1. ABC Blames Wild Fires on Global Warming, See Vindication for Gore
The ABC News Web site is soliciting examples of warm weather in the summer in order to demonstrate the impact of global warming and on Wednesday's Good Morning America the network illustrated how their reporters and producers assume any disaster proves global warming and vindicates Al Gore. Charlie Gibson teased at the top of the June 21 show: "The hot zone. Wildfires ravage the West and threaten homes. Is global warming to blame?" Reporter Bill Blakemore soon affirmed: "Well, Charlie, many scientists say that it fits exactly into the pattern predicted for global warming and is likely to get drier and hotter on average. This year wildfires have already burned more than three million acres, more than three times the average by this time of year." Blakemore concluded with how a fire chief in California "told me he also worries about how all the carbon from the fires only contributes to global warming. That fact about forest fires is something that Al Gore also points out in his new book and that book is now near the top of the bestseller list. It seems that people are really starting to pay attention to global warming."

2. Gumbel: Score in Soccer 'About as Often as Coulter Makes Sense'
This Sunday night (June 25) at 9pm EDT/PDT, the SciFi channel, part of the NBC-Universal empire, will re-run the Matt Lauer-hosted two-hour Countdown to Doomsday special packed with ominous warnings of impending disaster, as issued by such discredited doomsayers as Paul Ehrlich. Lauer declared: "Today, life on earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason." He claimed: "Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid." Lauer intoned: "Today, some of our greatest scientific minds are warning that we could be on the brink of another terrible extinction, only this one, is our own."

3. Sci-Fi to Re-Run Hyperbolic Lauer-Hosted 'Countdown to Doomsday'
In ending the June edition of his Real Sports news magazine show Tuesday night on HBO by urging Americans to watch and appreciate World Cup soccer, Bryant Gumbel slipped in a personal/political slam: "I know that in soccer they score about as often as Ann Coulter makes sense." Back in February, Gumbel used a commentary, about how he would not watch the Winter Olympic games, to denounce Republicans over race as he condescendingly suggested viewers "try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

ABC Blames Wild Fires on Global Warming,
See Vindication for Gore

     The ABC News Web site is soliciting examples of warm weather in the summer in order to demonstrate the impact of global warming and on Wednesday's Good Morning America the network illustrated how their reporters and producers assume any disaster proves global warming and vindicates Al Gore. Charlie Gibson teased at the top of the June 21 show: "The hot zone. Wildfires ravage the West and threaten homes. Is global warming to blame?" Reporter Bill Blakemore soon affirmed: "Well, Charlie, many scientists say that it fits exactly into the pattern predicted for global warming and is likely to get drier and hotter on average. This year wildfires have already burned more than three million acres, more than three times the average by this time of year." Blakemore concluded with how a fire chief in California "told me he also worries about how all the carbon from the fires only contributes to global warming. That fact about forest fires is something that Al Gore also points out in his new book and that book is now near the top of the bestseller list. It seems that people are really starting to pay attention to global warming."

     By that reasoning, since Ann Coulter's book as at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, "people are really starting to pay attention to how liberals are bad for America." But don't expect to see that expressed any time soon on ABC News.

     On Tuesday in his "Best of the Web" column for OpinionJournal.com, James Taranto pointed out how ABCNews.com has put up a page asking:

Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?

ABC News wants to hear from you. We're currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

We want to hear and see your stories. Have you noticed changes in your own backyard or hometown? The differences can be large or small--altered blooming schedules, unusual animals that have arrived in your community, higher water levels encroaching on your property.

Show us what you've seen.

     END of Excerpt

     For ABC's page: abcnews.go.com

     Taranto commented: "Essentially ABC is asking viewers to send in their anecdotes of warm weather, which it will claim are evidence of a warming climate. Well, when Al Gore gave a 'global warming' speech in New York a couple of years ago, the temperature was in the single digits. Does that prove the existence of 'global cooling'? Only by ABC's standards.

     The archive of Taranto's daily compilations: www.opinionjournal.com

     Gibson, the MRC's Brian Boyd noticed, teased at the top of the June 21 Good Morning America: "The hot zone. Wildfires ravage the West and threaten homes. Is global warming to blame? We'll take you live to one of the hottest spots on Earth."

     About 16 minutes later, Gibson set up the story: "And now we're going to turn to the ferocious wildfires that are ravaging five Western states this morning and turning large parts of the American West into a tinderbox. According to the federal government, this Spring was the fourth hottest on record. So, as part of our series Our Warming World, ABC's Bill Blakemore is back with us, has some new information about what could be causing all of this. And obviously the question, Bill, is global warming a contributing factor?"

