Global Warming, Hot Air

Altercation

We know from previous reporting that it is a concerted Republican strategy to sow false doubt in the minds of Americans about the phenomenon of global warming so that their campaign contributors and political allies may continue to destroy the earth's ecosystem without inconvenience. To do this they must deny the reality of Global Warming, by serving up mountains of bul**it. Here is one Frank Luntz memo about how they planned to do it. One thing I learned at Sundance watching Al Gore's film was that a study has been done of the available scientific literature on the current state of scientific knowledge. The scientists gathered up nearly a thousand peer-reviewed articles that purported to examine the issue and picked at random, ten percent of these to read. They found a grand total of zero actually challenged the existence of the phenomenon. Yet when they did a similar percentage study of mainstream media, they found right-wingers had been so successful in their campaign of disinformation that 53 percent (I think) of the articles written about global warming called the scientific data into question. This is how "working the refs" works and demonstrates why the kind of contentless reporting promoted by the likes of "The Note" is part of the problem. When sources lie, they lie too; and they don't even bother to discern the truth of the matter because it only matters what their sources tell them. (Remember that's Judy Miller's excuse--and Joe Klein's.) Anyway, look at these two stories: Global warming may soon be irreversible, portending incredible catastrophe, here, and the Bush administration is censoring and silencing top climate scientists at NASA, here, because they prefer to allow the danger to continue unabated, for matters of political convenience. And by the way, call me "shrill," but I call that "evil." (Read this article for background if you haven't yet had a chance to educate yourselves about the process.)

What "mojo?" Meanwhile, the increasingly pro-Bush Time Magazine, which stopped arriving in hard copy at my door shortly after I wrote about Ann Coulter, and whose idea of a "liberal" is Joe Klein, sent me this press release yesterday morning:

WHITE HOUSE MEMO: MIKE ALLEN--How the NSA Furor Helped the President Regain His Mojo (p. 31) (Online)

Going into this week and the State of the Union address, President George W. Bush was "selling himself with more vim and certitude than at any other time since he was re-elected 15 months ago," writes TIME's White House Correspondent Mike Allen. "Buffeted by Katrina, the CIA leak and Iraq, Bush was teetering on the edge of irrelevance after a largely wasted 2005. But he found his voice in an improbable place: at the center of what looked like a serious scandal," reports Allen. "The eavesdropping controversy turned out to offer a foothold... When a new threat on tape from Osama bin Laden emerged, Bush was set up to return to the stage as Protector in Chief, the Republicans' award-winning role in the past two elections.

Of course, just like Klein's unsupported allegations, discussed here, all of that would seem to be existing in a bubble that has little or nothing to do with what genuine Americans think, as in the very next paragraph we get a TIME Poll:

The President's approval rating is 41% approve-55% disapprove. The latest TIME Poll finds the President's approval rating off 12 points from this time last year. His current approval rating is little changed from late November (41% approve-53% disapprove).

And don't miss this NYT correction:

A front-page article yesterday describing the results of the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll referred imprecisely to Americans' favorable opinions of President Bush. The 42 percent of respondents who said they viewed him favorably were referring specifically to how he handles his job. On another question -- about how he is liked overall -- the result was 37 percent favorable."

Why, by the way, is every mistake the media make in favor of Bush?