress since 1975. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He is considered to be one of the most influential liberal members of Congress. Read more about Henry Waxman.
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George Monbiot
George Monbiot is a world renowned journalist and author, most notably known for his environmental and political writing. Since 1996 he has been a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian. Read more about George Monbiot.
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Christine Todd Whitman.
Christine Todd Whitman served as the first female governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001 and was Environmental Protection Agency administrator under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003. Read more about Christine Todd Whitman.
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Ban Ki-Moon
Ban Ki-moon is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations. Elected to the position in 2007, Ki-moon was unanimously re-elected in 2011. Read more about Ban Ki-Moon.
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Published on Media Research Center (http://www.mrc.org)
Eco-Terrorists Attack Conservatives in New Film
Enviro film ‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ opens in more theaters after box office flop.
By
Mike Ciandella
April 4, 2013 - 2:10pm
“Greedy Lying Bastards” follows “An Inconvenient Truth” in the climate change alarmism documentary film genre. The difference is this film lacked Al Gore’s name to give it momentum, although it has gotten some help from CNN [1].
The film is the creation of former eco-terrorist Craig Rosebraugh and actress Daryl Hannah [2] of “Splash,” “Kill Bill” and “Bladerunner” among others. The film made a mere $45,000 its March 8 opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo [3], which rated it the 400th movie of the past 365 days, and the 46th movie its March 8 opening weekend.
The documentary [1] says it “investigates the reason behind stalled efforts to tackle climate change despite consensus in the scientific community that it is not only a reality but also a growing problem that is placing us on the bring of disaster,” according to the official website [4]. The trailer, website and reviews for the film all make it out to be a collage of tried and true lefty climate change claims, complete with storm footage and villainization of the Koch brothers and the oil industry.
The Los Angeles Times [5] said that “longtime followers of this hyper-partisan topic may not find much terribly new or revealing here.” After an initial limited showing, the film was released in more theatres on March 29.
Rosebraugh, the film’s director, has been an outspoken activist for both the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, both of which are classified as domestic terror groups by the FBI [6]. In a press release on both groups, the FBI stated that “eco-terrorists and animal rights extremists are one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats in the U.S. today.”
One of the movie’s main targets is U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. Inhofe told The Tulsa World [7] that he was not surprised that the film targeted him, and he was proud of it on March 28. Inhofe was formerly the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. An outspoken conservative, Inhofe was also a winner of the Family Research Council [8]’s “True Blue” award for a consistent conservative voting record.
"As I said in July 2003, when I first called global warming thegreatest hoax perpetrated on the American people, science has been co-opted by those who care more about peddling gloom-and-doom fear tactics to drive their own broader political agenda," Inhofe told The Tulsa World.
"Just by watching the trailer, that's exactly what this video seems to do as well, leveraging the unknown to incite fear and raise money to make people like Al Gore even wealthier," he continued. Since his first speech on the topic, Inhofe has been surprised by how organizations have credited him as being “capable of singlehandedly bringing about the end of the world.”
Director Rosebraugh claimed that the media was biased in favor of “climate change deniers,” even comparing global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers in an interview with The Huffington Post [9]:“Fox [News] is far and away the extreme example. They’ll have a known Holocaust denier debating a Holocaust survivor. Or a tobacco industry representative still arguing that smoking isn’t linked to cancer.”
The Business and Media Institute has demonstrated the opposite, exposing the liberal media’s bias against climate change skeptics over [10] and over again [11].
Rosebraugh also called out Republicans in the same interview, saying that as “long as they continue to publicly question the science of climate change, so will the media.” Just like Gore has said, Rosebraugh claims the debate about climate change is “already over.”
Rosebraugh’s Holocaust statements echo CBS’s Scott Pelley [12] from 2006, who argued against including climate change skeptics on the news, saying that “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”
The film’s list of scientific “experts” included NASA scientist James Hansen [13] who’s predictions have failed to come true. In 1988, he warned that global temperatures would rise by 0.45 degrees Celsius. This was not the case [14]. However, Hansen began an August 2012 opinion piece for the Washington Post by saying that his predictions that year were too optimistic.
