Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Common Dreams:

"The New York Times and a New Climate Denialism. ... The headline of the interactive New York Times opinion piece [Yes, Greenland's Ice Is Melting] by conservative columnist Bret Stephens is placed over an image of Greenland’s melting ice cap crashing into the slushy meltwater below. With one more scroll, the word 'But…' appears over the ice, which resembles a melting snowplowed slush pile in a parking lot.


From just a glance at the headline, it was clear where this article was going. The 6,000-word piece went on to chronicle Stephens' trip to Greenland as a self-proclaimed global warming 'agnostic.' There, the dramatic effects of climate change 'changed [his] mind' about the problem, but reinforced his 'belief that markets, not government, provide the cure.'


Stephens' point of view represents a new climate denialism: No longer can any rational person claim that climate change isn’t happening at an accelerated rate due to human causes, or that it’s not causing harm. Instead they argue, like Stephens, that the swift, decisive action scientists say is necessary is 'magical thinking,' that genuine existential fear is 'alarmist,' that most humans will be able to adapt to climate disaster."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/28/opinion/climate-change-bret-stephens.html


-->The NYT doesn't mind talking about climate disaster, as long as the solution doesn't threaten the profits of huge, multinational companies. But isn't it the major corporations that have led us to this incipient disaster? Could our newspaper of record really believe that Big Oil will save us?


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FAIR:

"ACTION ALERT: NYT Invents Left Extremists to Make ‘Moderation’ the Midterm Winner. Of the many lessons to be learned from this year’s midterms, in which Democrats defied historical trends to largely hold off a GOP wave, the New York Times‘ Jonathan Weisman and Katie Glueck  (11/14/22) singled out corporate media’s recurring favorite: Moderation won. ,,,


But in true Timesian fashion, Weisman and Glueck argued that it’s both extremes that voters rejected. 'On the Right and Left, People Voted to Reject Extremists in Midterms,' announced the headline to their piece in the print edition. ...


While most would accept that [some GOP candidates had] extremist positions, the reporters matched them on the left with mere labels ('from the liberal wing of their party,' an 'ardent progressive') and not a single policy position, statement or action. Apparently if you call a politician 'progressive' at the Times, it’s meant to be understood that they’re extreme, with no further explanation required."

https://fair.org/home/action-alert-nyt-invents-left-extremists-to-make-moderation-the-midterm-winner/


-->The NYT is the establishment's filter to keep progressive ideas out of the mainstream. However elections turn out, the NYT will see the results as repudiating leftist candidates. And when progressive candidates get too popular, why they just leave them out altogether. Like the Bernie blackout of the last several years. 


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Common Dreams:

"Huge Methane Leak in Pennsylvania Sparks Fresh Call for Fracking Ban. A leak that erupted at a methane storage facility in western Pennsylvania on November 6 spewed massive amounts of the highly potent greenhouse gas for a week and a half, reigniting demands on Friday to better regulate and eventually euthanize the fracking industry as part of a crucial transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.


As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Thursday morning, before venting was stopped: 'A natural gas storage well in Cambria County has been leaking gas for 10 days, blanketing the mountains in Jackson Township with a roar like a jet engine and its valleys with an odor of hydrocarbons.' ...


So-called 'natural' gas is primarily made up of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps roughly 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere and is responsible for almost half of the 1.2°C increase in average surface temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. ... 


Despite the clear case for moving more quickly toward green energy, President Joe Biden has yet to use his executive authority to cancel nearly two dozen fracked gas export projects that are set to unleash pollution equivalent to roughly 400 new coal-fired power plants."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/11/18/huge-methane-leak-pennsylvania-sparks-fresh-call-fracking-ban


-->Our major media, including the NYT ignored this story. Always a big fan of catastrophic energy sources, the newspaper has always had a preference for nuclear energy and fracked gas. That's were the big money is, of course. And as long as the NYT protects such dangerous energy solutions, we will continue to get hotter, colder, wetter and dryer. The dust bowl of the 1930 was nothing compared to the migrations that are to follow.