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POPSPolar Bear Melodrama The greatest danger is that this ruling will be distorted by the courts, where it is inevitably headed. On the other hand, not listing the polar bear would have proceeded to litigation too, with potentially worse consequences. Climate-change lawsuits have already deformed the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and others. The most pernicious element in the polar bear melodrama is the way the law is being run off the rails, and even a duly elected White House can't seem to throw on the brakes. If Congress wants to enact global-warming legislation, then so be it – but the costs and benefits should be argued in the open. This fly-by-night policy making is not only unscientific. It's undemocratic.
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POPSMcCain's Hot Air: Chris Horner
situation — and that his EPA will implement something faster than anything the EPA has ever done before. Which is another way of describing his vow today to give the economy up to two years to bring emissions back down to 2005 levels. He says that the free-ride granted to most of the world proved the undoing of these “Protocols”. The fact that none of the parties which promised emission reductions have any clue how to actually reduce emissions, and therefore are not doing so, would seem to me to be a more central feature in Kyoto’s failure. First, McCain’s conceit in this speech and in his global-warming views generally are impervious to changing evidence: the problem of man-made climate change is real, bad, and here now. Second, McCain’s ultimate goal for “doing something” is, at best, unclear. He says “The goal in all of this is to assure an energy supply that is safe, secure, diverse, and domestic.” It has failed in Europe. He tries to elide this fact, but fails.
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POPSMcCain’s Assault On Reason: Dr. Roy W. Spencer So, here we are with bad science ready to support bad policy decisions that will lead to bad economic times ahead, and no presidential candidate who is willing to ask the hard questions. While we hate to be pandered to by politicians, in this case I can only hope that they really are pandering — that this is hot air and not prospective policy.
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POPSOppose Climate Alarmist Gore: Sign Free Petition Worried about high food prices, Congress tries to push the biofuel industry to use nonfood crops. Chicago - America's love affair with corn-based ethanol is cooling – at least in Washington. Some legislators blame the rising use of corn as a biofuel as a key factor behind high food prices. Others want to freeze the federal mandate on biofuels production at current levels, reversing legislation passed just a few months ago that increases it through 2022. Still others are pushing to shift tax incentives away from corn-based to cellulose-based ethanol in the nearly completed farm bill. These moves represent a dramatic backlash against corn ethanol, which until a few months ago was widely viewed as a boon for both farmers and consumers. Many experts worry that Washington's new skepticism will undo important progress the US has made in replacing foreign oil with domestic energy alternatives. http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p03s03-usec.html
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POPSGore Shamelessly Exploits Burma's Disaster PROBLEM #4 HE PROFITS PERSONALLY FROM CARBON TRADING SCHEMES The Green Growth Fund will provide its portfolio companies with both global perspective and global reach, which includes the benefit of KPCB’s Asian presence through its KPCB China Fund. The KPCB Green Growth Fund will also enable the firm to extend its existing collaboration with the London-based Generation Investment Management, whose chairman Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and Nobel Laureate, joined KPCB as Partner last year. Through their alliance, the firms actively work together to find, fund and accelerate green solutions with the greatest potential to help solve the climate crisis. Generation co-founder and Managing Partner David Blood said, “There is a significant gap between the capital needed and the capital currently deployed to create enduring solutions to the climate crisis. http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2008/05/al-gore-continues-his-brazen-efforts-to.html
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POPSUniversity Research Labs Produces Too Much CO2 Hervé Philippe, a Université de Montréal professor of biochemistry, is a committed environmentalist who found that his own research produces 44 tonnes of CO2 per year. The average American citizen produces 20 tonnes. Hervé Philippe“I did my PhD on nucleotide sequencing in the hope of advancing our knowledge of biodiversity, but I never thought that the research itself could have a negative impact on biodiversity,” he said, during a recent biology department symposium. He doesn’t believe in one magical solution, but rather in transformations adapted to each area. For universities, he recommends having less frequent international conferences, increasing the use of videoconferences, avoiding research on well explored topics, reducing publications and evaluating the amount of CO2 produced by research projects. On the web: About the Université de Montréal: http://www.umontreal.ca/english/index.htm.
