Help us find Annie
Blinded by the Light
Americans ought to know better than to accept shoddy journalism like this article, slugged Obama Left With Little Time To Curb Global Warming.
We have recently seen more genuine scientists coming out of the closet and admitting that they think the "global warming" bugbear that got Al Gore his Nobel Peace Prize is, to put it bluntly, a crock.
But that has not stopped AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein from writing yet another Chicken-Little story, as linked above. Borenstein's opus contains the following gems of egregious science writing:
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, global warming was a slow-moving environmental problem that was easy to ignore. Now it is a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid...Global warming is accelerating. Time is close to running out, and Obama knows it. [Wouldn't the slighest bit of information supporting this assertion help? Or are we all too dense to understand it, in the writer's view?]
Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points." [Science is generally based on measurements and observations that can be examined and repeated. The last time I checked, "anxiety" was a state of mind, marginally pathological, and certainly not quantifiable. Oh, and an example of what's meant by a "tipping point" would be ever so helpful.]
"We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct." [Would Mr/Dr Root be kind enough to give us an example of something that is "going extinct," aside from Republicans in Congress? Over the past few years, several species considered long extinct have been re-discovered. Most notable of these is the Ivory-billed woodpecker. And there have been numerous reports of the discoveries of new plant and animal species. So, is it possible that some thing are going extinct, while other new things are in the process of being created? No easy answer there...]
Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost. [Again, with the fearful scientists. What have they predicted, and how have those methods of prediction been tested for accuracy?]
The President-elect has said that one of the first things he will do when he gets to Washington is grant California and other states permission to control car tailpipe emissions, something the Bush administration denied. [Unless we are talking about a parallel universe, California has had the most stringent auto emissions rules on the planet, for two decades or more. So this statement is an outright lie.]
Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming. [Again, a sentence or two, even a dependent clause in support of this assertion would be appropriate. But no...]
For what it's worth, Mr. Borenstein has an impressive list of employers, awards, and articles published. But what's lacking in his résumé is the slightest bit of science education. His biography reveals that he has a high school diploma and a B.S. degree in Journalism. That's IT?
By the way, am I the only person wondering why almost all the literary fields of study culminate in Bachelor of Arts degrees, but you are granted a "B.S." in journalism? Are the universities sending us a subtle message?