Global Warming Denial
Love Your CO2? New Gas-Loving Group Runs Ads, Hides Bias
Who is the founder of a new nonprofit that says CO2 is healthy and good? A former oil company exec.By Amy Linn, 9-24-09
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You might have seen the half-page ad in today’s Missoulian: CO2 is Green, it declares, amid photos of a flower, a tree and two grazing bison. “There are regulators and some in Congress who want to pass laws that limit the amount of CO2 produced, with their claims that CO2 is a pollutant. That is a myth and absolutely false,” states the ad, which is appearing in similar forms around the country.
More CO2 is good for the planet and good for us, the ad kvells. “In fact, we all exhale CO2 and enjoy it in our carbonated beverages.”
Where is this info coming from?
The ad doesn’t mention it, but CO2 is Green is a Texas-based nonprofit group founded by H. Leighton Steward, a retired oil and gas executive who, according to Forbes magazine, is an honorary director of the American Petroleum Institute. (The API, one of the nation’s most powerful lobbying groups, launched a campaign to debunk global warming in 1998, and since then has mounted continuous efforts to promote fuel use and fight climate change legislation).
Steward is also the former vice chairman of oil company Burlington Resources Inc., and a former chairman of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association and the Natural Gas Supply Association, according to Forbes.
There are seeds of truth in the ads, of course. A little CO2 is indeed necessary. And it’s not poisonous in the small amounts that living things inhale and exhale. But an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—created by the burning of fossil fuels, among other things—is creating unhealthy shifts for the planet, according to the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists. There has been a rise in mean global temperatures, and human activity is a significant factor in the overload, the experts agree.
Consider the news from Science Daily, reporting on a fairly amazing consensus reached by 3,146 earth scientists around the world. A study by University of Illinois researchers Pat Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, published January 19 in Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, found that:
-- Ninety percent of scientists overall said global warming is occurring, and 82 percent said humans were a factor.
-- When results were broken down by specialty, the researchers found that a whopping 97 percent of active climatologists—those doing research today—agreed that humans play a role in global warming.
-- Only 47 percent of petroleum geologists believed humans have a role.
“The debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes,” the study concluded.
Steward, on the other hand, thinks climate scientists don’t understand the nuances, and he’s afraid legislators don’t, either. His group’s website prominently features a photo of Sen. Max Baucus, and urges supporters to write to Baucus and let him know that the Environmental Protection Agency should not classify CO2 as a pollutant, and cap-and-trade legislation or other measures to limit greenhouse gases will be harmful to mankind.
Who’s backing this mission? More than half the contributions to Steward’s group are from the coal industry, Steward told a recent Rotary Club meeting in Wyoming, covered by reporter Kristen Inbody of the Cody Enterprise.
Coal plants, wouldn’t you know it, are responsible for a major part of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
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Comments
The ad is ludicrous and a lie. Ads do not necessarily reflect the opionions of the paper or those that work there. But by agreeing to print the ad and cash the subsequent check, it invariably reflects upon the legitimacy of the paper itself. The paper made a conscious decision to print the ad, just as they decide everyday which stories to print and which ones to ignore. As a reader, I must question subsequent articles on things that may reflect poorly on industry, as they are customers of said newspaper. Don't forget, the customer is always right.
I get your point about violating the law, as those laws are readily available to me via the web and many other outlets. But as for basic standards of taste, can you point me to where these are set in stone, laid out before me so I know that your basic standards of taste are the same as mine?
Screw, you say that "ads do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the paper or those that work there," and in the next breath you imply that by running any ad, a periodical is endorsing that business or concept or product. To put it bluntly, you're wrong.
The Independent routinely runs campaign ads for candidates and ballot issues of all stripes. The very name of the Missoula Independent should tell the reader that they are beholden to no one special interest or ideology.
As most people know, the newspaper business is supported mostly by advertising revenue. In the past the Indy has accepted ads for adult internet sites, phone sex outfits, and all kinds of things that might be objectionable to some people. That doesn't mean that everyone at the Indy sits at home at night in a darkened room with the phone pressed to their ear with one hand, pulling their pud with the other. It's just business. On the other hand, the Indy long ago decided not to accept advertising for cigarettes. That's a moral decision that runs counter to the paper's bottom line. I think that was a laudable decision, though, as the paper's demographic is skewed largely toward a younger, more impressionable readership.
The advertising tail cannot wag the journalistic dog, or a paper (or online news outlet, for that matter) will not survive.
Thanks for chiming in, but you don't need to defend the Indy. We didn't get the ad in question. The Missoulian did. We certainly would have run it , though, if it had come our way. I spoke up because I think there's an important principle at stake. I don't think Screw really wants me to be final arbiter of what people can and cannot advertise in the local newspaper. I think most people would find my judgments objectionable.