Hansen also called for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity [15]” in a 2008 speech to Congress, according to the U.K. news outlet the Guardian [16].
The film has gotten some publicity from the news media. During a March 9 CNN interview [1], the film’s executive producer, Daryl Hannah, was able to slam "false information" by the Koch brothers, compare herself to Martin Luther King, andcall for the "eradication" of Citizens United during the interview. CNN completely ignored that the director and writer of the film, Rosebraugh, was a former spokesman for eco-terrorist groups for years before abandoning his work.
Source URL: http://www.mrc.org/articles/eco-terrorists-attack-conservatives-new-film
http://www.mrc.org/articles/eco-terrorists-attack-conservatives-new-film
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is CNN, where environmental activists can launch their blistering attacks on man-made global warming skeptics without much of a challenge. On Tuesday's Starting Point, actress and activist Daryl Hannah promoted her new documentary "Greedy, Lying Bastards" that hits the funding and supposed falsehoods behind global warming skepticism.
Hannah was able to slam "false information" by the Koch brothers, compare herself to Martin Luther King, and call for the "eradication" of Citizens United during the interview. CNN completely ignored that the director and writer of her film, Craig Rosebraugh, was a fomer spokesman for eco-terrorist groups for years before abandoning his work.
At least The Oregonian newspaper took the trouble to provide such background context for the film that CNN ignored.
Man-made climate change skeptics have fared much worse than Hannah on CNN. For instance, on December 4 CNN host Piers Morgan teamed up with scientist Bill Nye against skeptic Marc Morano. Morgan even lectured his guest that "I respect that you have views. I don't think they're facts, and there are many scientists who would take issue with you about the use of the word 'fact.'"
On November 1, Morgan defended New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "very pertinent point" that Hurricane Sandy was probably brought about by global warming, and he again lectured skeptics that "it depends whether you believe the science or not."
Such hostility was nowhere to be found on Tuesday's Starting Point. Host Soledad O'Brien even promoted Hannah's documentary. "That's one of the most powerful lines. 'They're in the business of selling doubt,'" she marveled at a movie line on global warming skeptics. "And it's that doubt that keeps this conversation, I think, about global warming going."
O'Brien prodded Hannah to deliver her activist message. "What was your personal interest in this? I mean, why climate change and environmental issues overall for you? You've gotten arrested because of your passion for some of these topics."
That teed up Hannah to compare her cause to that of Martin Luther King: "Well you know first of all, I don't think that that's something that's really so bad. I mean, Martin Luther King was arrested 30 times before he was the age of 39 to right incredible wrongs. And we're at a time of extreme crises. I mean, we are facing a possible threat to our very life support systems."[note defense v mrc attack on actress and activist]
Hannah also claimed the Koch brothers spread falsehoods about global warming. "But then, yet, they will still funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that climate legislation isn't passed. That there's false information put out about the climate crisis and also about clean energy and its possibilities."
Those were only some of many claims Hannah made during the interview that CNN mostly left unchallenged. "It opens nationwide in theaters on Friday," O'Brien closed the segment promoting the film.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on Starting Point on March 5 at 8:49 a.m. EST, is as follows:
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Daryl Hannah has been with us all morning. She's also the executive producer of a new movie which is called "Greedy, Lying Bastards". It's causing some major buzz, not just for the name. The film takes a look at campaigns that deny climate change. Let's play a little clip.
(Video Clip)
MARC MORANO: We actually have had no significant warming.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The breakup of the ice at the North Pole is not unusual.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. There is no scientific basis for alarm.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC host: Are you guys funded in part by Exxon?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Verily, but why did you imagine that Exxon give you money?
Rep. HENRY WAXMAN (D-Calif.): The fossil fuel industries have an enormous amount of clout.
The Koch Brothers, for example, gave millions and millions of dollars to Republican efforts to not do anything to fight climate change.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They basically are in the business of selling doubt.
(End Video Clip)
O'BRIEN: That's one of the most powerful lines. "They're in the business of selling doubt." And it's that doubt that keeps this conversation, I think, about global warming going.
