Head-Exploding Compilation of Fox News Clean Energy Coverage
"Head-Exploding Compilation of Fox News Clean Energy Coverage"
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I hate subjecting readers to pain. But if you read this blog regularly, you’ve probably put your head in a vise more than a few times.
It’s time to get that vise out once again because Media Matters has just put together a compilation of the greatest hits (read: biggest failures) in Fox News “coverage” of the renewable energy industry. I challenge you to get through the whole thing.
Meanwhile, as these pundits sit in their high-chairs and blabber on without any understanding of what they’re talking about, entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies all around the world are implementing innovative ways to reduce energy use and transform our energy system. Any journalist who’s talked to these business leaders understands that it’s one of the most important wealth-creation opportunities (and moral obligations) in history.
I’d love to say it makes me happy to know how foolish these pundits will look in retrospect. But we’re talking about the stability of the world’s climate here, not a sporting match.
Here’s some debunking by Media Matters:
By contrast, 77% of Americans believe that “the U.S. needs to be a clean energy technology leader and it should invest in the research and domestic manufacturing of wind, solar, and energy efficiency technologies,” according to a recent poll by the nonpartisan Civil Society Institute.
The clean energy sector is small but growing rapidly, according to a study by the Brookings Institution, which found that U.S. renewable energy jobs grew at an average annual rate of 11.1 percent between 2003 and 2010. By comparison, the overall economy grew by 4.2 percent annually.
But clean energy faces significant barriers, as market failures hinder the deployment of potentially breakthrough technologies and dirty fuels face little accountability for the cost of pollution.
A 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that the “hidden costs” of energy produced by burning fossil fuels, including the impact on public health, amount to $120 billion per year. If these costs were factored in to the cost of energy, coal-fired electricity would cost an additional 3.2 cents per kWh and gasoline would cost .30-.40 cents more per gallon. These numbers would be even greater if they included the impact of climate change, and other environmental consequences of pollution.
Nevertheless, fossil fuel interests protest any new pollution limits – even those that are long overdue and widely considered achievable. And Fox has been a consistent ally in this effort, routinely spreading fear and misinformation about the impact of clean air rules on energy costs and electric reliability.
Fox also perpetuates the false narrative that the Obama administration has stifled domestic oil production. In reality, the number of crude oil rigs in currently in operation is the highest on record. U.S. oil production has risen during each year of the Obama administration, despite the massive Gulf oil spill, and the Energy Information Administration projects that it will continue to increase in 2012. And the hydraulic fracturing techniques that led to the natural gas boom have yet to come under meaningful federal oversight.
The Brookings report stated that China has successfully deployed clean energy technologies because the country has articulated “a comprehensive and long-term state clean energy build out policy that sends clear signals to investors.”
A Deutsche Bank report also stresses the importance of a clear policy framework, contrasting countries like Germany and China, which have built “transparency, longevity and certainty” into their policy strategies, with the United States, which exhibits “climate policy inertia” resulting in “a patchwork of inconsistent state policies.” The report states: “The net effect is that while Congress stumbles, the US stands to fall behind.”
FRONT
These idiots (what is the collective noun for idiot?) reflect the problems of us all. The desperate need for our delusion of prosperity to go on into that infinity promised by our politicians and flat earth economists.
The affluence loaned to us by fossil fuel use is over. We may not want to admit it even to ourselves, but it is.
We discovered a treasure trove of 150 million years of stored sunshine, and in 2 centuries we’ve blown it on eating, procreating and devising creative methods of mass homicide.
US geology is fully explored, there are about 9 years of domestic oil consumption left in the ground if used at maximum rate, ie with no foreign imports. So drill baby drill would last that long. Oil would be cheap for a while, then the demand for infinite growth would smack into the wall of terminal resources.
Then there would be total social breakdown as the last dregs were fought over.
It will happen anyway, but burning oil as fast as possible will bring it closer.
Fox is ripe for a nightly comedy parody show on the Comedy Channel. O’Reilly is full of unintentional humor, along with Hannity and the bimbo brigade.
I think I’m going to pitch this show to a couple of people I know in Hollywood. It wouldn’t take much exaggeration to get the audience laughing, especially with guest panelists portraying Gingrich, Bachmann, Koch, and the rest of them.
Love it. I nominate Sarah Silverman as host.
Great idea, perhaps a sketch could be included, as I described in another topic thread, where some of these idiots are sat down for dinner only to be repeatedly told that their menu choices are OFF through lack of supply because the crop dried out, the animals drowned or there is a shortage of Maple syrup because of warming etc., etc., etc.
I agree, but what would really help right now is for Jon Stewart And Stephen Colbert to come out of their comfort zones and give the climate crisis the same moral gravitas they bestow upon other issues. They are both capable of looking straight into the camera and speaking truth. The morals of climate catastrophy deniers are no more laudable than those of holocaust deniers and they should be openly condemned on these shows regularly. So far I don’t see either show giving climate the ‘coverage’ it deserves.
