Judy Woodruff introduced the first segment tonight by very briefly mentioning a “changing climate.” But neither of the two stories on the plight of the polar bear included even a single sentence to let the viewer know that human emissions are almost certainly the primary cause for the loss of Arctic ice that the polar bears rely on for feeding.

That’s doubly pathetic from one of the few TV shows that typically uses its extra coverage time to lay out the full issue in a thoughtful manner. You can listen to the audio here, but I wouldn’t bother.

The media bear much of the blame for our inaction to date.
Related Posts:

• NYT editors confused about Arctic warming
• Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science!

An award-winning Swedish design firm, ADDI, has a novel plan to save the polar bears from the loss of their Arctic ice habitat:

ADDI explains the thinking behind their design:

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I’m about to reveal Canadian state secrets: William Shatner is an overacting jerk. The tar sands are an unfixable climate disaster.

Lock me up in Gitmo! Or wherever the Canadian version of that hellhole is. I’m guessing Athabasca.

The Onion CBC News reports:

CBC News has obtained a government document that says reducing greenhouse gases from Western Canada’s oilsands will be much more difficult than some politicians and the industry suggest.

The ministerial briefing notes, initially marked “Secret,” say that just a small percentage of the carbon dioxide released in mining the sands and producing fuel from them can be captured.

The oilsands are the fastest-growing source of CO2 in the country, set to increase from five per cent to 16 per cent of total emissions by 2020 under current plans.

Capturing the gas and pumping it underground has been the key public strategy for reducing the oilsands industry’s contribution to global warming.

Only in Canada is it a government secret that conservative politicians and the fossil fuel industry lie to further their agenda. At least in the good old United States of America, our state secrets are really secretive stuff like torture and eavesdropping.

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Erika Lovley

Erika Lovley, the Politico’s energy and environment reporter, today wrote a full-page article on the dying breed of global warming deniers that promotes their brand of toxic stupidity.

Lovley unquestioningly quotes extremist denier Joseph D’Aleo, Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) aide Marc Morano, and Cato Institute fellow Patrick Michaels in a piece littered with bald assertions and slanders against the scientific community without any basis in reality.

She talks of a “growing accumulation of global cooling science,” and a “growing number of scientists” who are “questioning how quickly the warming is happening and whether humans are actually the leading cause.” She claims Al Gore is a “crusader on climate change” who is “unconcerned” by the “growing science.”

The only specifics she mentions to support this extended screed are D’Aleo’s “Is Global Warming on the Wane?” in the Old Farmer’s Almanac and the Global Warming Petition Project. The Almanac piece purports that global warming is due to sunspot variation, and the petition claims — as Lovley faithfully transcribes — to have the signatures of “31,000 scientists across the world” agreeing with the assertion that “man’s impact on climate change can’t be reasonably proven.” These are both zombie lies, animated by the efforts of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and credulous reporters like Erika Lovley, years after they have been pronounced dead by all reputable authorities: Read more

A coalition of leading environmental groups has delivered a 400-page report (pdf) to PEBO’s transition team covering every aspect of energy and environmental policy.

The NRDC’s Switchboard blog has a bunch of more manageable summaries by their leading experts here.

If you like the old media’s misreporting on climate (see “The NYT blows the bark beetle story” and so does NBC), then you’ll love this whopper from the Politico, “Scientists urge caution on global warming,” which opens:

Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.

Growing accumulation? Too shaky? An entire piece on climate science that never actually talks to one single reputable climate scientist?

Even as pure political reporting, the piece is beneath rank amateurish — as if climate change deniers on the Hill are “quietly” doing anything.

Has the reporter, Erika Lovley (sic), been following this issue for more than a week? Note to Ms. Lovley: The deniers on the Hill have been shouting their disinformation for years. Try listening to the recent Senate climate bill debate (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us“).

This piece wins the 2008 prize for a press release masquerading as journalism – a tough category to win given the competition: NYT suckered by ExxonMobil in puff piece titled “Green is for Sissies.”

Even by old media’s standards, the story is laughable. It is built around “Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D’Aleo and other scientists” who are pushing the “global cooling theory” (aka well-debunked denier talking point numero uno, see links below).

Note to Ms. Lovley: D’Aleo holds no doctorate in any scientific discipline. Whether holding a Masters in meteorology qualifies in general as being a scientist I will leave to others, but meteorologists should not simply be treated or quoted as experts on climate (see “Are meteorologists climate experts?“).

Here’s where the Politico jumps the shark into the territory best left to The Onion. The story actually builds its case around D’Aleo’s article in that well-known, highly credible, peer-reviewed scientific climate journal, The 2009 Old Farmer’s Almanac.

You can’t make this stuff up. Well, maybe you can’t, but deniers can. They can make stuff up, print it in places like the Almanac, and then get “media” outlets like the Politico to regurgitate it wholesale:

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I’m reprinting a piece from Meg Imholt, an intern at Greenpeace USA and V.P. of American University‘s environmental club, EcoSense. GM continues to fund and pimp fuel cell vehicles aka “The car of the perpetual future” or “The Last Car You Would Ever Buy — Literally.” The key point is Meg’s final one — “green” remains primarily a marketing strategy for GM:

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