DARYL HANNAH, actress, activist: It's true because there is actually a consensus that it is happening. And that it is also human caused. However – and even, what's really interesting, is even Rex Tillerson from Exxon now has finally acknowledged that climate change is actually happening. Even the Koch Brothers I mean, you know, they will publicly come out and acknowledge it.
But then, yet, they will still funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that climate legislation isn't passed. That there's false information put out about the climate crisis and also about clean energy and its possibilities.
So while they – they want to, you know, not seem like idiots and say, well, nothing is happening when you can obviously it's so clear now. We've got epic droughts. I mean, unprecedented droughts in the Midwest, in our bread basket of our country. We've got wildfires and superstorms and floods. And I mean, Arctic ice sheets melting in unprecedented fashions, et cetera. It's impossible to deny those facts, simple facts. Like you put the pH strip in the ocean, it's 30 percent more acid than it ever it has been.
O'BRIEN: What was your personal interest in this? I mean, why climate change and environmental issues overall for you? You've gotten arrested because of your passion for some of these topics.
JOHN BERMAN: Many times.
O'BRIEN: Yeah. A handful of times.
HANNAH: Well you know first of all, I don't think that that's something that's really so bad. I mean, Martin Luther King was arrested 30 times before he was the age of 39 to right incredible wrongs. And we're at a time of extreme crises. I mean, we are facing a possible threat to our very life support systems.
I mean, a week and a half ago, the World Bank – the World Bank – who financed most of these large fossil fuel projects, you know, mega dams, et cetera, put out their own report on the climate crisis. And it was, like, the worst horror film I've ever seen in my life. It was the scariest scenario.
They said that if we raise the temperature of the earth four degrees Celsius, essentially it's total systems collapse, mass starvation, mass extinctions, disease. I mean the picture that they portray in their report was so horrifying that they had no choice but to make urgent recommendations to make radical changes, to stop fossil fuels immediately.
O'BRIEN: Do you think you're getting –
HANNAH: And that's from the World Bank.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY, Wall Street Journal: You know what's the takeaway here? What do you want people who watch the film to do when they leave the theater?
HANNAH: Well, to -- to hold these fossil fuel companies accountable. Because, see, I believe that they're – first of all, I believe Citizens United needs to be eradicated. This ruling that gave corporations the right of a person – because now politicians are doing the bidding of corporations and not doing – not doing representing us, we the people.
They're representing the corporations, because now corporations can give them money to their campaigns. They can, you know, basically send hundreds of lobbyists to make sure that they keep the pressure on so that the politicians are doing their will. And when that's all the messaging that they get, they're going to do it. You know, what did Upton Sinclair say? You know you can't – a guy is not going to do something when his salary depends upon him doing it.
ROLAND MARTIN, CNN contributor: Daryl how do you – how do you counter though, the economic argument. Because what happens in this country any time you try to propose any change, folks will say oh it's going to cost us billions. It's going to wreck the economy. We're going to lose jobs. And that all this causes somebody to go –
(Crosstalk)
O'BRIEN: Are you picking the environment over human beings and livelihood?
(Crosstalk)
MARTIN: Right, people go, oh, my God. We can't lose jobs.
HANNAH: Well here's – here's the deal. What we're talking about is protecting our ability to survive and our – and our vital life support systems. Now, there's a way to do that and still create jobs that are domestic jobs with safe, clean energy. And that's where we should be putting all of our resources. Not just allowing these companies who are essentially raping and pillaging our ecosystems because they are making record profits. Even in this economy.
The oil – the fossil fuel industry is the wealthiest industry in the history of money. In the history of money, and yet we're still paying, you know, through the roof just for our gallons of gas to go to, you know, to take our kids to school. It is unethical, it's wrong. And now we're going to extreme forms of extraction just to get that fuel because we've run out of the easy-to-get stuff. We have to blow up entire mountain tops. We're just decimating our oldest mountain range in the Appalachians.
MARTIN: I take it you're against Keystone.