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POPSEscape From Reality With Stories Of Myth And Magic The answer is in the magical letter "D" next to a politician's name, which tends to vanish mysteriously in news media reports! It is almost always possible to apply both 'W' and 'R' to news and pictures of death, destruction, global warming, economic downturn, etc. By Pioneer Pavlik Brought to you by the MSM: "Indulging your fantasies because the truth is just too hard to bear" The next mystery letter of the day: "A HYPHEN"
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POPSBackdoor Kyoto Protection under the Endangered Species Act will provide concrete help to polar bears and could revolutionize American climate policy. Since U.S. resistance to curbing greenhouse gases has allowed other countries to shirk their responsibilities as well, major changes in American policy are likely to have a powerful domino effect, catalyzing change in climate policy worldwide. From polluting power plants in the Midwest to auto manufacturers, a vast array of industries may have to clean up their acts to give the polar bear a chance to survive.
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POPSGlobal Warming Causes Shark Attacks And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites.' Some experts suggest that an abundance of seals has attracted high numbers of sharks, while others believe that overfishing has hit their food chain. 'I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's a convenient excuse,' Burgess said. Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures. 'You'll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn't in the past with some regularity,' he said. On a tip from mega. Posted by Van Helsing
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POPSWeather Or Not, We're Still Doomed.....Whatever James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claims that an ozone hole over the Antarctic is masking conditions there, keeping temperatures low. Later the ozone hole will close up, so we're still doomed. Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey floats this one: climate change causes Antarctic winds to blow harder, trapping colder air. But this will decrease at an undisclosed future date, so we're still doomed. Gabbles Marshall: The tea leaves point to a minimal amount of sea ice next September, that would be the same as we had last summer, 40 percent loss compared to 20 years ago. At least tea leaves are an improvement over the phony computer models they've been using to find their predetermined results. On a tip from hiram13pm. Posted by Van Helsing
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POPSAre Global Warmists Pulling A Cool Fast One? The New York Times rolled out Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, CO. Tremberth told them that "the global climate will continue to be influenced in any particular decade by a mix of natural variability and the building greenhouse effect" and that "a cool phase does not mean the overall theory of dangerous human-driven warming is flawed." And then added what appears to be the latest greenie talking point: "Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way." Is anyone else noticing a trend developing here, beyond the "we never said that warming patterns would be steady" shuffle? Each explanation, whether by Willis, Keenlyside and Latif, Wood, or Trenberth implies that some climate forces natural are more formidable than those anthropogenic.
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POPSAnalysis of Lieberman-Warner Reveals Massive Economic Pain EIA also found Lieberman-Warner would result in up to a 9.5% drop in manufacturing output by 2030. “Despite this gloomy EIA analysis, proponents of Lieberman-Warner are still claiming the bill will not impose economic harm to America. Only in Washington could higher energy prices be characterized as not negatively impacting the U.S. economy. If Democrats have their way, Americans will pay significantly more at the pump, in their homes, and in many cases, with their jobs, all to accomplish an undetectable impact on the climate. “The question now is which U.S. Senator will dare to stand on the Senate Floor a month from now to vote in favor of significantly increasing the price of gas at the pump?” Both government and private sector analysis have shown the cost of the Lieberman-Warner bill to be extremely painful.