The deniers will deny wind and solar power no matter how cheap and plentiful it becomes. The extreme nature of their denial makes it seem like they are suffering from some sort of mental illness or perhaps a brain tumor.
Thanks for the side show of rodeo clowns. Is there any new research on methane hydrates?
Stephen Lacey wrote: “read: biggest failures”
These are not “failures”. These are examples of deliberate dishonesty.
Stephen Lacey wrote: “how foolish these pundits will look in retrospect”
These are not “foolish pundits”. These are bought-and-paid-for propagandists, telling deliberate lies.
The sad thing is, there are enough grains of truth in these snippets from Fox that will make people actually buy in to what they’re saying. If you follow the UK blogs you will know that some of what Moreno is saying ‘fuel poverty’ is true.
Laughing at these guys is not going to help get the AGW message out. What we need is a tv version of Climate Progress.
This is blatant propaganda. By compiling these short clips it makes is so clear what FOX news really is.
Its amazing that Rupert Murdoch has managed to infiltrate and control america to such an extent and to get away with it!
well maybe its not so amazing…
Of course it is blatant propaganda, and I don’t need to watch the my umpteenth Fox clip to know it. It isn’t good for my sanity, so I no longer watch it at all.
Take the Soviet-era Pravda, soup up the graphics, hire some blow-dried Kens and Barbies to deliver the messages, give ‘em marching orders from paranoid GOP operative Roger Ailes, and violá (!) – you’ve got Faux News.
I think you meant “Faux News”.
But critics of renewables do have a point about the intermittency of renewables. (This, however, is manageable, but up to a certain point with current technologies and cost points.) (The big exceptions are hydro and geothermal which can be “baseload”.)
I actually think the stronger case now is climate change itself. This is now mainstream science, has the backing of major scientific institutions such as the National Academy of Sciences. Even the issue of energy security is easier than this one, esp. now with the advances in technology for unconventional fossil fuels, which unfortunately for the climate, will bring the cost of unconventional fossil fuels down and extend its supplies. But here we are. How are we going to deal with climate change? We can remain technology neutral as long as the problem is dealt with. I think this is where I would choose to do battle. (I still personally favor renewables, and longer term, thorium reactors. But this is still secondary to dealing with the climate problem.)
I am totally stunned by the extreme short-sightedness of FOX news: “the White House should shutdown the green push for good.” Unbelievable. Their answer: ‘drill here, drill now.’
I don’t have a problem with an attempt to increase US production SO LONG AS IT IS ACCOMPANIED BY A HUGE PUSH TOWARDS GREEN ENERGY during a planned transition away from fossil fuels.
What do these boneheads think the US is going to do when the price of gasoline begins to rise exponentially as availability plummets? Begin a green energy R & D program?
Of course by then it will be too late and we will see ‘people dying because they can’t afford their heating bills’. Well that’s perhaps the one thing FOX got right!
They are all owned or ding-a-lings.
Yesterday between 3.20 and 8.40 a.m. MORE than 50% of the energy in Spain was produced by wind energy, 11,546 MW the same as 11 nuclear power plants.
Sustainability is a wonderful way to help our economy why isn’t everyone supporting it?
Life is all about choices. Solid healthy investments will always win over the long term.
Selfish grab the carbon (oil and coal) and burn it is a short sided unhealthy addiction we need to break to sustain our existence here. Since the beginning of life on our planet, plants have taken carbon out of our atmosphere and buried it in the ground. We are now putting carbon in the atmosphere at an increasing rate that needs to stop. How does mining and burning all the oil and gas we can get our hands on help humanity?
It is unhealthy now, (lung and skin disease, mercury and heavy metal contamination) how are we supporting generations to come.
Step up and help the earth heal our fossil burning sins.
“.30-.40 cents more per gallon,” that’s not a whole lot.. Do you mean 30-40 cents more per gallen? .30 cents is NOT the same as 30 cents.
Did one of them actually say that green jobs are the biggest hoax since the moon landing? (Answer: Yes. I checked twice.)
Did one of them actually say that green jobs are the biggest hoax since the moon landing? (Answer: Yes. I checked twice.)
As Perry said, “Oops.” Must have clicked twice.”
Hank @6 and other talking about TV shows
I’ve been saying for a while, that what we need is a hard hitting documentary, along the lines of Naomi Oreskes book “Merchants of Doubt” and the newer book “The Inquisition of Climate Science”
by James Lawrence Powell and others. There are many in the movie and Tv business who are sympathetic to the cause. All that’s needed is to keep planting the idea among them. The producer of No End in Sight and Inside Job, would be great. Before the election.
With OWS showing that there is still life on the progressive side, drawing the connection between corporate greed and climate change denial will find a receptive audience, and a bigger one than up till now.
Wake up the base and moderates, to make climate change a game changer in the election. So if you know someone, tell them.