HANNAH: The Keystone which is a – this is something I think we would all be united on because it's not a polarizing issue. It's a foreign company coming into our country, taking our farmers' and ranchers' lands through eminent domain, which is supposed to be only used for national security. But in this case, this pipeline which is going to be carrying corrosive tar sand sludge, it has to be pushed through at 150 degrees with toxic chemicals, is only going down to the Gulf of Mexico so that they can export it. They say that in their own documents. This is not for energy security for America. This is not going to affect our gasoline prices except for possibly to raise them, because the price per barrel that they can get down in the Gulf of Mexico to export is $20 higher a barrel.
O'BRIEN: The issue is a tough one.
HANNAH: And they try to confuse you. That's what it is.
O'BRIEN: Well that is –
(Crosstalk)
MARTIN: You're slightly passionate about this.
HANNAH: It's very infuriating. I mean, it's outrageous. It should be illegal to do what they do. It should be illegal.
O'BRIEN: The film is called "Greedy, Lying Bastards".
MARTIN: Cut right to the chase.
O'BRIEN: Yeah, it really does, doesn't it? Nice to have you talk about it. It opens nationwide in theaters on Friday.
-- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center
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Published on Media Research Center (http://www.mrc.org)
Global Warming Censored
By
Dan Gainor
Julia A. Seymour
March 3, 2008 - 6:32pm
Correction Appended
So much for that job requirement of balance and objectivity. When it came to global warming the media clearly left out dissent in favor of hype, cute penguins and disastrous predictions.
"They [penguins] are charismatic, endearing and in serious trouble," warned NBC's Anne Thompson on the Dec. 12, 2007, "Nightly News." Thompson didn't include any disagreement.
While the networks had plenty of time to worry about the future of birds, most network news shows didn't take much time to include any other point of view even though hundreds of scientists have expressed skepticism of manmade climate change theory.
Another NBC reporter, Kerry Sanders, hyped the threat of warming to polar bears and walruses on Dec. 9, 2007, "a world scientists say may melt away by 2050." Sanders didn't include any scientists who disagreed with that claim.
The lack of balance on the issue prompted one network journalist, John Stossel of ABC, to do a story on the media's one-sidedness on '20/20" Oct. 19, 2007.
"You've heard the reports. The globe is warming. And it's our fault. And the consequences will be terrible. But you should know there is another side to this story," teased Stossel as he began his "Give me a Break" segment.
There is another side to the issue. In one story, Stossel interviewed four scientists critical of the so-called "consensus" on global warming. That's four more dissenting scientists than CBS put on its network in six entire months.
To better assess network behavior on this key topic, the Business & Media Institute examined 188 stories from ABC, CBS and NBC that mentioned "global warming" or "climate change" between July 1, 2007, and Dec. 31, 2007.
BMI found skepticism was shut out of a vast majority of reports. Overall, a measly 21 percent had any dissent at all referenced by a journalist or guest.
Skeptical voices were suppressed by the networks, outnumbered by nearly a 7-to-1 ratio by those promoting fear of climate change or being used by the network for the same purpose. CBS had an even worse record: nearly 38 proponents to one skeptic.
Lengthy segments like Scott Pelley's Oct. 21, 2007, "60 Minutes" story on "The Age of Megafires" certainly had time to include an alternative point of view to the notion that global warming is largely responsible for bigger, hotter fires in the American West. But Pelley skipped those voices - voices like a University of California Merced professor published on the Washington Spokesman-Review Web site about the California wildfires.
According to Alan Zarembo's Oct. 24, 2007, story, "Scientists said it would be difficult to make that case, given the combustible mix of drought and wind that has plagued the region for centuries or more. [2]"
Anthony Westerling, a UC-Merced professor and climate scientist, told Zarembo that the wildfires were the result of two "staples of the region's climatic history," meaning "strong Santa Ana winds" and "a drought that turned much of the hillsides to bone-dry kindling."
"Neither can be attributed to climate change," said Westerling.
The near blackout of skepticism on the networks didn't come as much of a surprise, since reporters like Pelley have been much more than onlookers in the story of global warming. In many cases they have become advocates - even going "to the ends of the earth" "to find evidence of climate change."
Ann Curry of NBC's "Today" made that clear on Oct. 29, 2007: "[O]ur mission, of course, is to find evidence of climate change."