And by way of clarification, the Indy has never rejected a tobacco ad, not on my watch, and not before either. Our stance on tobacco is that it's a permissible pleasure, despite being a pernicious vice. The Indy welcomes tobacco advertising, and pretty much anything else that meets minimum standards for taste and legality. We draw the line on profanity, crude sexual references, and anything inherently dehumanizing, like promoting enslavement of racial minorities.
I feel bad for Amy Linn, She's trying to draw attention to the real jerks who made the ad in the first place, and instead she's getting a discussion of advertising policies. Sorry, Amy.
Matt Gibson
Publisher
Missoula Independent
It's sad that newspapers are so desperate that they'll print lies for money. A newspaper's main asset is its credibility. Demonstrably false information in an ad printed next to editorial content is a blow to that credibility.
Mr Gibson of the Independent makes a defense of the Missoulian in a way that ivory tower journalism types would understand, but readers probably don’t appreciate. As a reader what I see is deliberate misinformation coming from a source that I look to for reliable news.
If newspapers were flush, I bet they’d be more selective and demanding of the advertising content they publish. But as circulation and ad revenues plummet, publishers continue to cheapen their product in so many ways.
And Gibson saying here that he feels bad for the reporter because readers aren’t reacting to the story in the way that he would like them to shows a flawed and arrogant attitude common in old media. The comments reveal what the real story is.
It sounds like a majority of the twits who have commented on this skein would have them rule that corporations are entitled to first amendment protection.
Thje decision will end forever any questions about whether or not everything is for sale or not.
which is the current plethora of CO2 will be occurring at a time when there are seven billion homo sapiens occupying the earth.
If it weren't for the ill effects of global warming on excessive numbers of homo sapiens, nobody would be worried.
Not many folks living in Bangla Desh, or the east coast of the U.S. or anywhere at all last time there was so much CO2 in the atmosphere.
I'm betting Garcia still wears a pocket protector.
Comparing to a building is meaningless because a temperature change of only a few degrees is all that's necessary to cause major global problems. We're not talking about changes that would be noticeable in a building. Also the greenhouse effect requires sunlight. Buildings have a roof. Our planet does not.
Talking about day-to-day differences in temperature, or differences in temperature in different regions is utterly meaningless when talking about global climate change. It's clear you don't have any idea what that really is.
There's no way to precisely predict how global climate change will affect the weather on a given day or in your given zip code. That's not now how it works. Global averages are much easier to model, and those models are much more reliable and consistent.
And yes, there are some climate scientists that disagree with the consensus. That's hardly unusual. This is normal in any scientific community, and indicates healthy debate. However, they are a tiny minority. Your term "plenty" is certainly open to interpretation, but the numbers are not in your favor. Your evidence against global climate change gets repeatedly debunked if you'd care to read up on it. Here's a handy collection:
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
If you find something not addressed on that site that is also relevant, please feel free to bring it up, though. I believe in the spirit of scientific inquiry and debate, and welcome rational counterarguments.
I agree of course. But that's not what I said. Again with the straw men. Also, let's not start insulting each other quite yet, ok?
The differences between a little greenhouse and the global atmosphere don't change the fact that greater CO2 content causes our atmosphere to trap more heat.
"convective cooling, evaporation, evapotranspiration, condensation and precipitation"
None of these mechanisms remove heat from our atmosphere. Most of them transfer heat from the surface to our atmosphere.
Listen, I'd love to keep doing this, but frankly, neither of us are experts in the field. People who do study the atmosphere in a professional and scientific manner overwhelmingly agree that climate change is very real, and probably caused by humans. This is a fact. Look at the numbers. They, more than anyone else, understand the dynamics of earth's atmosphere. Look up the number of peer-reviewed scientific papers published that come to a conclusion against the presence of climate change. Last time I looked, there weren't any.
I used to think global warming was nonsense. I really did. But upon examining the tremendous body of evidence and the expert opinions of professionals, I realized that it is very real. It's a complicated subject, and some pieces of evidence may seem to counterindicate global climate change, but they are a minority, and they are being steadily explained and understood.
Even if some doubt exists, the consequences of global climate change are far more severe than the consequences of reducing greenhouse emissions unnecessarily.
Anyway, since you're resorting to name-calling, I'm done with you. You call us a religious cult, but you were the first to resort to ad-hominem attacks. All of my statements have been logical and reasoned, and I've tried to address each of your points. I'm sorry if I missed some. I would have been glad to touch on those if you had pointed it out. You've cherry-picked a few of mine, and lobbed insults. I think it's clear to most readers which of us has an emotional bias.
I wish you well, but I hope you take the time to read the data on both sides, and take into consideration the where the information comes from.
CO2 is not and should not be deemed a pollutant, and at the same time we can not allow an over abundance of it to be dumped into the atmosphere. Carbon is essential to life everywhere on this planet.
He is a veritable fount of information. Or--he can google enough of it to challenge people who actually are well informed.
From your lips to God's ear. May he wash away their sins.