     Bill Blakemore checked in from in-studio with video shot in California: "Well, Charlie, many scientists say that it fits exactly into the pattern predicted for global warming and is likely to get drier and hotter on average. This year wildfires have already burned more than three million acres, more than three times the average by this time of year. Over the past month we traveled through the western Sierras and Rockies to find out what scientists and firefighters make of the new flames that they must now face.
     "The size and ferocity of these wildfires plaguing the West right now, many growing in size every hour, astonish even experienced fire chiefs like Mat Fratus, who fought this recent fire in the Sierras that burned 1,000 homes."
     Mat Fratus, Chief of the San Bernardino Fire Department: "I talk to people that have been in the fire service their entire career and not only this fire, but fires in preceding years because of the drought, because of the fuel conditions, they've produced fire behavior, flame lengths, intensities that we have never really experienced before. And everything that we had to throw at it we did and it just seemed to burn right through us. I was born and raised in this area and to see this entire area burn in my lifetime, I've never seen a fire come through here of anything of that magnitude."
     Blakemore: "Today's wildfires are part of a worsening pattern most everywhere. Since 1970, the number of major wildfires has soared not only in North America, but around the world. Scientists report that global warming means mountains are losing winter snow pack weeks ahead of time from Himalayas to California Sierras."
     Anthony Westerling, Scripps Institute of Oceanography: "The snow is melting earlier in the year on very regular intervals, now. And we're getting much longer fire seasons. It dries out much more than before."
     Blakemore: "The dollar cost of these new fires? Many billions, no one knows exactly except that rapid new development will make it much worse."
     Westerling: "Some of our fastest growing areas are going to have the biggest increases in fire frequency in the future driven by temperature increases from climate change."
     Fratus: "It appears that global warming is an issue that is not going to subside or go away anytime soon. What we thought was the anomaly will soon become the rule."
     Blakemore: "Fire Chief Fratus there, whose family has lived in the area for five generations, told me he also worries about how all the carbon from the fires only contributes to global warming. That fact about forest fires is something that Al Gore also points out in his new book and that book is now near the top of the bestseller list. It seems that people are really starting to pay attention to global warming."

     In a May 20 NewsBusters blog posting, the MRC's Tim Graham quoted Blakemore's enthusiasm for Gore's film and linked to earlier items on Blakemore's promotion on air of the most extreme global warming fears and predictions: newsbusters.org

     For a lot more on media mis-reporting of global warming, check the May 17 report issued by the MRC's Business and Media Institute, "Fire and Ice: Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can't decide weather we face an ice age or warming," at: www.businessandmedia.org

Gumbel: Score in Soccer 'About as Often
as Coulter Makes Sense'

     This Sunday night (June 25) at 9pm EDT/PDT, the SciFi channel, part of the NBC-Universal empire, will re-run the Matt Lauer-hosted two-hour Countdown to Doomsday special packed with ominous warnings of impending disaster, as issued by such discredited doomsayers as Paul Ehrlich. Lauer declared: "Today, life on earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason." He claimed: "Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid." Lauer intoned: "Today, some of our greatest scientific minds are warning that we could be on the brink of another terrible extinction, only this one, is our own."

     MRC intern Chadd Clark suffered through the entire show which first aired at 9pm EDT/PDT on June 14. Chadd lined up a long list of wild predictions of how we may all be dead tomorrow and, for a Wednesday posting on the MRC's NewsBusters site, Tim Graham laid out the quotes and added examples of how one of Lauer's experts, Paul Ehrlich, long ago issued wild predictions: newsbusters.org

     SciFi's page for the program: www.scifi.com

     # 9:03pm, Lauer on the threat of extinction: "Today, some of our greatest scientific minds are warning that we could be on the brink of another terrible extinction, only this one, is our own."

     # 9:08pm, Lauer on the alleged threat of super volcanoes: "While these scenarios seem dire, they actually pale in comparison with the threat of super volcanoes, volcanoes capable of eruption so massive, they can end life as we know it. Now these eruptions are rare, about once every half a million years or so, but they can happen at any time."