When people with other views were mentioned, it sometimes came with a denigrating label like "deniers" or "cynics." Such critics were also portrayed as flat-earthers by journalists and guests. One person skeptical of manmade climate change, a Kentucky state representative, managed to get on the air but was treated to an exceptionally hostile interview by ABC's Bill Weir.
There were many other flaws in the reporting that created a very one-sided perspective. Journalists repeatedly phrased questions or made statements indicating human-caused warming was a fact, and they included opinions of politicians, movie stars, musicians and ordinary people like bankers instead of relying on scientists.
But according to Dr. Pat Michaels viewers would be better served by hearing both sides. "They would benefit from appreciating the true scientific diversity on the topic. The arguments against these gloom and doom global warming scenarios are much stronger than the arguments for them," Michaels told BMI.
Voices of Dissent: Missing
According to NBC's Brian Williams, "There's no shortage of folks out there saying it's [global warming is] not all that bad." Williams was teasing a "Nightly News" story on August 15 that included two other voices: Dr. Pat Michaels, a research professor of environmental sciences [3], and Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute [4].
Williams was certainly right - there are hundreds of scientists [5] from around the world who question the global warming "consensus" - but in the news the latter half of 2007 you had to look hard to find them.
On the three networks, 79 percent of stories (149 out of 188) didn't mention skepticism or anyone at all who dissented from global warming alarmism. Williams' own network, NBC tied with CBS with roughly 85 percent of stories ignoring other opinions (NBC excluded dissent 76 out of 89 stories, CBS - 39 out of 46). ABC was the most balanced network, but still censored dissent from 64 percent of its stories (34 out of 53). The 113 casual mentions of global warming that BMI analyzed were not included in this calculation.
But dissent flourishes. The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee released a list [6] on Dec. 20, 2007, of more than 400 skeptical scientists from different fields - astrophysics, geology, climatology, meteorology and others. The release didn't even earn a news brief from one of the three networks as of Dec. 31, 2007.
Even when one show claimed it would represent a range of opinions on the issue, it didn't. On Oct. 30, 2007, NBC "Today" co-host Matt Lauer teased the upcoming "Ends of the Earth" broadcasts saying to Meredith Vieira, "And you're going to be interviewing all the experts talking about the issues of climate change." (emphasis added)
Vieira replied, "Absolutely. Getting into a whole debate, too, because some people believe there's an effect of climate change, others say not really. So we're going to discuss all of it and give viewers at home real tips on what you can do."
But on Nov. 5 and 6, 2007 as "Today" went to the "Ends of the Earth," the only "experts" Vieira spoke to were former vice president Al Gore, Chip Giller of Grist.org - a left-wing environmental Web site - and Katherine Wroth, co-author of "Wake Up and Smell the Planet."
Grist is an extreme publication. David Roberts of the environmentalist magazine called for "war crimes trials for these bastards - some sort of climate Nuremberg," [7] referring to the climate change "denial industry [8]." (Roberts later retracted [9] his comment, but not until it received a strongly negative response.)
The only skepticism of global warming "consensus" that came up was a brief mention by Vieira as she interviewed Gore. She asked Gore about John Christy, one scientist formerly with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who criticized Gore's predictions in an op-ed printed in The Wall Street Journal. Gore shot back calling Christy an "outlier."
Vieira didn't question Gore's remark or give Christy an opportunity to respond to the attack. Perhaps if she had, Christy would have echoed his remarks from the Nov. 1, 2007, Wall Street Journal [10]:
"I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never 'proof') and the coincidence that change in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time," said Christy.
He continued, "We [dissenting scientists] discount the possibility that everything is caused by human actions, because everything we've seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice bridge linking Asia and North America."
'Deniers,' 'Hired Guns' and Hostile Interviews
Journalists practically drooled over Al Gore during Live Earth interviews and after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. In contrast, people with alternative views barely got face time on the networks. Instead, they received insults and hostile questions.
The ugliest treatment of a skeptic was by Bill Weir on Nov. 18, 2007, "Good Morning America." He was interviewing Democratic state representative Jim Gooch from Kentucky.
