Global warming - overhyped by an ignorant media?

Question

Thanks to the release of Al Gore’s latest effort on global warming – this time in book and movie form – climate change is the hot topic in press rooms around the globe. It isn’t the first time.

The media have warned about impending climate doom four different times in the last 100 years. Only they can’t decide if mankind will die from warming or cooling.

As the noise from the controversy has increased, it has drowned out any debate. Journalists have taken advocacy positions, often ignoring climate change skeptics entirely. One CBS reporter even compared skeptics of manmade global warming to Holocaust deniers.

The Society of Environmental Journalists Spring 2006 SEJournal included a now-common media position, arguing against balance. But that sense of certainty ignores the industry’s history of hyping climate change – from cooling to warming, back to cooling and warming once again.

So what's the deal? Is this a SERIOUS problem or just something for newsies to hype?

Answer 1

Only time will tell. I'm not convinced of the reason for global warming, i.e. how much is cyclical, how much is caused by 'greenhouse gasses'?

Answer 2

Unfortunately you've got it backwards.

Global warming is accepted as a real and serious problem by the vast majority of climate scientists.

The news stories that are overhyped are the reports of skepticism about global warming from a few fringe scientists and supporters of the fossil fuel industry.

Al Gore and CBS may be just a little hardcore. But they're way more on target than the skeptics. Here's an article about that.

"Such statements (that there is large uncertainty about whether global warming exists) suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

This article is two years old. The strength of the scientific consensus on global warming is even stronger today, thanks to such things as an amazingly rapid shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap. That is especially convincing because the huge and relatively stable ice cap responds more to long term climate change than to variations in weather.

Answer 3

Global warming is real-it's happening now. The polar ice caps are melting and they shouldn't be. The earth should be cooling off right now, but because of us and how we treat the earth we are warming up. It's 50 degrees here in CT, it has never been this warm in January here. It actually poured the other day-what should've been snow.

CO2 levels are rising. They were 200 a hundred years or so ago. Now they are just above 300. 500 parts per million is deadly for humans and at the rate we are going, we will reach that within 50 years.

I would suggest watching An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore (if you haven't-it is what you are refereing too)--it's is wonderful and extremely informative.

Answer 4

Just hype. One of the greatest offenders is CO2 from all the fuel the U S is using. When u know that Mother Nature introduced plants a few million years ago ,to resolve the problem. Even when man breathes he exhales CO2 and without the plants we would all die,but the plants take in CO2 and keep the C and give back the O2. Very good I think. There are the recycle of the fossil fuels from there . the plants die and their dead leaves wash down the rivers to the delta where they are converted to Gas, Oil,and Coal . we will never run out it will be difficult to figure where Mother Nature hides it. Where do u think our original fossil fuels came from. So in reality there is no problem with CO2 or the fear of ruining out of fuel.

Answer 5

Unless you are playing devil's advocate, your phrasing indicates that you have already made up your mind on the issue. Therefore, why bother with questions like this? You won't listen to anything anyone has to say in favor of it being a true problem, anyway. It is an emotionally "loaded" issue for most people (myself included -- I know myself well enough to understand that), and "just asking" questions is usually only for the purpose of expounding your own side of things, anyway.

Answer 6

you are really wrapped up in yourself aren't you? are you one of these liberal brainiac's who thinks every word out of your mouth has to be or sound profound ?if you don't like the fun and harmless question put on this site by a guy just enjoying his morning coffee and the entertainment value of this site , don't answer the question! and to answer your question "god gave me a brain so that i could respond to ******* like you!