Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« Indonesia Releases Two Bali Bombers | Main | Damn: Liberal New Jersey Supreme Court Doesn't Have To Issue Gay-Marriage Ruling Before Elections »
October 24, 2006

Newsweek Notes It Was Wrong To Predict Global Cooling and New Ice Age, But Darn It, It's Right About This New Climate Change Theory

Heh.

Oct. 23, 2006 - In April, 1975, in an issue mostly taken up with stories about the collapse of the American-backed government of South Vietnam, NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling.

More than 30 years later, that little story is still being quoted regularly—as recently as last month on the floor of the Senate by Republican Sen. James Inhofe, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the self-proclaimed scourge of climate alarmists. The article's appeal to Inhofe, of course, is not its prescience, but the fact that it was so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future. Even by the time it appeared, a decades-long trend toward slightly cooler temperatures in the Northern hemisphere had already begun to reverse itself—although that wouldn't be apparent in the data for a few years yet—leading to today's widespread consensus among scientists that the real threat is actually human-caused global warming. In fact, as Inhofe pointed out, for more than 100 years journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age. The implication he draws is that if you're not worried about being trampled by a stampede of woolly mammoths through downtown Chicago, you don't have to believe what the media is saying about global warming, either.

But is that the right lesson to draw? How did NEWSWEEK—or for that matter, Time magazine, which also ran a story on the subject in the mid-1970s—get things so wrong? In fact, the story wasn't "wrong" in the journalistic sense of "inaccurate."

That's an interesting distinction, eh?

What they mean is you're not wrong for accurately reporting what someone claims, even if that person is, himself, wrong. But the media do not think of themselves as mere stenographers; they are not indifferent to whether what they are reporting as having been said is actually true or not.

And they do take sides on such questions, all the time.

They reported all of this nonsense uncritically (as late as 1992, Newsweek itself notes, when they reported "Global Warming" could cause a new Ice Age) and not only report it, but actively endorse it now. Newweek's entire piece is written to convince you that what they're now reporting is in fact quite accurate:

The point to remember, says Connolley, is that predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today. And for good reason: the tools scientists have at their disposal now—vastly more data, incomparably faster computers and infinitely more sophisticated mathematical models—render any forecasts from 1975 as inoperative as the predictions being made around the same time about the inevitable triumph of communism.

How they give themselves away, eh?


digg this
posted by Ace at 06:44 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Cuthbert the Witless: "When they cut into the TV show last night they tal ..."

TheJamesMadison, finding suspense, madness, and humanity with Michael Powell: "41 Did Obama give Joe the green light to pardon Hu ..."

Duke Lowell : "He will pardon his brother next. ..."

Commissar of Plenty and Lysenkoism in Solidarity with the Struggle : "how long Hunter stays clean and sober. I give it 5 ..."

Archimedes: "There hasn't been enough discussion of the fact th ..."

Ganowicz Commie Exterminators, LTD.: "Robert Hunter Biden, Esq. Heh. The grift is comi ..."

Eromero: "Virtual mountains of money, great gobs of cash, pl ..."

weft cut-loop[/i][/b] [/s]: "[i]To hell with them all, literally. Posted by: A ..."

Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM)[/b][/i][/s][/u]: " Open the Joseph R Biden, Jr. Presidential Librar ..."

The ARC of History!: "It's pretty funny that Joe cites Hunter's "sobriet ..."

I used to have a different nic: "[i]It's not just Joe Biden exposed as a rancid lia ..."

Thomas Bender: "@7 >>I dunno. It doesn't matter, no one is g ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64