Weir peppered Gooch with hardball questions and even attacked Gooch's motives:
"So what do you suspect these 4,000 or so scientists from 130 countries are up to? Do you accuse them [IPCC scientists] of lying? Do you think they're just all wrong? I should point out that your family is in business with the coal industry. You opposed a bill that would've stopped coal mines from exploding the tops of mountains and dumping waste into rivers there. So shouldn't you temper on your opinion on the environment?"
Gooch made it clear that he supported an open debate, saying, "[T]here is another side of the story. I think what we have is we have the problem of global warming about to become a political problem when lawmakers in Congress, when governors in states, when even the courts start to act in ways that are gonna affect the American people in severe ways." Gooch then mentioned the possible $6-trillion cost of one bill to deal with global warming.
"And what I wanna make sure that we do is that if we act, we have the science right," explained Gooch.
Weir wasn't satisfied: "But, but according to all these scientists, the more handwringing we do, the more we dither on this, the worse it's going to get. And what if you're wrong? What if this is, in fact, a global catastrophe? Isn't it a moral imperative as a public servant to err on the side of planetary survival and get something done?"
Instead of letting Gooch debate with someone who disagreed, Weir filled that role himself. He came across as a passionate advocate for "something" that would supposedly aid "survival," ignoring the cost, accuracy, and his supposed objectivity.
Journalists also called skeptics "deniers," conjuring images of Holocaust deniers, and cast them as flat-earthers - ironically forgetting that there was once a scientific consensus that the earth was flat.
When Gore attacked Dr. Christy [11] [who was mentioned by Meredith Vieira] on "Today" Nov. 5, 2007, Gore specifically compared people critical of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming to people who think the Earth is flat.
"Well, he's an outlier, he no longer belongs to the IPCC. And he is way outside the scientific consensus … There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat," said Gore.
Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made the same disparaging comparison on July 16, 2007 "Early Show" on CBS. After co-host Harry Smith said, "[I] asked why some people still don't believe we have a problem."
"Well, I think that there is [sic] still a lot of people that still think that the world is flat," said Schwarzenegger.
NBC's chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson said, "He is proudly a denier," of research professor and CATO senior fellow Dr. Pat Michaels.
Michaels told BMI, "She has no idea what she's talking about. I have written and spoken repeatedly in the last 15 years that human beings are responsible for most of the warming in the past century." What Michaels disagrees on is whether such warming will result in environmental catastrophe.
Recalling that NBC interview, Michaels continued, "The interview was great, but she pulled out one little piece and took it completely out of context. It was really, really disappointing. The interview was conducted in a very professional fashion, it was the editing that clearly did not reflect the tone and content of the overall interview."
Thompson actually included two dissenting views in that Aug. 15, 2007, "Nightly News" but undermined both their opinions by implying they were not experts and were only making trouble: "Climate experts say whether hired guns or honest dissenters, deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions."
A paltry 37 people expressing skepticism were included in six months of TV news coverage on the issue across three networks. That included all kinds of people like politicians or government employees, business representatives, celebrities, ordinary people and unidentified people. Only seven of them were scientists like Michaels.
CBS practically banned skeptics from its network, including only four and not a single scientist. The network seemed to adopt the mentality of CBS journalist Scott Pelley, who referred to global warming skeptics as "deniers" in March 2006 when he said, "If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?" [12] Recent "60 Minutes" segments from Pelley indicated he hasn't changed his mind about balanced journalism.
Those skeptical of the environmental impact of Gore's Live Earth concerts on July 7, 2007 also earned scorn from the media - even those like Bob Geldof who weren't questioning the science.
"[T]here have been cynics out there who question whether the artists are practicing what they preach," said NBC's Lester Holt on July 7, 2007 "Today."
You Call Them Experts?
ABC's Bill Weir claimed that "all the scientists" urge immediate action to stop global warming, but it wasn't just scientists the three networks relied on to make that case. Far from it.
There were politicians and government workers. Musicians like Madonna and Dave Matthews. Movie star Leonardo DiCaprio. And quite possibly, your next-door neighbor.
