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June 03, 2006

Global Warming and Fear Mongering - more

If you like glaciers, you'll enjoy Rocky Mountain National Park. That any glaciers exist there in 2006 might have surprised readers of the Nov. 7, 1937, Rocky Mountain News. According to the 1937 News, scientific measurement of the glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park showed that "these sheets of 'eternal' ice, within a few short decades, may be 'eternally gone.' "

The News pointed to climate graphs showing that "winters are not what they used to be in the Never Summer Range." Thus, the glaciers were "inexorably retreating to extinction."

"Can it be possible that the Earth is undergoing a slow, but steady climactic change?" asked another Denver paper. The article pointed out that the "The winters are becoming colder, and the summers drier and hotter." The changes were taking place "all over the continent", while "In Europe we hear of climatic changes as strange as they are unaccountable." The newspaper was the Denver Tribune, and the year was 1874.

As the Tribune noted, climate change is nothing new. As the News demonstrated, neither are alarmist, inaccurate media predictions about climate. The Business and Media Institute, a branch of the right-wing Media Research Center, recently published Fire and Ice, a study detailing the national media's terrible record of climate hysteria over the last century.

For example, The New York Times in 1895 predicted widespread global cooling. In 1924, the paper reported "Signs of New Ice Age." But in 1933, 1952, 1959, and 1969, the Times declared global warming. Then in 1974 and 1975, the Times decided that the new ice age was coming, with catastrophic consequences: "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade" leading to "mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence."

The Washington Post announced a "New Ice Age" in 1970, and, in 1974, Fortune agreed, touting a scientist who predicted that a billion people would die from starvation caused by global cooling. Time magazine declared global warming in 1939, global cooling in 1974, and currently believes in global warming.
. . .
Colorado's most prominent skeptic is Colorado State University professor of atmospheric science William Gray, who has directly harmed his own financial interests by speaking out.

As detailed in a major profile in The Washington Post, Gray has lost most of his government grants because of his relentless presentation of evidence in support of his view that man-made global warming is a hoax. While the Boulder Daily Camera reprinted the story of Colorado's controversial scientist, The Denver Post - which has access to Washington Post articles - did not.

The News and The Denver Post do recognize Gray as an expert on atmospheric science, and have published dozens and dozens stories citing his hurricane forecasts and analysis, including stories this Thursday. They have quoted Gray's accurate prediction in the late 1990s that decades-long lull in hurricane activity on the Atlantic Coast was coming to an end, and his spring 2005 predictions for very intense hurricanes in the summer; such stories often quote other scientists affirming Gray's pre-eminence in the study of atmospheric science. Yet in the News and Post combined, one can find only a few paragraphs even mentioning Gray's analysis of global warming.

"Climate alarmism a perennial: Study: Journalists have often blown hot and cold on issue," by Dave Kopel, Rocky Mountain News, June 3, 2006

Posted at June 3, 2006 03:48 PM | Categories: Ignorance

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