Internews is an organization devoted to helping out people in areas not served by an independent media:
Internews is an international media development organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard.
This sounds like a laudable goal, but like many roads paved with good intentions…well, you know where that goes. In particular, this group has a curious idea of what “balanced” reporting means when it comes to global warming alarmism:
Climate change could be the biggest story of the twenty first century, affecting societies, economies and individuals on a grand scale. Equally enormous are the adjustments that will have to be made to our energy and transportation systems,economies and societies, if we are to mitigate climate change.
All journalists should understand the science of climate change – its causes, its controversies and its current and projected impacts. Start by doing your own research from established sources, such as reports from the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or from local scientific experts you trust.
Read and report on the latest research from peer-reviewed scientific journals, or at the very least from reputable popular science publications.
OK, so it seems to be a given to these people that global warming is a proven fact. I suppose that doesn’t make them all that different from much of the rest of the media, but then there is this bit of advice for aspiring journalists:
Avoid false balance. Some journalists, trying to be fair and balanced, report the views of climate change sceptics as a counterweight to climate change stories. But this can be a false balance if minority views are given equal prominence to well-accepted science. For example, an overwhelming majority of climatologists believe that average global temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800s levels and that human activity is a significant factor in this.
Of course it’s good to air all sorts of views if they are placed into context. So if you report climate change sceptics’ views, also describe their credentials and whether theirs is a minority opinion.
Oh, so balance is not balance when it is “false” balance, that being when skeptics are given anything approaching equal time without caveats and qualifications designed to make their statements suspect.
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600 years ago people who challenged scientific orthodoxy could end up headless, such as the minority fools who said the earth was not the centre of the universe and orbited the sun, or even that the earth was not flat, or it was not possible to synthesise gold, and this miracle stuff called phlogiston …..
At least we don’t execute skeptics nowadays although I suspect some of the warmist fanatics might think that a good idea.
PaulH from Scotland (17:55:44) :
OT, but you may find this interesting.
I’ve just spent a bit of my evening discussing AGW with Patrick Harvie – a Green Party MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) on his blog.
As usual with AGW believers, he’s not interested in facts or science.
If you’re from Scotland, you may find the conversation enlightening as to the mindset of one of our elected representatives.
If you’d like to join the conversation, please be polite and respectful. He seems like a nice, if somewhat misguided, fellow.
http://www.patrickharviemsp.com/2010/01/snow-joke/comment-page-1/#comment-1621
Unlike JohnH I did manage to post a question, which has been accepted.
Dena, that was a very impressive post and got just the responses we have come to expect from AGW proponents.
Beth Cooper (20:08:05) :
Next, our progressive universities will be bringing in a course in gatekeeping. Very selective entry process but gaining gatekeeping credentials will offer graduates high monetary rewards and an open door into an elite coterie of power brokers. :-\
ERRrrr I think it is already being taught.
“”The Delphi Technique was originally conceived as a way to obtain the opinion of experts without necessarily bringing them together face to face. In recent times, however, it has taken on an all new meaning and purpose. In Educating for the New World Order by B. Eakman, the reader finds reference upon reference for the need to preserve the illusion that there is “…lay, or community, participation (in the decision-making process), while lay citizens were, in fact, being squeezed out.” The Delphi Technique is the method being used to squeeze citizens out of the process, effecting a left-wing take over of the schools.” http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf001.htm
And here is “The Delphi Technique” in actual practice:
“The break-out sessions are nothing more than the Delphi Technique revisited and a means to divide the attendees and diffuse the conversation. Who ever might be in opposition to the conclusions, policies, or programs the facilitator is advancing is quickly singled out and actively shunned.
The biggest goal of the facilitator is for him/her to be perceived as part of the group. Once this is done, the facilitator asks for ideas and opinions, leading the group carefully to the pre-determined conclusions and leaving them believing it was all their idea. Only it didn’t work this time. The farmers and ranchers, the cattlemen and horse people stood their ground. The only people shunned and shut out of the meetings were the facilitators.” http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/usda-employing-delphi-technique-prepare-to-be-delphi%E2%80%99d/
I understand some of the meetings got down right amusing, farmers can be a VERY stubborn lot and are not stupid “needing to be addressed at the sixth grade level” as one USDA training manual suggested. The USDA even brought in armed guards!
Carddan (13:43:31) :
My observation is that the prevailing opinion expressed on this website is that global warming is not being caused by human activity. If this is an accurate assessment, I have two questions. To what extent do you believe you could be mistaken, and, what if anything would cause you to change your opinion?
That’s easy:
So little is certain about future increases that I am willimg to wait to see;
My main interest is for the same bunch of folks to invent a magic elixir to allow us a chance to verify present claims.
Stefan (03:49:15) :
If an NGO is funded by the UN, is it still a “Non-Governmental” organization?
Al Gore mentioned the UN reaching down to the “grass roots” and bypassing governments. Methinks Climate Change was chosen as the big issue because no government can solve it, so it legitimizes the UN.
Reply:
NGOs are a very clever way to harness the energy of young activists and direct it. Maurice Strong is sometimes credited with coming up with the idea.