What those celebrities said had little to do with science and everything to do with advocacy. Singer KT Tunstall, a Live Earth performer, was quoted by ABC on July 7, 2007.
"I think I am an environmentalist. I mean, I don't have a car. I live in a small apartment," said Tunstall.
Madonna urged Live Earth attendees, "If you wanna save the planet, let me see you jumping up and down."
But it wasn't just globe-trotting stars telling people the planet was in danger and crowding out any other perspective.
Politicians offered perhaps more substance, but certainly not much more science than the Hollywood types. In addition to fawning over Gore, networks interviewed Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Independent), among others.
Reporters also relied on ordinary voices to reinforce the idea that global warming was already a major threat impacting our daily lives.
Only 15 percent of the people used to support global warming positions were scientists - identified as a "scientist" or with a specialty like genetics, ecology, biology or oceanography. A total of 71 scientists were included in six months of coverage. But networks turned to ordinary, unidentified people nearly a third more often than the scientists (101 to 71.)
Networks turned to ordinary people like two Live Earth concertgoers and the unidentified female "consumer" quoted by ABC "World News with Charles Gibson" on Sept. 14, 2007.
"You know, I think everybody's got to think about it. We've got to change," said a woman in a story about carbon labeling of food products.
Those quotes were used to underline the points that reporters made. One story on "Today" Nov. 6, 2007, warned that melting ice could kill off polar bears. Reporter Kerry Sanders included three unidentified people talking about polar bears - supporting his remark that "Worst-case scenario: If the Arctic ice continues to melt, in the next 100 years, the U.S. Wildlife Service says the only place you'll find a polar bear will be at the zoo."
Worries over Arctic melt flooded global warming coverage in the latter half of 2007, but as columnist John Tierney wrote in the Jan. 1, 2008 New York Times: "When the Arctic sea ice last year [2007] hit the lowest level ever recorded by satellites, it was big news and heralded as a sign that the whole planet was warming. When the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites, it was pretty much ignored."
No Need for Debate, Warming is 'Fact'
To many in the news media, global warming and its reported cause were already established fact. It was clear by the way some journalists talked about warming that they had accepted Gore's insistence that "the debate's over."
Just listen to CBS's Harry Smith: "Before we do anything else, there is, in fact, global climate change. It really affects some climates much more than others and it's really caused some real serious problems." Those serious problems Smith was talking about were allergies during a segment on the Aug. 7, 2007 "Early Show."
ABC's Sam Champion seemed to agree. Champion called the fourth U.N. IPCC report "definitive" on Sept. 5, 2007 and said he had been "investigating the alarming numbers of animals that are disappearing due to global warming" in July.
But Dan Harris went the farthest on Dec. 2, 2007 in a story about security risk and global warming. The "World News Sunday" host told viewers to "Think about this scenario: global warming contributes to a severe drought and food shortage in a third-world country. The government collapses. Warlords take over. America is forced to intervene."
Shockingly, Harris then claimed: "It's already happened, Somalia, 1993, with disastrous consequences."
Harris excluded expertise on the Somali situation or any context. Human Rights Watch, a liberal international organization, gave a very different perspective at the time of the crisis back in 1992:
"Somalia has historically been subject to famines, especially in the pastoral areas of the center and north … The current famine that threatens Mogadishu and south-central Somalia is radically different in origin and impact. Drought has played only a minor role [13], and the main victims are poor townspeople, farmers and rural laborers."
The ABC correspondent didn't include any statements about the way the war was thought to have contributed to the famine. [14]
Journalists weren't the only ones claiming that global warming was a fact, though. But the people journalists chose to interview also included Gore saying the "debate's over" and didn't dispute Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s incorrect statement that there was "zero dissent" on the issue, or Leonardo DiCaprio's assertion of a "90-percent consensus."
"Consensus" was rarely questioned by reporters at all, and ABC's Bill Weir even used the concept of "these 4,000 or so scientists" to hammer at one person expressing a different view.
