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Climate Progress

To Infinity and Beyond: Keystone XL Champions Wildly Inflate Jobs Numbers

By Stephen Lacey on Jan 20, 2012 at 11:40 am

Domestic oil and gas production on federal lands is at an all-time high, creating roughly 75,000 jobs in the sector under the Obama Administration since 2009. That’s about 69,000 jobs more than would be created by Keystone XL, according to estimates from the State Department, Cornell University and the company building the pipeline, TransCanada.

That is a very inconvenient fact Keystone XL champions ignore when claiming Obama is trying to stop drilling for oil and gas. So what’s the best way to shift attention away from that ugly truth? Posture up, make up some fake jobs numbers, and then continually inflate those lies over time.

Media Matters just released a new compilation of “reporting” showing this predictable pattern of behavior in the television media. The claims from pundits get so absurd, even TransCanada has to weigh in to temper expectations:

NEWS FLASH

Fox Moves Into Digital Programming, Countering YouTube’s Channel Realignment | Fox just let us know that Nick Weidenfeld, who produced The Boondocks and Children’s Hospital, will start a programming block to compete with Adult Swim, airing from 11 to 12:30 starting in January 2013, and a program to produce 50 pieces of digital programming a year that could move to network if they’re successful enough. It’s a fascinating move and one that recognizes a new reality where companies like Netflix are serious competitors if they’re treated like networks.

Kevin Reilly, Fox’s entertainment president framed the decision as a response to tech companies like YouTube starting to get into the creative content market. “This is the first time a major broadcast company has an opportunity to seed something in the digital realm. Something that starts in digital could be the next big prime time hit,” he told us. “Some of it is technological. You’re starting to enter the realm of internet-connected television…and you’re seeing those entities beginning to see the value of content. We have an expertise, and a history, and a proficiency, and a prime-time audience base.”

He said that animation was a logical place to start both because it could be done less expensively, and because of the nature of the fans. ” Animation is a very particular audience, it’s a distinct and passionate audience,” he said. “They’re willing to consume things in the digital realm.” This all strikes me as a smart bit of outreach to viewers the network has identified as early adopters. And it’ll also likely mean that Fox will have to make sure its online streaming platforms are in good shape and can handle significant capacity—it’s a way of building a new business that creates benefits for the old audience.

Climate Progress

Fox Absurdly Denigrates The “ENTIRE Solar Industry”

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 6, 2011 at 10:10 am


 — a Media Matters Cross-Post

A recent Fox Nation post claimed that the “ENTIRE Solar Industry” is on the “Brink of Collapse.” But the solar industry is growing faster than any other energy sector, and experts say solar is becoming increasingly cost competitive.

Solar Is Growing Rapidly Even Without Climate Legislation

Solar Industry Is Fastest-Growing Energy Sector In U.S. Earlier this year USA Today reported:

The U.S. solar power market grew a record 67% last year, making it the fastest-growing energy sector, the industry reports Thursday.

Its market share jumped from $3.6 billion in 2009 to $6 billion in 2010, helped by federal tax credits and declining technology costs, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and GTM Research.

Enough solar power was installed last year to power about 200,000 homes, the report says, noting that more than 65,000 homes and businesses added solar water or pool heating systems. In particular, the photovoltaics or solar panel part of the market soared most, more than doubling from 2009….

The solar market diversified last year as 16 states installed more than 10 megawatts of photovoltaics (PV) each last year, up from four states that did so in 2007. The top 10 states for PV installation in 2010 were: California; New Jersey; Nevada; Arizona; Colorado; Pennsylvania; New Mexico; Florida; North Carolina; Texas.

