(Untitled)
I've been thinking about spin and misrepresentation. And now I'm going to write about it. Wit' mah fingerz!
The recent Channel 4 documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was a 90 minute debunking of the concerns that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are heavily responsible for global climate change. It was presented and polished in a very ( Read more... )
The recent Channel 4 documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was a 90 minute debunking of the concerns that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are heavily responsible for global climate change. It was presented and polished in a very ( Read more... )
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Now you know why all big companies insist that their employees never, ever, speak to the media: everything goes through PR experts who have tame* journalists, and who know how to play rival media outlets against one another.
That's good advice for private individuals, too. Never, ever, speak to the media. If you don't have the money to pay a PR agency, for God's sake keep your head down and hope that you're to small and uninteresting for the media to destroy your life with lies and sensationalism ( ... )
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Ah, but your blog is about what you think. And it's worth quoting: expect some traffic.
As for what I think... Thank F*** these guys weren't around in the 1970's when the dangers of smoking came out. Many people are alive and healthy today, who would be diseased, dying or dead if, in those days, tobacco companies had the budget, the media access, the propaganda skills, and the pervasive ability to distort the scientific agenda that 21st-century Big Oil is deploying today.
The world has changed - been changed, deliberately - and there is no impartial source of news and worse, no impartial scientific opinion: the few and fortunate scientists or doctors who can speak out in the public interest without fear of losing their research budget now face a megadollar media, political and scientific campaign to undermine their work. If they are not co-opted and protected by a rival political lobby then they will be hammered flat - and such allegiances are in any case the end of their scientific impartiality ( ... )
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You're right, the damage is now done and it'll probably take months or years to undo it, if it ever is. And even if we assume for a moment that human-made global warming is bunk, it's not like reducing our dependence on fossil fuels would be a bad thing.
Channel 4's website for the documentary is ... interesting. Several very cautious statements ('some evidence to suggest', 'doesn't seem to support') and some important points ignored, such as animals' contribution to greenhouse gasses being significantly increased by humans farming them in unnatural numbers, on land cleared of trees. The sum-total of the Arguments section of that site seems pretty weak to me, including a very strange account of cloud formation ( ... )
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That's a very good question. They seemed to be suggesting that we were being misled about it to suit various high-up agendas, but surely the opposite is true? It's large, industrial, Capitalist machines that would benefit from people not caring about pollution. I'll have to see if I can find a copy of the programme on the net somewhere for the benefit of readers who'd like to see or re-see it...
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Not sure if you ever go there but the Now Show on BBC radio 4 covered this subject too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/nowshow.shtml
(I imagine they Marcus Brigstock must have read your journal and got all fired up)
John M
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