The media did a terrible job of actually explaining what the IPCC was. Atmospheric scientist Dr. John Christy told Earth & Sky Web site [15] that the "IPCC would do well to define what each participant truly contributes to each product (i.e. Summary for Policy Makers vs. Full Text) so that the world would know that thousands of scientists never reached a 'consensus' on anything."
"When the Full Text is developed, 'consensus' is a concept held by the chapters' Lead Authors who often ignore or contradict positions offered by the Contributing Authors and Reviewers," explained Christy.
David Henderson, a former chief economist of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), wrote a detailed criticism of the IPCC in the Oct. 11, 2007 Wall Street Journal. He called the process "flawed" and biased because "the Panel members and those who appoint them are of course identified with the policies of their governments And virtually all governments are formally committed … to the 'stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere'."
"[T]his puts in doubt the accepted basis of official climate policies," [16] concluded Henderson.
It Don't Cost a Thing if It's Got That Climate Swing
Not only did the networks censor skepticism from stories, but the cost of proposed solutions, small or large, was routinely omitted.
BMI found that 90 percent of the stories didn't mention cost at all, even though the networks urged immediate action to stop the "climate crisis."
"NBC Nightly News" ignored cost in a Dec. 18, 2007 report about the recent energy bill passed by Congress.
"What America drives could change dramatically under the energy bill," said Anne Thompson before quoting David Hamilton of the left-wing environmentalist group Sierra Club.
Hamilton lauded parts of the bill during the "Fueling Change" segment: "This bill means that we will get all the same safety, all the same performance that we've ever gotten from our cars, but we'll get it with more miles to the gallon."
Thompson and Hamilton both ignored the obvious cost to auto manufacturers of designing vehicles that will be able to meet the new fuel efficiency requirements. Likely, those costs will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher vehicles prices.
Other plans to curb greenhouse-gas emissions could cost trillions of dollars. One estimate by business consulting firm CRA International put a $4-trillion to $6-trillion price tag [17] on the Lieberman-Warner bill, which would mandate scaling back emissions levels to 1990s levels by 2020. That would cost each American man, woman and child $494 a year.
Network reporters also didn't focus on how much is already being spent. As the Business & Media Institute reported in its "Fire and Ice" study, more than 99.5 percent of American climate change funding comes from the government - taxpayers - and we spend $4 billion per year on climate change research.
The Kyoto treaty that was never ratified by the U.S. carried an estimated cost of $440 billion per year for America. The Senate voted 95 to 0 to reject it.
Methodology
BMI examined all ABC, CBS and NBC news transcripts that included the terms "global warming" or "climate change" during the most recent six month period - from July 1, 2007, to Dec. 31, 2007. Only stories mentioning those terms were included in the study.
The stories were split into two categories: stories and casual mentions. Casual mentions encompassed anchor briefs shorter than 50 words and longer stories that only mentioned global warming or climate change incidentally (the story was not about that issue).
"Dissent," for the purpose of this study, included any uncertainty ["I don't know"], alternative opinions about warming, and caution against making climate change policy decisions without more information. It also included criticism of "solutions" to global warming and "awareness" campaigns like Live Earth - even when the critic wasn't disagreeing with manmade climate change, but just the usefulness of worldwide rock concerts.
People quoted in a story that supported climate change claims were placed in the proponent category because their comments were used by the network to support the manmade global warming viewpoint. There was one exception. In one story, scientist Bill Nye presented both positions on the issue in a balanced manner. He was counted as neutral in that story.
Correction:Due to a tabulation error, the original version of this report said 80 percent of the stories lacked dissent. The correct number was 79 percent. The actual total of stories was 188. The CBS total was also misstated. The correct figure was 85 percent (39 out of 46). State Representative Jim Gooch (D-Ky.) was incorrectly identified within the report as Bill Gooch. BMI regrets the errors.
Resources
Fire and Ice: [18] Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide 'weather' we face an ice age or warming.
Climate of Bias [19]: BMI's section dedicated to issues of climate change in the media
Skeptical Scientists [5]: A list of hundreds of scientists who question the science surrounding global warming alarmism.
Source URL: http://www.mrc.org/special-reports/global-warming-censored**
http://www.mrc.org/print/special-reports/global-warming-censored
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