Strong’s early work with YMCA international “…may have been the genesis of Strong’s realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government.” http://sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html
NGOs are not membership steered which makes them so very easy to use for purposes other than what the ordinary membership thinks.
“Very few of even the larger international NGOs are operationally democratic, in the sense that members elect officers or direct policy on particular issues,” notes Peter Spiro. “Arguably it is more often money than membership that determines influence, and money more often represents the support of centralized elites, such as major foundations, than of the grass roots.” The CGG has benefited substantially from the largesse of the MacArthur, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations. http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
A precursor was The ‘Innocents’ Clubs’: http://www.heretical.com/miscella/munzen.html
“…During the 1920’s and most of the 1930’s Münzenberg played a leading role in the Comintern, Lenin’s front for world-wide co-ordination of the left under Russian control. Under Münzenberg’s direction, hundreds of groups, committees and publications cynically used and manipulated the devout radicals of the West….Most of this army of workers in what Münzenberg called ‘Innocents’ Clubs’ had no idea they were working for Stalin. They were led to believe that they were advancing the cause of a sort of socialist humanism. The descendents of the ‘Innocents’ Clubs’ are still hard at work in our universities and colleges. Every year a new cohort of impressionable students join groups like the Anti-Nazi League believing them to be benign opponents of oppression…”
I also found this interesting:
” The Commission on Global Governance (CGG), was established in 1992, after Rio, at the suggestion of Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor and head of the Socialist International…. In 1991, the Club of Rome (of which Strong is, of course, a member) issued a report called The First Global Revolution, which asserted that current problems “are essentially global and cannot be solved through individual country initiatives.” http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
This was my post
http://www.patrickharviemsp.com/2010/01/snow-joke/comment-page-1/#comment-1621
Patrick, as one of your constituents I am not happy at you last comment. The points raised by Paul are worthy of calm and measured debate, even if you ignore any of the issues raised by the emails released by climategate, there is the issue of the CRU’s lack of proper data security/documentation as outlined by the Harry.txt file. This shows the problems during a period of 2/3 years where a programmer was trying to tidy up a set of programs designed to take the raw data and present it as a database of global temp trends. The lack of proper IT procedures/documentation is shown to be bordering on criminal, if this is the std that the CRU was working to then it brings into doubt any papers based on this data.
I suggest you take more time to review the issues raised you will see that AGW is no longer a 100% certainty and unless you show that you are also open to this possibility you will be loosing credibility.
Andy Revkin was promoting this crew in his leaving piece for NYT.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/my-second-half/
I’m taking a position as senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University, situated in the school’s young Academy for Applied Environmental Studies. There’s more background on my plans in the Columbia Journalism Review, the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media and CEJournal.
I’ll also be working on two books, one for middle school kids on resilience to disasters and another, for adults, on ways to navigate the next 50 years with the fewest regrets.
Finally…I want to help build networks of journalists and communicators in rich and poor places so that good ideas can be efficiently shared and flawed ones modified. The Earth Journalism Network is one example. Developing Radio Partners is another. When writing my book on the Amazon, I learned about the power of radio (which was an organizing tool for the rubber tappers seeking to gain land rights). But this potential goes way beyond radio. What happens to all those “ one laptop per child” machines? Are they simply dropped off, or are the recipients cultivated as a network?
http://www.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=14128&frame=news/read.cfm?id=866 “We are extremely pleased that Andy Revkin is joining what we believe is one of the strongest university environmental programs in the nation,” said Geoffrey Bracket Brackett, DPhil (Oxon.), the University’s Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. “His intellectual expertise and ethical balance will make enormous contributions to helping the Pace Academy in its aim to be a global resource for policy development.”
Pace awarded Revkin an honorary doctorate in 2007.
He is starting what will be his third book for adults, about the interlinked issues of sustainability and population, and finishing the second of two books for children on environmental issues. The first has the ironic title “The North Pole Was Here.”
This is what Revkin is promoting
http://www.internews.org/
Climate Leaders Honor Reporters at Internews Earth Journalism Awards
Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri and Internews celebrated the best in climate change reporting at the Internews Earth Journalism Awards in Copenhagen. Among the presenters were key figures on climate and environmental issues, including Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland; Marina Silva, the former environment minister of Brazil; and award-winning Chinese movie star Li Bingbing, who is also the Global Ambassador for WWF’s Earth Hour.
“If we are to have any hope of reversing the effects of climate change, then we have a monumental task of educating the six billion people on our planet about how climate change works and what they can do to help,” Dr. Pachauri said. “The media is critical in this effort, since just one reporter has the ability to reach thousands, even millions, of people. These awards help to expand and honour these vitally important efforts.”
@JohnH
Patrick’s last comment “You seem determined to just keep bombarding this site all night with huge quantities of self evident rubbish.”
Self evident to who? To him? No awareness nor insight on his part that he might just possibly be wrong, and no interest in engaging in a dialogue to try to understand the other point of view?
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
He’s probably read one of those “How to answer a skeptic” sites and thinks he knows it all. This is why Lucy Skywalker’s counter-wiki project is so important. All you really knowledgeable folks should get over there and pitch in. (Please post the link again, Lucy.)