The Center for American Progress affiliated attack group “Forecast the Facts” is turning on the CBS News magazine “60 Minutes” for reporting truthfully on the issues surrounding green technology last Sunday.
See the press release below and the full video from CBS News follows.
For Immediate Release January 9, 2013
Contact: Anna Zuccaro, anna@fitzgibbonmedia.com, (914) 523-9145
Benghazi Redux? 60 Minutes “Cleantech Crash” Segment Severely Misleads Viewers
Climate Group Forms Online Petition in Demand of Public Editor
Washington, DC — On January 5th, 60 Minutes aired a segment entitled “Cleantech Crash” and made false accusations regarding the nation’s clean energy economy. The broadcast failed to mention that the clean energy industry has actually been booming, and that the increasing and severe threats of climate change makes the transition from fossil fuel pollution an economic necessity.
Not only did the “Cleantech Crash” segment mislead viewers, it threatened our ability to confront the global warming crisis.
Fortunately, 60 Minutes can still set the record straight: by appointing a Public Editor, the program can see to it that this particular broadcast is investigated, ensure that all future reporting serves the public interest and deliver more accurate information about climate change to their audience.
“Those who watched 60 Minutes this past Sunday might be under the impression that cleantech is dead, our hope for a much-needed green energy economy down the tubes,” said Forecast the Facts campaign director Brant Olson. “Fortunately for the world and unfortunately for good investigative journalism, 60 Minutes got the future of clean energy technology wrong—very wrong. 60 Minutes should appoint a Public Editor to restore its damaged reputation.”
Take a stand with us and sign the petition to demand the appointment of a 60 Minutes Public Editor, which will be delivered to Jeff Fager, Chairman of CBS News and Executive Producer of 60 Minutes: http://act.forecastthefacts.org/sign/sixty_minutes_public_editor.
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THE VIDEO:
From the YouTube video description:
Published on Jan 5, 2014
Despite billions invested by the U.S. government in so-called “Cleantech” energy, Washington and Silicon Valley have little to show for it. Lesley Stahl reports.
I always think of Lesley “Finger” Stahl when I hear her name. And for most of her reporting it is true. This is an exception.
Richard S. Courtney,
“The ball dropped when he jumped off the board.” OK, if we are calling muscle power (anathema to us mechanical engineers!) “technology,” a stretch, but I’ll work with you. Thank you for this very informative post. Soldiers used to get paid with salt, hence the phrase, “Worth his salt.”
SAIL Capital Partners, Irvine, CA
Walter L.Schindler, Managing Partner and also on the Board of Cleantech Group,LLC
Advisory Board includes:
David Miller, Fmr.Toronto mayor
Joseph Romm
http://www.sailcapital.com/team/walter-l-schindler
Seems most people don’t know who the people are that are involved in the “green” industry..
Follow the people and follow the money.
IIRC, the narrator immediately pointed out that the US subsidies and silicon valley investment went not to research (which is what Bjorn Lomborg is advocating) but to financing factories and large-scale projects.
Climate solutions had to put out their 2 cents worth…
”
The reports of clean tech’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
My inbox has been flooded this week with articles, press releases, and email responses to the 60 Minutes hit job on the clean tech industry. The embattled news program’s latest has been described as fluff and sloppy journalism, shoddy, and just plain wrong.
But, as my colleague KC Golden points out, this show was more than a case of bad reporting – it deliberately ignored the context within which clean tech operates: climate change. Here’s KC on his blog, Getting a GRIP on Climate Solutions:
“Doing a story about a “clean tech crash” without mentioning climate is symptomatic of a form of denial that may be more destructive than straight-over-tackle lying about climate science. Denial is a remarkably resilient ecosystem, and this kind of silence is the essential host condition in which it continues to thrive.
Simply not talking about climate disruption in the context of a story about government-supported clean energy technology development is startling – almost aggressive – in its deliberate avoidance of the thing that matters most about the topic.”
The producers at 60 Minutes would have us believe that clean tech is dead. You and I both know that’s not true because there are thousands of business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs here in the Northwest who are hard at work creating innovative clean technology solutions to power a clean energy economy.
Clean tech is in our organizational DNA at Climate Solutions. We are excited to work together with you to move policy forward, grow the clean energy economy, and accelerate practical and profitable solutions to our climate and energy challenges.
Some great clean economy events that highlight the rapid pulse of our community are listed below. And, as always, you can find more events on our events calendar.
Chris Bast – Business Partnerships Manager
To paraphrase Frank Zappa: “CleanTech is not dead, it just smells funny.”
Then you also agree with the pint 60 Minutes was making.
I did more than agree with this. I indicated that the government should more focus on long-term type research rather than research that can experience a quick pay-off. Quick pay-off research will be privately funded if it’s promising. The government shouldn’t be in that business. That’s why I wrote, “especially for technologies that will rely on many stepping stones over a very long period of time.”
Not at all. 60 Minutes clearly made a distinction between research and ill-advised infrastructure builds.
