Sustainability: John Stossel versus Anderson Cooper
October 26th, 2007Posted by: admin
During the past week, ABC and CNN both tackled global environmental issues — but in completely different ways. In a 20/20 segment, John Stossel weighed in on global warming in predictable fashion, using half truths and complete nonsense to make the case that “when the Nobel prize winner says, ‘the debate’s over,’ I say, ‘give me a break!’” Meanwhile, over at CNN, Anderson Cooper, Jeff Corwin and Sanjay Gupta did a shockingly good job with a four-hour documentary titled Planet-in-Peril.
In his 20/20 segment, Stossel copied and pasted the usual exhausted arguments about global warming, including that old one about atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rising hundreds of years after temperatures began to increase when the Earth was emerging from past ice ages. I guess he was trying to convince viewers that greenhouse gases don’t actually warm the planet, almost putting him in the same company as flat Earthers.
Of course he is either willfully ignorant or willfully misleading. At risk of annoying those Prometheus readers who generally don’t want to waste time on issues like this… Scientists have long known that CO2 and other greenhouse gases lag climate change in the ice core record, and they offer a widely accepted explanation. Changes in Earth’s orientation to the sun are believed to initiate the rise in temperature that heralds the end of an ice age. This rise in temperature, in turn, causes greenhouse gases to be emitted into the atmosphere — for example, as permafrost melts, methane is released. And this accentuates the warming. (For an excellent explanation of this idea, see this RealClimate post.)
I have no problem with Stossel pointing out uncertainties in our understanding of climate, or even arguing in an opinion piece that “the debate is not over.” But I’m not at all certain his viewers understood that his “Give Me a Break” segment on global warming was not actually journalism but straight up bloviation. Stossel is clearly motivated less by a desire to follow the truth than by blind allegiance to a laissez-faire ideology. Since the free market alone probably cannot solve global warming, Stossel’s ideology likely will prevent him from ever acknolwedging even the possibility of a threat from anthropogenic climate change. He is therefore disqualified from covering this issue as a journalist.
I have to say that I was skeptical when I sat down to watch the first segment of “Planet in Peril” on CNN. The title itself seemed to promise the typical sensationalized fare. But I found it to be remarkably well reported. CNN pulled out all the stops on this one, sending Cooper, Corwin and Gupta around the world to report on biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change. They were even unafraid to include science in their reporting. Imagine that! We’ve now gone from not having a single full-time environmental reporter or producer in all of broadcast and cable news just a few years ago, to four hours of gorgeous high definition imagery and solid television journalism on the fate of the planet. Unbelievable.
I know some critics will say that Cooper, Corwin and Gupta were just as biased in their treatment of this material as I maintain Stossel was in his. But I’m not buying it. Whereas Stossel simply rehashed the same old tired arguments, twisting the truth along the way, “Planet in Peril” was notable for its originality and in-depth reporting. One of my favorite segments was on pollution spewing from a Chinese mine into a river used by a local village for irrigation and drinking water. People in the village are getting sick, but little is being done to clean things up. In the great tradition of television investigative reporting, Sanjay Gupta literally walked right in to the mine offices with a camera crew to conduct an interview of the unsuspecting mine manager. In China! It was stunning.
But the very best environmental coverage of the last couple of weeks came on the Colbert Report. Stephen asked Anderson Cooper how people can help the environment without any inconvenience…
October 28th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I find your summary of the two pieces inaccurate. The 20/20 piece was factually accurate. I did not detect any factual errors. I gather from your statements that you did not either. Your attacks on the piece are emotional and without any factual support. I would ask you to be more objective in your presentation. The term you used to describe one of the sections, bloviation, is a more accurate charaterization of your work.
I would ask that you present your opinions as emotional fits unless you are going to back them up with facts. You do a disservice to science when you engage in emotional rants. Please grow up. You owe us all an apology for using this forum for your personal beleifs when it is a fourm for scientific reasoning.
October 28th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
A significant portion of my post provides the evidence you say is missing. Perhaps you should re-read it when you calm down. But to reiterate, among other things, Stossel trotted out the exhausted argument about carbon dioxide lagging temperature change in the ice core record, evidently to cast doubt on the idea that greenhouse gases warm the planet. I simply showed how Stossel was being terribly disingenuous at best, and I provided links to relevant information. If you don’t choose to accept the evidence, then we can simply agree to disagree.
But you missed my central point: Stossel masquerades as a journalist when in fact he is an intense partisan with a libertarian agenda. In addition to being misleading and inaccurate, his 20/20 piece offered no journalistic balance. By contrast, CNN bent over backwards to give Patrick Michaels equal time with James Hansen in its coverage of global warming in “Planet in Peril.” Some journalists might even criticize CNN for offering false balance on the subject, since the scientific evidence and thinking on this issue is not split evenly.
Stossel was right about at least one thing, however: Equating skepticism about climate change to denial of the Holocaust, as one unnamed pundit did in the 20/20 segment, is a real outrage and it ought to stop.