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POPSMark Steyn: Feed Your Prius, Starve A Peasant Insofar as history will recall him at all, he may have the distinction of being the first head of government to fall victim to "global warming" – or, at any rate, the "war on global warming" that Time magazine is gung-ho for. The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you've suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it's not "you" who's got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about. That tree the U.S. Marines are raising on Iwo Jima was most-likely cut down to make way for an ethanol-producing corn field: Researchers at Princeton calculate that, to date, the "carbon debt" created by the biofuels arboricide will take 167 years to reverse
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POPSGore Ducks Questions About Food Crisis, Ethanol And Climate Alarmism Isn't that dandy? The person that cast the deciding vote in 1994 beginning ethanol mandates, who has been traveling the world advocating biofuels, and even admitted in March 2008 to having investments in biofuel companies, wasn't available to discuss the food crisis and its relationship to ethanol. Maybe this is why Gore isn't allowing press members into his speeches. Regardless, the pressure is mounting, and as more media outlets begin seeking his opinion concerning this matter, it seems a metaphysical certitude he won't be able to hide forever. Stay tuned.
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POPSLadies and Gentlemen! Comrades! In the absence of classical Marxist preconditions for the Revolution - global crisis of capitalism combined with massive poverty and despair - Global Warming stands out as the most convenient, non-denominational replacement thereof. It provides both the means to manipulate the masses - and a moral justification for doing so. As such it replaces the previously promising but failed agitprop tools as "Overpopulation," "Ozone Holes," "Global Famine," and "Ice Age 2." Until the time when it gets replaced by another convenient agitprop tool, Global Warming must remain an unquestionable dogma in all political discussions (you shall be notified of changes, if any, by the NPR, the New York Times, and other progressive media organs.) The importance of Global Warming for the Revolution is too great to leave it in the hands of scientists. The masses must have faith in Global Warming whether it can be proven or not. http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1096
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POPSImages Of Only One Tiny Sun-Spot On Sun's Surface There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770. It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years. This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers. It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday.
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POPSGore Says Laws Must Change In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Mr Gore – hailed as the world’s leading green campaigner – said recent polls had found that while people rate climate change as a “serious problem”, some ranked it lower than clearing up dog mess.
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POPSCitizen Petition To Stop Al Gore Tax & Climate Alarmism By my signature below I hereby join the growing number of scientists and informed citizens deeply concerned by the dire predictions and proposed solutions of Climate Alarmists. Fears that mankind has created a ‘planetary emergency’ are scientifically unfounded, and as such the doomsday predictions of Climate Alarmists are irresponsible and dangerous. Also, the solutions proposed by Climate Alarmists would have a harmful and possibly devastating impact on our economy, without any detectable climatic impact let alone benefit. http://www.grassfire.org/106/petition.asp?PID=16245502
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POPSTime Magazine Sells Out To Global Alarmists $1.2 Trillion Al Gore Tax coming before summer! Gore and the radical Climate Alarmists are using unfounded science and the willing spin of the media elites to push a massive, $1.2 Trillion Global Warming Tax. We have less than two months to stop the new tax. But the fact is, as this TIME article shows, the entire political, entertainment and media establishments are lining up to push this oppressive new Carbon Tax down our throats. answer your questions about global warming.
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POPSBush Raises Temp On Global Warming Granted, President Bush doesn't intend for his simple decision to offer legislation to regulate carbon emissions to have such catastrophic consequences. But then, by this point, he should be quite familiar with the concept of unintended consequences. And he needs to recognize that he cannot pass "sensible" legislation. (I have serious doubts that any legislation on this topic could be sensible.) All he can do is set the stage for next year's legislation by giving away the rhetorical store and weakening the already modest backbone of Republican legislators. The liberal world order will not let go of their global warming assault on free economies until hell freezes over -- by which point, obviously, the global warming theory will be visibly disproved.
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POPSLike Lemmings To The Sea All of this assumes that mankind is the primary cause of global warming anyway. You might be surprised to learn that there has never been a single scientific paper published which has ruled out natural climate variability for most of our current global-mean warmth. Not one. As the mass hysteria calling for an end to carbon dioxide production has accelerated, ethanol has arisen as the new messiah of radical environmentalism, promising to assuage our guilty enviro-consciences when we choose to starve more of the world’s poor.
