Environmental Law

TEMPERATURES GETTING COLDDER/ARCTIC ICE INCREASING?

By STEPHEN HOLZER

     Columnist Debra J. Saunders has a column worth reading in today's San Francisco Chronicle:

Here's another reason why people don't trust newspapers. When science reporters write about, say, hormone therapy or drinking red wine, they report on studies that find that hormones or red wine can be good for you, as well as studies that suggest otherwise. Any science involving complex organisms is rarely black and white.

When it comes to global warming, newspapers play up stories that reinforce the prevalent the-sky-is-falling belief that global warming is human-caused and catastrophic. But if a study or scientist does not portend the end of the world as we know it, it rarely rates as news.

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"It's not even science any more; it's anti-science." [David] Bellamy [an Australian botanist] notes that official data show that "in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002, Arctic ice actually increased." Exhibit B: MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Richard S. Lindzen recently wrote, "There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995."

     To read the full article, go to this link.

Full post as published by Environmental Legal Blogs on November 30, 2008 (boomark / email).