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CNN: Cutting Science, and Kicking It On the Way Out the Door

By cmooney on December 19, 2008.

It seems just days ago that we learned CNN is cutting its science unit, including Miles O'Brien, who took global warming very seriously.

And then last night, a guy who wasn't cut, meteorologist Chad Myers, popped off as follows: "You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant...Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big - I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water or we're going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure."

This was part of a Lou Dobbs program that also featured a global warming "skeptic" from the rightwing Heartland Institute who argued, "I think we're going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man."

Bravo, CNN, for cutting science coverage and then rubbing our faces in it.

Tags
global warming

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And Lou was AWOL - very discouraging.

I have to say, I don't think that one necessarily has to be a climate change denialist to think that the water problem might be more urgent, or that oceans becoming uninhabitable for fish might be an urgent problem, though the way he states it does sound like he's minimizing the global warming problem. That's a sign of the times: Now exactly which of our environmental disasters is going to do us in first?

"What's the big deal? The water can rise a few meters without any whatsoever to my house here in the Heartland. And Venice, Bangladesh, blah de blah.. those places are all far away from here. They can adapt!"

Of course, it's arguably deglaciation that's the biggest threat to the fresh water supply, and deglaciation is most credibly attributed to anthropogenic warming.

For me, the most offensive thing was passing off a conservative think-tank economist as a climate scientist. This guy is a scientist like Steve Milloy.

You can't tell me this isn't intentional. It's easy to find a climate scientist to bring on your show. The fact that they don't, in favor promoting hacks from corporate front groups, is deliberately dishonest.

Even if "It is the sun that does it, not man", that doesn't excuse us from trying to solve the problem. The effect will be just as bad no matter what caused it.

Unbelievable. I might be naive but I can't believe that there are people that are still in active denial.