Back in February the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC released its last major update report on global warming. Unless you've been locked up in somebody's basement for months you'll know the IPCC report warned of the advance of global warming and the urgent need to take remedial action.
Now the IPCC is only 2,500 of the top climate scientists in the world. But there are other voices. Now those other voices may be the same folks who took RJ Reynolds money way back when to boldly deny the link between cigarettes and cancer and they may be the same ones who now take the filthy lucre of Exxon to deny global warming but, hey, that are a contrary voice. That's why Asper's CanWest flagship, the National Post countered the February IPCC report with a whole series of articles from the global warming deniers. Scientist for scientist, CanWest gave the deniers a perversely disproportionate amount of attention.
But the best is yet to come. The February IPCC report received brief and passing coverage in the NatPo but the dodgy denial series is still front and centre on the paper's web page. It may well be the longest lasting series in NatPo history. Who cares if it's bullshit carefully crafted to sow confusion and doubt? Not Leonard Asper.
2 comments:
A disproportionate voice? Perhaps if you only look at the National Post, but virtually any other mainstream paper is afraid to be labelled a denier by people like you. Good for the Post for not taking everything as given.
If you actually bothered to read the arguments of the scientists, you'd realize that they are not a bunch of sellouts, most of them do meaningful research and are merely pointing out that the Al Gore line (we can lower CO2, we can conrol the climate, everything will be back to normal!)is misleading.
Even in the IPCC, they admit the lack of knowledge on such key issues like aerosols and the mechanics of H2O cycles. They also voice uncertainty on whether lower CO2 emmissions will actually "stabilize" the climate.
The scientists in the Post admit that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that its emmission has definitely had an effect (this is the only hardcore fact, and it is not debatable). But they question the extent and accuracy of predictions, and our ability to mitigate the effects.
And I doubt the Aspers are skeptics anyways. The whole media conspiracy thing is exaggerated. The Post takes a certain editorial stance because that is what its readers want/expect, not because the Aspers want to control our minds.
And for someone who is "rolling back the tide of extremism," trying to silence minority voices in a pluralistic society sounds a little anti-thetical.
My comment was directed at NatPo and it stands. Your claim that "virtually any other mainstream paper is afraid to be labelled a denier" by people like me is simply childish. I have read the arguments of the climate change critics - they're hard to miss. I also read the forceful rebuttals of the scientists representing the overwhelming majority of climate change experts. I don't know how you can purport to speak for the IPCC and its findings but you are cherry picking a couple of comments to avoid accepting their plainly stated conclusions. That's a cute game but it doesn't hold water.
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