     # 9:42pm, on the destruction of ecosystems: "Today, life on earth is disappearing faster than the days when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason."
     Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Center for Conservation Biology: "Humanity is assaulting earth's life support system, what scientists sometimes call ecosystems, at a level that is absolutely unprecedented."
     Lauer: "We're living on the edge of a mass extinction. Scientists predict that more than two-thirds of the world's species will be lost by the end of this century. That's as many as 7 million different kinds of plants and animals gone forever."
     Dr. Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden: "We worry about the extinction of those organisms, but it's widely appreciated that there's one of them which if it disappeared tomorrow would leave the other 9,999,000 cheering wildly - that would be us."
     Lauer: "Us homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any asteroid. Earth's intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend on for our own lives."
     Raven: "We're driving them to extinction at the very time when we ought to be using them to build better and more sustainable lives. How dumb is that?"
     Lauer: "Pretty dumb, considering that the food and water that keep you alive, the plants the give you medicine, the wood that gives you shelter, the climate, energy, even the air that you breathe, are all products of earth's natural systems."
     Ehrlich: "If I were to grade humanity on its care of the life support systems upon which its very future depends, I'd give it a grade of F."
     Lauer: "That failing grade is spelling disaster for our environment, and for us."

     As legendary liberal-media blowhard Eric Engberg would say, time out! NBC's "Today" and Paul Ehrlich have a history. (Yes, Sci-Fi's screen graphic is misspelled, see screen shot in NewsBusters.) In June 1989, NBC' Today gave Ehrlich a three-part series that he wrote, taped, and reported, all without a conservative counterpoint, despite Ehrlich's rather stunning record of predictions that did not pan out, especially in his man-hating 1968 manifesto "The Population Bomb." As we noted then in our MediaWatch newsletter:
     "Ehrlich saw widespread famine as part of the solution to his theories of overpopulation. In what he called a 'cheerful scenario,' the U.S. government would decide in 1974 it would no longer send food to countries considered 'beyond hope.' Famine and food riots would ensue until 1985, 'when it is calculated the major die-back will be over,' that is, when enough millions have died to reduce Earth's population to some arbitrarily acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.
     "The Today reports were about as 'cheerful,' and Ehrlich's predictions as pessimistic about the coming decade. 'We're going to see massive extinction,' he warned, not to mention drought, erosion, and famine. Global warming is going to melt the polar ice caps, causing a flood in which 'we could expect to lose all of Florida, Washington D.C., and the Los Angeles basin...we'll be in rising waters with no ark in sight.' Thus, industrial nations will have to abandon their wasteful lifestyles using gas and electricity or risk global cataclysm. 'Perhaps the most explosive social problem of the next 50 years will be that the ecosystems of the world cannot support the spread of the American lifestyle to the Third World or even to the next generation of Americans.'"

     In our February 1990 MediaWatch, NBC won our "Janet Cooke Award" for giving Ehrlich another three-part series on Today, which he produced again with absolutely no conservative counterpoint. His record of gloomy predictions have not often come to their fearsome fruition. The Ehrlich series kicked off January 9, 1990 with a story on "how man is destroying the entire ecological system with something that appears to be completely harmless." What was this global threat? The cow. "The dog may be man's best friend, but cows are family...our dependence on the cow is destroying the world environment."

     Lauer and his Sci-Fi sob sisters never asked whether any of Ehrlich's wild predictions of doom in 1990 have come true in the last 16 years. As Julian Simon, professor of economics at the University of Maryland and author of The Ultimate Resource, a fact-filled refutation of Ehrlich's contentions, told MediaWatch: "On just about every point where his statements can be tested against evidence, Ehrlich is wrong. Indeed, he has been wrong across the board since the 1960's. Every one of his predictions has been falsified. How many times does a 'prophet' have to be wrong before he stops being a prophet?" In 1980, Ehrlich accepted a bet from Simon that five natural resources of Ehrlich's choosing would grow more scarce [i.e., expensive] by 1990. Ehrlich lost on all five counts. Sadly, Dr. Simon has passed away, and Ehrlich's still spinning tall tales on a Sci-Fi soapbox.

     Back to the SciFi diatribe:

     # 9:45pm, Lauer on overpopulation destroying ecosystems: "It's no coincidence that ecosystem destruction is happening at exactly the same time our population is exploding. 50 years ago, the world's population was only 2.5 billion people. Today, it's 6.5 billion. 50 years from now, it will be 9.5 billion. Not even fuzzy math can make numbers like that add up to a healthy planet."
     Ehrlich: "If we want the United States to last a long time, the way to do it isn't to see if we can cram in 500 million people before it goes bust."
     Lauer: "The stark reality is that there are simply too many of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home."
     Raven: "We use twice as much energy in the United States per person. Does anybody really think that we live twice as well as a result of doing that? No, we waste twice as well. That's our special trick."
     Lauer: "Even the mighty oceans, the biggest ecosystems of them all, are losing the battle."
     Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence: "Grave changes have taken place that have altered the very nature of the ocean itself. The ocean is in trouble. Take away the ocean, and you take away life itself for planet earth."
     Lauer: "In Sylvia Earle's lifetime, commercial fishing fleets have wiped out 90 percent of large fish in the ocean -- sharks, tuna, swordfish, snapper, cod -- fish we love to eat, features that are vital to the food change, vital to ecosystem earth. What a waste."

