The Daily Background

Hurricane Season and Global Warming
With another hurricane season on the way President Bush was told earlier this week by government scientists that there was not scientific consensus that stronger hurricanes are linked to global warming. This is of course exactly what he wanted to hear.

And it is of course misleading and dishonest. There is plenty of evidence that there is in fact a link between the two, and scientists do agree that changes in climate are creating larger environmental events than ever before. In fact a study independent of the Bush Administration recently demonstrated that “50 percent of the extremely warm temperatures of the North Atlantic Ocean in the summer of 2005 that spawned the record-breaking 2005 hurricane season was caused by global warming.”

In related news, the Washington Post reported yesterday that scientists are now examining a link between heat waves (like the one that the US is enduring right now) and global warming.

Allegations of Scientific Supression
This comes after allegations have been made against the Bush Administration for censoring government scientists from saying what they really think about global warming.

Disinformation Campaign

The Bush Administraiton and Big Oil have collaboratively sought to confuse the public about global warming science in the past (see BBC video report here).

What’s worse is that the oil industry has been funding their own little “scientists” to spread misinformation about global warming and try and make it look as though there’s no scientific consensus that the phenomenon is occurring or that it is linked to human activity (even though virtually 100% of all serious scientists not paid by the Big Oil agree that it is). You might remember that I’ve done my share of exposing of “scientists” who are actually paid by ExxonMobil (more here).

On a humorous note, you might recall that a group funded by ExxonMobil was spreading disinformation in commercials which call CO2 “life” (see video here). Well, the Al Franken Show on Air America Radio decided to parody that commercial, almost word for word with a slight replacement. Pretty funny, you can listen here.

Public Opinion, Global Warming “Converts”
Fifty six percent of Americans now think that the Bush Administration isn’t doing enough to protect the environment, and that number has steadily grown by 15% since the early days of his Presidency.

With scortching heat wave that has been cooking much of the nation over the past week (killing about two dozen people thus far), some people are taking warnings of global warming more seriously than they have in the past. Case in point: conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson(at least the Rev isn’t blaming God for global warming). Robertson recently said (video here) on his television program the 700 Club:

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers… the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. If we are contributing to the destruction of the planet we need to do manage about it.

Speaking of converts to science, a large number of traditionally conservative hunters and fishers are also becoming global warming believers, but for entirely different reasons.

Attack on “An Inconvenient Truth”
A few weeks ago I saw Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth and wrote a review of the film (as well as posted links to the trailer and a list of theaters showing the film in your area). I’d certainly recommend that you see it if you haven’t already, it’s a very informative and entertaining film. Recently a bit of a buzz has been circulating both on and offline over a very obnoxious viral video called “Al Gore’s Penguin Army” which mocks Gore and scientists who believe global warming is occurring.

The video which claims to be the work of a single person in his basement, posted on YouTube.com, was recently revealed by the Wall Street Journal (non-registration only link here) as a piece of propaganda created by a powerful ExxonMobil-paid lobbying firm called DCI Group. The lobbying company even appears to have bought ads in Google’s search engine results pages linking to the video on YouTube (Google has since taken down the ads after they were revealed to be in violation of their own rules). While the still feebly claim not to have created it, they’ve been caught red-handed.

You can watch the awful video here.

Filed under: War on Science, Environment Related, Z-TDB Blog