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POPSBush To Speak On Reducing Greenhouse Emissions (continued)_Net emissions rise. There also isn't any viable legal instrument that will significantly alter the rate of warming. The Kyoto Protocol, which is pretty much moribund, would reduce surface warming by 0.07 degrees Centigrade every fifty years, an amount too small to measure. Kyoto failed because, by and large, no nation could meet its modest emission reduction targets."
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POPSWorld's New Crisis: Soaring Food Prices "Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait," Mr Zoellick said, after meeting the IMF and the World Bank's Development Committee. "We estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty." The World Bank has warned that food prices will remain elevated this year and will probably stay above 2004 levels until 2015. "We estimate that the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is in the order of seven lost years," Mr Zoellick said. He said that almost half of $500 million that the World Food Program recently requested in additional pledges for food aid had been committed, but the May 1 deadline for raising the money would not be met. The parliamentary secretary for international development assistance, Bob McMullan, said yesterday Australia was one of the largest donors through the World Food Program, giving $61.7 million last year.
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POPSA Maverick Climate Policy For example, in Phase I of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme, which started three years ago, a huge misallocation of emissions quotas led to a collapse in the price of carbon from $40 to 40 cents. At that price, there was no incentive to reduce emissions, which is why Phase I was an abject failure. Even a functioning cap could have only a limited effect on emissions. Energy-intensive industries would have every incentive to move their operations to countries without carbon controls, like China. As a result, McCain's plan would cause a net reduction not of greenhouse gas emissions, but of American jobs. The Arizona senator's plan might not shrink emissions, but it will surely grow government. (and raise billions of dollars) McCain does not offset this increase in government revenue with tax cuts elsewhere in the budget, so government would get bigger. He has said that he wants to promote "green jobs," and indeed he would be doing so, by adding green bureaucrats.
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POPSBig Taxing, Big Earmarking, Big Congress Grills Big Oil (continued) will Rep. Walden agitate for lower tax rates? What about Walden’s earmarks of over $46 million? Will he think about lowering his earmarks, in light of the federal government’s record profits? * * * * * As Ronald Bailey of Reason writes: “Finally, if Congress wants to blame someone for high oil prices, blame the benighted oil producing countries that have underinvested in oil production for at least a decade. But Congressional grandstanders can’t haul the likes of Venezuela’s Chavez, Russia’s Putin, and Iran’s Ahmadinejad to their hearing rooms.” The spectacle of the House blaming the oil companies in a free market for high prices would be bizarre, if it didn’t happen so often.
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POPSBritish Policy Advisor Says Gore Is In 'Panic' Mode On Sunday, CBS News correspondent Leslie Stahl asked Al Gore on the television show 60 Minutes what he thinks of people like Vice President Dick Cheney who doubt that global warming is caused by human activity. "I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they're almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, and those who believe the earth is flat," replied Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off."
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POPSThe Clean Energy Scam But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon. Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources-- it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started. One groundbreaking new study in Science concluded that when this deforestation effect is taken into account, corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce about twice the emissions of gasoline. The growing backlash against biofuels is a product of the law of unintended consequences.
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POPSEPA Chief On The Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases "Global warming is a complicated and nuanced topic that needs smart and carefully-devised solutions. And because the policies needed to achieve greenhouse gas reductions also stand to damage our economy, these policies must be both economically and politically feasible," said Sensenbrenner. "But left in the hands of regulators and the courts, greenhouse gas reductions could have serious consequences on our economy and our way of life," he said. "And I'm afraid the Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court decision runs the risk of putting this political question in the hands of unelected regulators." "We're not talking about just new cars and, ultimately, power plants," the Wisconsin Republican said, "this could also include several types of buildings, including small factories, assisted living facilities, indoor sports arenas and even breweries. Where I'm from, we don't like the sound of that."