October 29th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Tom, you said:
“I provided links to relevant information. If you don’t choose to accept the evidence, then”…
Evidence? Real world *evidence*? I missed that too. How do you know that increasing CO2 doesn’t e.g. increase convection, therefore cloudiness, to the extent it offsets surface heating?
Don’t confuse modifications to evapotranspiration by 6.5 billion Homo sapiens stripping the surface bare with evidence of “greenhouse gases”.
Evidence is not some simple lapse rate calculation. We need *evidence*.
October 29th, 2007 at 8:32 am
What you call “the usual exhausted arguments about global warming” may not be so usual for the viewers of 20/20. It might even be perfectly new and refreshing after being snowed under and brainwashed by Rev.Gore’s freely distributed AIT dvd.
And talking about Stossel’s “the usual exhausted arguments about global warming”, by calling Cooper, Corwin and Gupta’s polar bears, Lake Chad and Cartered islands shockingly good shows your real colours.
Gupta’s piece of investigate journalism at the China mine may look stunning to you, but leaves me wondering on which planet you’ve been living the past decade.
Whilst it’s nice to notice that you disapprove with the term holocaust deniers, you’re not shy to use the term flat Earthers, which makes your first remark looks rather hypocrite.
Leaves me quoting your remark “But I’m not buying it.”. Seems that for you the discussion is over…
October 29th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Stossel may have been wrong on GW here. (I didn’t see his or Anderson’s program) but he is one of the few people in media with the guts to challenge any viewpoint and any lobby.
I am surprised he can still work in MSM.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Many things to respond to…
First, I am a journalist, not a scientist. I report on what scientists have to say about these issues. So if you publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal showing that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and it played no role in past climate changes, then I’ll be more than eager to write a story about it — as long as you provide some extraordinary evidence to back up such an extraordinary claim. Please email me when you do! (But please note that unlike John Stossel, I will not just speak just with people who agree with you. I will seek out comments from a variety of scientists, to provide journalistic balance for my readers.)
Concerning Holocaust deniers and flat Earthers, I was merely poking fun, not doing the equivalent of accusing someone of forgiving or ignoring the deliberate extermination of 6 million people. Surely you must see the difference.
About Gupta’s reporting in China, it is by no means surprising that China is an environmental mess. I was not referring to that in my post. I was referring to Gupta’s chutzpah in walking in to the mine office and confronting the manager. That IS unusual in China — and laudable — wouldn’t you agree?
My “I’m not buying it” comment was made in reference to the idea that CNN’s treatment of sustainability was just as unbalanced as Stossel’s treatment of global warming. Perhaps you didn’t see both programs. But it’s not even remotely close. Stossel dropped any semblance of fair, balanced and accurate reporting. His portrayal of CO2 lagging temperature change in the ice core record is clear evidence of that. He willfully ignored what many climatologists say on this issue. That was my overall point: He is not a journalist. He is an advocate. (And a very effective one at that, because he doesn’t have to be guided by the principles of fairness, balance and accuracy.)
Lastly, I do not believe that “the discussion is over.” Nothing would please me more than to report on convincing science showing that we have little to be concerned about from our greenhouse emissions.
So let me turn this around. How much evidence would it take to convince skeptics that greenhouse gas emissions are of concern? Or does a modified version of the Fox News motto apply: “You can report all you like, but we already decided.”
October 29th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Tom – you said:
“So if you publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal showing that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas and it played no role in past climate changes, then I’ll be more than eager to write a story about it — as long as you provide some extraordinary evidence to back up such an extraordinary claim.”
I didn’t make a claim. You are making the claim that increased CO2 causes global warming. Again, where is the real world evidence? Just show me correlation between increasing CO2 and subsequent increasing temperature. Should be easy for a journalist to dig *that* up, should it not?
October 29th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Tom-
As you state the core data is clear and undisputed that CO2 follows warming as the 20/20 journalist clearly stated. Your assertion that there is a generally accepted explanation for this lag is simply not true. The literature is split on this topic given that the offered explanation does NOT correlate very well (a partial correlation is the best we can get). This is a material issue because it strongly suggests that even if we accept the explanation, we must acknowledge that CO2 is an insufficient cause to drive material global temperature increase.
While I appreciate your generous nature in permitting dissenting opinions, I must say you sound insincere. If you wish to play the role of a scientific journalist, I would ask that you lay out what facts you believe point towards catastrophic global warming. I am sure that once you lay out the facts you will either come to realize that the we still do not have sufficient evidence to indicate we are headed towards any catastrophic scenario. What you will find is a mixed picture without a doom and gloom ending driven by man made green house gases.
Why do I say this. Well for a number of reasonings.
1) We that study earth history can point towards both a long history and a future where we will see large scale glaciation. For a layman’s presentation I believe the History channel had a special on the future glaciation on planet earth. The recent blip in temperature is immaterial to our planets evolution.
2) The general rise in temperature that we have experienced over the past few hundred years must be viewed in the historical context of the mini ice age. Even over the past one hundred years we see that the temperature increase occurred early in the century, not late as would be predicted.