     # 9:47pm, on the loss of bio-diversity: "On land, wild creatures are also in trouble. Losing our cousins in the animal kingdom has dire implications for us too."
     Richard Carroll, World Wildlife Fund: "When you see a gorilla, you can't help but see that recognition that separates us from our closest relatives..."
     Lauer: "Can humans avoid getting caught up in the mass extinction that we started? It will take a massive global effort to make things right, but the solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green technologies."

     # 9:49pm, Lauer on the problem of ecosystem destruction: "The future lies beyond our vision. It's not beyond our control. We are the problem. We can be, and must be, the solution, or else, this beautiful green place we call home could turn into a lifeless, gray planet."

     # 10:15pm, Lauer on the potential reality of global disaster: "Massive tornados in Los Angeles are just some of the ways that global warming wreaks death and destruction around the world in the movie The Day After Tomorrow. The movie's nightmarish scenario is not as far fetched as it may seem...For years, many scientists have warned that gasses emitted from burning fossil fuels are creating a greenhouse effect that's heating up the globe. Now, having ignored the calls for action, we may be at a tipping point."
     Dr. James E. Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard: "The danger is that we will pass a point of no return and not be able to prevent further changes from happening."

     # 10:18pm, on the ice caps melting: "Dramatic, as in starvation, since we all depend on fish for much of our protein. But, the warming of the ocean also presents another threat. You've undoubtedly heard that the polar ice caps and glaciers around the world are beginning to melt, but new data on the rate of the thaw is shocking scientists."
     Marika Holland, National Center For Atmospheric Research: "The change is rapid and very dramatic. In the last 800,000 years, there has not been an arctic that has no sea ice in the summer, and our climate models are showing that that could happen within 50 years. Species like polar bears and like seals will be at great risk, and many indications are that they'll be driven towards extinction."
     Lauer: "The terrifying danger is if the massive glaciers of Greenland and ice-bound Antarctica turn to slush, the Greenland ice sheet alone could raise the global sea level by 23 feet. If Antarctica melted, seas would rise an additional 215 feet. The effects would be catastrophic."

     And so on:

     Lauer: "The devastating effects of global warming may be much more imminent than most people realize. Hidden at the bottom of the ocean is a little known factor that could accelerate the whole process -- massive deposits of frozen methane, a potent greenhouse gas."
     Hansen: "The amount of methane in the ocean is much larger than the amount of methane and CO2 that we can get from fossil fuels."
     Lauer: "If the ocean gets warm enough, the methane will defrost and rise from the ocean into the atmosphere. Global warming will suddenly get a steroid injection. If that happens, we will be past the tipping point. Colossal hurricanes would hammer the globe. The oceans would become too hot to support much life. Droughts, forest fires, and famine would rage across the continents. Florida would be gone, completely swallowed by the rising ocean, as well as hundreds of cities all around the world."

     Florida would be gone? Well, let's consult the Ehrlich panic from Today in 1990 for another drink of that crazy brew. "As global temperatures rise, they may cause the massive West Antarctic ice sheet to slip more rapidly. Then we'll be facing a sea-level rise not of one to three feet in a century, but of 10 or 20 feet in a much shorter time. The Supreme Court would be flooded. You could tie your boat to the Washington Monument. Storm surges would make the Capitol unusable. For Today, Paul Ehrlich in Washington, DC, on the future shoreline of Chesapeake Bay."

     The last I checked, the shoreline of the Chesapeake is still a decent drive from the Washington Monument.

     # At 9:48pm, I found Ehrlich adding this nugget of political rhetoric to the special: "When you hear a politician say we've really gotta concentrate on the economy now, and forget about the ecology, you know you're listening to a moron."

     Sigh, let's continue to the proposed solutions to Armageddon:

     # 10:21pm, Lauer on the Kyoto energy-curbing agreement: "What can be done to prevent this global Armageddon? More than 160 countries have signed an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, the United States has refused to sign, saying it would threaten economic growth. As a result, emissions in the U.S. have increased by 2 percent each year...Recently, President Bush acknowledged there is a problem with too much oil consumption and supported a switch to alternative fuels. But so far, the United States has not come up with a plan to combat global warming."