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POPSNEW TEMP MEASURING SHOWS NO GLOBAL WARMING Climate-change promoters also are perplexed by the observations of NASA's eight weather satellites. In contrast to some 7,000 land-based stations, they take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the surface of the Earth. In 30 years of operation, the satellites have recorded a warming trend of just 0.14C — well within the range of normal variations. If the Argos buoys and satellites had confirmed the greenie computer models and Gore hype instead of natural temperature variations, it would have been big news. The silence speaks volumes.
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POPSTop British Scientist Warns Against Biofuels This now threatens to reverse a half century of gains not only against world hunger, but also in holding the line against conversion of undeveloped land. This is partly due to the diversion of corn to biofuels. ... Meanwhile, European demand for biofuels to replace gasoline is fueling plans for massive clearing of rainforests for palm-oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. ... Ironically, much of the hysteria over global warming is itself fueled by concerns that it may drive numerous species to extinction and increase hunger worldwide, especially in developing countries. Yet the biofuel solution would only make bad matters worse on both counts."
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POPS Obama Eyes Active Role In Oil Markets Grumet said Obama supported a global carbon market and would seek to link a U.S. emissions trading system with the established European one "as soon as possible," though he would make establishing a U.S. program to fight warming and agreeing an international climate change treaty his top priorities. Grumet said Obama would push the biofuel industry to move into second-generation fuels made from waste and advance beyond ethanol produced by corn to avoid the "food or fuel" debate. "For this to really be a significant contribution to increasing our energy security, we're going to have to move beyond corn," he said. Grumet, head of the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center in addition to advising the Obama campaign, said the oil industry had "concentrated incredible market power in a small number of companies" in a way that caused alarm.
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POPSThe Washington Post-er Child For Climate Bias It’s quite possible that if Eilperin and the many other members of the mainstream media who so far have been in the tank for global warming started reporting on the very real debate about climate model validity rather than simply regurgitating what the agenda-driven modelers tell them, then we could avert the looming national economic disaster that Congress is preparing for the next president to sign into law.
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POPSCarbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must ACT NOW to address global warming." "It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves." The Earth has already warmed by 0.76 degrees Celsius (nearly 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Most scientists warn that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could have serious consequences.
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POPSFormer Thatcher Adviser Monckton Warns Global Warming Alarmism That’s the message Lord Christopher Monckton, a policy advisor for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York. Monckton held the media responsible for the one-sided portrayal of the climate change issue and stated that global warming alarmism can be defeated when refuted by science. He used a recent court ruling in Great Britain as an example that restricted showing Al Gore's documentary, “ An Inconvenient Truth,” in schools. They’ve got the science wrong and it will gradually penetrate to the general public that they have got the science wrong and once the penny drops – that will be the end of this scare too,” Monckton added. “We’re not far away from it now.”
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POPSTWC Founder Advocates Suing To Expose Global Warming Fraud Coleman told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism. “The Weather Channel had great promise, and that’s all gone now because they’ve made every mistake in the book on what they’ve done and how they’ve done it and it’s very sad,” Coleman said. “It’s now for sale and there’s a new owner of The Weather Channel will be announced – several billion dollars having changed hands in the near future. Let’s hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information.
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POPS “Global Warming Censored” The conference is being run by the Heartland Institute. The Business & Media Institute is one of several co-sponsors and will be reporting from the event. BMI will also be hosting a panel discussion on the media’s involvement in advancing alarmism. Those who challenge the popular theories that humans are causing global warming or that climate change will lead to catastrophic events are often ignored by the media or branded as “skeptics,” “cynics” or “deniers.” The media have been eager to report on climate change throughout modern history, alternating between the imminent threat of global cooling and global warming in the past century. The recent trend in media-driven global warming alarmism has seen the media glorifying crusaders like former Vice President Al Gore while vilifying -- or ignoring -- scientists and others who don’t buy into the hype.
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