Al Gore’s documentary on Global Warming has just come to Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill Theatre. Sean Tubbs spoke with state climatologist Pat Michaels and clean air attorney Cale Jaffe to get their differing thoughts on the film. Michaels is a visiting professor of natural resources at Virginia Tech, and Jaffe is with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The fact that human behavior has caused climate change is, among all scientists on the planet (with the exception of Pat Michaels and Richard Lindzen, both of whom have received serious funding from petroleum interests) not a subject of controversy. It’s a fact.
The myth of scientific controversy regarding global warming is perpetuated by journalists, who, in the interest of balance, feel that they must contact someone on “the other side” for input into a story.
And that is fine, responsible behavior when reporting many news stories. Where this “balance” method falls apart is when reporting science stories.
When a theory has, through hard data, become accepted by virtually all scientists, then it is a fact. It is not necessary for a journalist to seek out the input of someone from the Flat Earth Society when reporting a story about, say, the Space Shuttle orbiting the earth.
Nor would it make a bit of sense, when reporting the fact that a particular flu virus has evolved to become more virulent, to include the opinion of someone who denies the mechanism of evolution.
To continue calling upon either Michaels or Lindzen (even if Michaels is affiliated with UVa, and may therefore have local appeal) plays right into the hands of the likes of the Cato Institute, which is a think tank that exists only to promote those concepts that the extreme right wing would like to drill into the heads of all Americans, whether or not these ideas contain any truth.
If reporters would remove the contact information for Michaels and Lindzen from their Rolodexes we’d make swifter progress toward fixing this horrendous global mess we have made for ourselves.