The report says the annual cost of these PV systems fell 8% in the residential market and 11% in the commercial one. [USA Today, 3/10/11]

IEA: Solar May Produce Most Of World’s Power By 2060. Bloomberg reported:

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Fox Nation: ‘God Bless Income Disparity’ | Polls show that Americans are increasingly concerned with growing income inequality in the country, but conservative news outlets and think tanks are pushing back with their own reports praising the widening gap between the rich and everyone else. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, argued on their blog that “economic inequality is not necessarily an injustice, but rather a necessary component of any prosperous society.” Now, Fox Nation, the social media spin off of Fox News, has chimed in with their own story citing one obscure economist: “Economist: God Bless Income Disparity.” They tweeted the story as simply “God Bless Income Disparity”:

Special Topic

Fox Panel Bashes OWS As ‘Toxic,’ ‘Marxist,’ ‘Anti-Democratic And Un-American’

By Marie Diamond on Nov 13, 2011 at 11:47 am

This morning on Fox News Sunday, conservative panelists did their best to smear and discredit the 99 Percent Movement. Pundit Bill Kristol called the protests “un-American” and “fundamentally undemocratic,” despite the fact that recent polls show that they are supported by a majority of Americans. Kristol even complained that the world “occupy” was itself Marxist.

Fox anchor Brit Hume called Democrats’ support of the movement “toxic” to centrist voters who decide elections:

HUME: To most middle-of-the-road voters, those who decide elections, Occupy Wall Street is toxic…She [Nancy Pelosi] said it’s focused, and I guess it’s brought some attention to the issue of income inequality, which will be a big Democratic talking point in this election cycle, but I think they need to get away from these Occupy Wall Street protesters as fast as they can.

Watch it:

Hume’s claim flies in the face of most polling about public support for the protests. For instance, according to the CBS/New York Times poll taken just one month after the start of the first encampment in New York, 43 percent of Americans said they agree with the movement. Another poll for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found a similar level of support. Most importantly, in both polls, support for the movement was stronger among independent voters.

In short, the goals of Occupy Wall Street have already captured the support of the voters in the middle of the political spectrum, and its themes of income inequality, unemployment, and corporate corruption have already begun to change the discussion.

Alyssa

‘The Simpsons’ Will Be Back for Two More Seasons, Or, Reflections of a Simpsons-less Childhood

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 8, 2011 at 11:37 am

I’m glad to hear, via commenter Anthony, that The Simpsons will be back for two more seasons, though it’s too bad Fox so publicly went after its talent on the way to a renewal. Alan Sepinwill has a nice meditation on the show’s longevity:

It’s comforting to me knowing that there are still new stories involving the citizens of Springfield. They may not be as brilliant as “Marge vs. the Monorail” or “Homer the Heretic,” but the new episodes’ existence also doesn’t somehow invalidate the greatness of the good old days. Even periods when I’ve strongly disliked the show (what some fans refer to as the Jerkass Homer Era) never made me retroactively dislike earlier seasons. Ted Williams and Stan Musial hung around baseball forever, but they were still capable of putting together good-to-great years in their final seasons (Teddy Ballgame famously homered in his last at-bat at Fenway, in a year where he hit 29 home runs and batted .316; Stan the Man hit .330 in his next-to-last season). These last few seasons have given me episodes like “Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind,” “Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words,” and even this season’s premiere, which wrung a lot of laughs out of Homer befriending a Jack Bauer-esque former killer played by Kiefer Sutherland. (We also got “The Simpsons Movie,” which came out in 2007 and was a reminder of just how vibrant those characters remained after all these years.) And for those who just wish the show would end already, there’s always been the very simple option of not watching anymore.

Of all the shows I wish I hadn’t missed as a result of my mostly TV-less childhood, The Simpsons is the one I regret most. I’m not sure if my parents bought the hype that Bart was a bad influence or what, but somehow I missed out on the phenomenon, except for glimpses of a spiky-haired cartoon kid in advertisements on my Archie Comics. Is there a show that’s more of a cultural touchstone for my generation? More universally referenced? I had a high school assistant debate coach who, in the days when it was still slightly daring to do so, ripped a lot of Simpsons episodes and showed them to me while we were hanging out in the airport on our ways to various ridiculous locations for tournaments and made up a small part of the gap. But what a blessing would it have been to grow up with Lisa Simpson.

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