3) CO2 induced temperature increases is probably worth about 1 degree. Yes, I know that this increase is without other forcing mechanisms. I am skeptical that positive feedback loops are materially driving CO2 temperature increases given the lack of testable models.
4) It is the global warming models that point to a problem in the future. These models are first very much in debate. Those familiar with the models know that they are hotly contested in their respective fields. Further, we know that many of these models are not validated by traditional methods. These models have parameters set a range setting techniques that do not include actual historical data fitting. When some of these models have used historical data to set model parameters we find that the predictions generated are very close to current temperatures. Finally, we know that these models offer very inaccurate short-term forecasts. The major models perform very poorly. This is not a good indicator for a model.
In summary, I maintain that you are a bloviator who is less concerned with the facts and more concerned with practicing the art of pushing superstition. If you want to join the world of the natural I ask that you become a scientists and stop playing one as a journalist.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Simon – you state:
“(a partial correlation is the best we can get). ”
Got a reference for that?
About your other points:
#2, One also has to remember that the instrument record began during the coldest period of the last 8,000 years. It’s curious that although “forcing” from ghg’s is way above what it has ever been, “global warming” has stalled for the last 10 years (maybe that’s why the urgency on the part of the alarmists – more and more people are realizing that every day).
(In summary) – you illustrate the new religion – complete with original sin.
As for actually getting into the science Tom, I suggest you start with thermodynamics.
October 31st, 2007 at 9:46 pm
“His portrayal of CO2 lagging temperature change in the ice core record is clear evidence of that. ”
you acknowledge that his statement was factual and the record supports it. He’s ‘biased’ for making a factual statement about the paleo-climate!?! Moreover, one that clarifies the very point that Al Gore erroneously fuzzed up in his documentary??!
“Scientists have long known that CO2 and other greenhouse gases lag climate change in the ice core record”
… Then we need to run a warning to viewers of Al Gore’s movie – “Dont get misled by his phony chart that confuses paleoclimate CO2/warming cause and effect.”
simon sez: “Your assertion that there is a generally accepted explanation for this lag is simply not true. The literature is split on this topic given that the offered explanation does NOT correlate very well (a partial correlation is the best we can get). This is a material issue because it strongly suggests that even if we accept the explanation, we must acknowledge that CO2 is an insufficient cause to drive material global temperature increase.”
This is correct.
What Tom may not know is that a new study reported a few months back, looked at the timing of the rise in temperatures around 18,000-19,000yrs ago and compared with CO2 record. It discounts the feedback theory that Tom points to as the explanation for the lag-plus-correlation, as the lag is on the order of almost 1,000 years. warming caused CO2 rise via the release from deep ocean, not the other way around, and there was little remaining warming in the feedback.
This doesnt dispute CO2s warming influence, but
you are being biased if you think there is anything wrong in Stossel presenting an Inconvenient Fact for AGW proponents. Of course, he is not less and no more of a climate scientist than Al Gore or Anderson Cooper. All 3 treatments will necessary have factual shortcuts, but the least accurate has been Al Gore.
“For a layman’s presentation I believe the History channel had a special on the future glaciation on planet earth. ”
Very good show on the history of the earth for the last 4 billion years. We went from a planet of molten lava to at one time being an iceball (700m years ago), and back and forth from different climates, some much warmer, some colder than today. In 15,000 years we will face another ice age … natural climate change can/will be far more extreme than what man could do.
Tom: “Concerning Holocaust deniers and flat Earthers, I was merely poking fun” Either term is inaccurate, emotional, denigration of people who are concerned, knowledgable, in many cases professional scientists, but whose study of the matter comes to different conclusions – they dont believe or agree with what some other scientists think. When Einstein didnt accept quantum mechanics at first, was he a ‘flat earther’… And given the errors in climate science ‘consensu’ – from temperature data re-adjustments, to a phony ‘hockey stick’ paper that presented flawed data, to significant reduction (about 27%) in observed sea level rise, and model error of 300% in precipation prediction, and the known uncertainties in cloud modeling that could by themselves cut in half predicted temperature rises … given ALL THAT, the most scientific position one could take is that of reasoned skeptic.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:54 am
Well, I think Stossel and Cooper have done an excellent jobg educating the general public about the nature of consensus. I think that many global warmng alarmist bloggers not only have not a clue about how science works — they don’t seem to even have a clue that they don’t have a clue. And that’s bad . . .
You can see more about this here:
Will the Debate on Global Warming Ever be Over?
November 20th, 2007 at 4:59 am
Well, I think Stossel and Cooper have done an excellent jobg educating the general public about the nature of consensus. I think that many global warmng alarmist bloggers not only have not a clue about how science works — they don’t seem to even have a clue that they don’t have a clue. And that’s bad . . .
You can see more about this here, “Will the Debate on Global Warming Ever be Over?”
http://libertydesirebelief.thechartersofdreams.com/2007/11/will-the-debate-on-global-warm.html