     # 10:22pm, Lauer on the feelings of the American people on global warming: "In the meantime, people are starting to reach their own tipping point. A recent U.S. poll shows that the majority of people believes that global warming is a global problem, and that the government needs to be part of the solution....The only way to ensure our survival is to take matters into our own hands, stop talking about developing new cleaner energy, like alternative fuel cars and wind farms, and start investing in them. The trend is unmistakable. The ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990."

     # 10:36pm, on the ability of viruses to spread: "In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed more than 50 million people world wide, and this time, things could be even worse. Our modern global village is a crowded, hectic place, and that makes us more vulnerable than ever before."
     Laurie Garrett, Council on Foreign Relations: "Globalization is globalized opportunity, but it's also globalized threat."
     Lauer: "A bug out of Africa or Asia can hitch a ride on a jumbo jet and find itself just about anywhere in the world in less than a day. In the last few decades, infectious diseases like SARS and AIDS have emerged and spread all over the world."

     Sadly, I prefer Matt questioning Britney Spears about the paparazzi to this panicked propaganda.

Sci-Fi to Re-Run Hyperbolic Lauer-Hosted
'Countdown to Doomsday'

     In ending the June edition of his Real Sports news magazine show Tuesday night on HBO by urging Americans to watch and appreciate World Cup soccer, Bryant Gumbel slipped in a personal/political slam: "I know that in soccer they score about as often as Ann Coulter makes sense." Back in February, Gumbel used a commentary, about how he would not watch the Winter Olympic games, to denounce Republicans over race as he condescendingly suggested viewers "try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

     Fast forward to Tuesday night and Gumbel praised the World Cup soccer games as "athletic, intense, passionate and driven by a blend of patriotism and nationalism that is real and not commercial. In short, these games offer everything the Olympics want to claim and try to sell every four years." Gumbel concluded: "I know that in soccer they score about as often as Ann Coulter makes sense. And yes I know they all act like drama queens whenever they're fouled. But if you haven't watched any of the World Cup matches from Germany you should try it. You won't be disappointed. And after years of repeating the standard American denials, you might even have to admit that the rest of the world is onto something."

     [This item was posted Wednesday afternoon, with video, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters. The audio and video clip will be added to the posted version of this CyberAlert, but in the meantime, to watch the video clip in Real or Windows Media format, or to listen to the MP3 audio, go to: newsbusters.org ]

     Gumbel's remarks at the end of the June 20 edition of HBO's Real Sports:
     "Finally tonight, a few words about World Cup soccer. Please spare me the stifled yawns and typical American gripes about how boring the sport can be. For God's sake, we're a nation that venerates one-nothing baseball games, watches cars make endless left-hand turns and televises people playing poker and dominoes.
     "Now, I confess that I barely know a corner kick from a free kick. I don't get the logic of why they call off sides and I think the whole yellow card/red card thing is melodramatic. But these Cup games are athletic, intense, passionate and driven by a blend of patriotism and nationalism that is real and not commercial.
     "In short, these games offer everything the Olympics want to claim and try to sell every four years. You think the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is intense? Or Michigan-Ohio State? How about the emotional and historic implications of a match-up between German and Poland? Or the stakes involved for players from Iran or Croatia. Or how spirits are lifted when a nation like Ghana wins or tiny Togo even tries.
     "Yes, I know that in soccer they score about as often as Ann Coulter makes sense. And yes I know they all act like drama queens whenever they're fouled. But if you haven't watched any of the World Cup matches from Germany you should try it. You won't be disappointed. And after years of repeating the standard American denials, you might even have to admit that the rest of the world is onto something."

     The February 16 CyberAlert recounted: Bryant Gumbel couldn't resist taking a racial shot at the Republican Party in a pre-Winter Olympic games commentary at the end of the February edition of his Real Sports magazine show on HBO. The former NBC and CBS morning news host concluded by telling viewers that as for the Winter Olympic games, "count me among those who don't like 'em and won't watch 'em." He condescendingly suggested viewers "try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

     Gumbel's remarks came at the very end of the February edition of Real Sports, a monthly sports news magazine show which includes Bernard Goldberg amongst its correspondents. It first aired on Tuesday night, February 7, a few days before the Olympics opened in Italy.

     For the full transcripts, as well as an audio/video clip: www.mrc.org

-- Brent Baker

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