George Bush might not be looking forward to Al Gore's new film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, but I am.
I don't get those that deny global warming. What's in it for them? Do they just not believe any science? Since it's mostly Republicans who deny it, I'd think there'd be plenty of money to be made in trying to fix the problems. And I really wish there was a statistic like 98% of scientists agree. It really is at least close to that amount, but still much of the media puts on one for and one against which suggests it's a 50-50 proposition. I wish Gingrich didn't do away with the Office of Technology Assessment, maybe they could have stood up to Bush's denial.
1 comment:
That's the problem with the "fair and balanced" format. If 98% of experts agree on something, the media tends to interview one person from the 2% minority for each one from the 98% majority. This creates the illusion that the experts are evenly split, and there is no consensus. This is true for most of the controversial topics I can think of: climate, stem cells, abortion, evolution, the phrase "Merry Christmas", etc.
This not only dilutes the actual consensus, but gives more voice to the minority view than it deserves. For topics like climate or evolution, this gives more airtime to the minority, conservative view - far from the "liberal bias" the media is often accused of.
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