Friday, September 29, 2006

About the media and climate change...

Its really too bad that the media in general tends to send mixed and misleading messages whenever they cover Climate change. I grant that the science is very complicated, and the scientific community is still debating the details, but the basic premise is very very simple.

CO2, carbon dioxide, is the offending pollutant. A colorless, odorless gas, emitted whenever oil and gas are burned. Thats what scientists believe we have to slow down on producing. I don't know how CO2 causes climate change, I'm not a scientist.

And neither does the media, or the environmentalists. The media are more interested in sexy images and entertainment value than the truth, and the environmentalists are too busy frothing at the mouth to be bothered with the facts. Between the two, mixed messages are burying every chance of an intelligent discussion.

Some examples of mixed messages are mentioning smog in almost every CC report, or CBC news showing video of an oil slick during todays CC story. CO2 has absolutely nothing to do with smog or a bloody oil slick! A favorite tactic is to use misleading images, pictures of smog, smoky tailpipes, cooling towers (these are the shorter, fat stacks that the media often films for CC stories. They have nothing to do with emissions, their purpose is to reclaim boiler water from used steam for re-use or to cool it so it wont damage the sewers), steam from natural gas exhaust stacks shot on a cold day. (Natural gas exhaust has a large percentage of water vapor, which shows up as steam on a cold day)


This really has got to stop. Its impossible to have an intelligent debate about climate change when theres so much disinformation flying around. I'd expect a serious effort by the media to make an issue easier to understand, and environmentalists are harming their own cause when they treat the public like dupes.