That’s what financing partners are for. The government is terrible at venture capital, and it shouldn’t try it again.
http://theconversation.com/software-is-officially-a-rip-off-in-australia-so-what-can-you-do-16556
Australians who cannot watch the video, even those looking for a proxy server in the USA to make them LOOK like they are in the USA, should read this webpage with an eye on revolt….
I was looking for a cheap proxy server to recommend, but not sure that can be done in Oz.
Capital E, LLC, Washington, D.C.
Joseph Romm, Principal
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/people.asp?privcapId=26222759
This is a “green” industry business.
I have talked for years about how people like Vinod Kosla and other renewables ideologues (including Kosla’s buddy and business partner, Al Gore, and our own President, Barack the Usurper) have only been trying to “force the love” with support for a taxpayer-subsidized renewables industry. Now, amazingly, the folks at 60 Minutes are finally discovering the bitter truth that it has all been a pig-in-a-poke, a scam. Better late than never: 60 Minutes, welcome to the fold.
_Jim says:
January 10, 2014 at 6:51 am
Rare earth magnets are used in the cell phone vibrate motor.
Pentagon documents show its top arms buyer, Frank Kendall, granted waivers to two main F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell International, for the use of Chinese magnets in the fighter plane’s radar system, landing gear and other hardware.
Dennis Hand says:
January 9, 2014 at 9:50 pm
What most people don’t even recognize is that we are in the mist of another civil war for the heart and soul of the country. On the left you have the progressive socialist and on the right you have the defenders of the Constitution, the Tea Party, et al. While there has yet to be bullets flying, people have died. Currently, this is being fought in the halls of Congress, the pages of the media, and our educational system. That doesn’t meant that all out bloodshed won’t occur. We hope that it does not.
Dennis,
Very good summary!
MtK
Mario Lento says:
January 10, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Pentagon documents show its top arms buyer, Frank Kendall, granted waivers to two main F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell International, for the use of Chinese magnets in the fighter plane’s radar system, landing gear and other hardware.
Mario,
From my comment at 10:44 on Jan 9:
Today, we have this: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101309177
US put China-made parts in F-35 fighter program
Published: Friday, 3 Jan 2014 | 4:49 PM ET
I might be wrong, but sometimes this climate change or AGW being the scam it is, is a short fix to deflect from more serious issues. You divide a nation over this and some political parties will get more supporters than others. If they changed the issue to ‘sustainability’ and stop all this yahoo on solar is best or wind is better, we might have a chance to undo the harm we humans have done in the past to our natural environment including cities. Certainly in Australia where rain fall is spasmodic and unpredictible. If you live 50 miles from the coast naturally precipitation levels decrease. And so does flooding to a degree. But this government is curtailing the Green bank, much to their annoyance, and if and when the carbon tax is repealed, then we will lead the world.
I just wonder how the wind turbines are coping with the extra cold weather some States in the USA and Canada are faring?
As far as socialism and capitalism is concerned, the average person is dependent on work or the dole to exist. To the extreme we are neo-serfs. However in a democratic country we are better off than in socialist or eastern countries. Money and the capacity to collect it is mandatory to anyone in any country. The more money you have, and handle it properly, the more options one has and so do your children. When they start advertising California homes on our TV, something is wrong. I could not believe it! And when I watch English programs like ‘Escape to the country’ and people are paying over one million pounds for a property, I am glad that I live in my $400 k 4 bed brick and tile, that needs no heating, and a small garden. (Oh, by no heating other than a two bar electric fire and blanket) we use the sun to warm us up. We have ducted oil heating through out, but I don’t use it, too expensive. Wood smoke is banned in Armidale, NSW. And even that is expensive now a days. Being a valley environment, the smoke when there is cloud keeps the wood smoke down. I believe in Northern Hemisphere homes, according to my English friends, central heating has turned them all into hot house flowers. It is only when they go outside they find it cold. That’s not acclimatisation. I remember when it was coal lite, coke and coal fires, and Jack Frost patterns on the inside of the windows, and icicles forming on the taps inside the bathroom. Numbed fingers and toes, etc. We survived.
Richarscourtney-san:
Yes, the maxim of free-market trade is for corporations to maximize profits for its stockholders, which is as it should be. In order to accomplish that, the corporation must produce the best product at the cheapest possible price, or risk losing profits to the competition.
Part of that equation is for the corporation to hire the most competent, productive and skilled labor available to increase production efficiency. The higher the skill set, the higher wages an employee can demand. If an employee can bid his skill set at a higher wage to the competition, he’ll do so, which protects the employee.
The consumer is the biggest winner as he receives ever higher quality goods at the lowest possible price, which improves his standard of living.
Apart from minimal contract laws, commercial laws, GAAP standards, product liability, pollution standards, low flat corporate tax rates (should be zero, but that will never happen), etc., applicable to all corporations, there really isn’t a need for additional excessive rules, regulations and mandates.
If governments lack the authority and power to that can be bought and sold, the corruption will be minimized. Free-market trade and competition will naturally take care of the rest.
Governments and labor unions use excessive power and authority to extort business. Prior to the exploitive and explosive growth of government, federal spending only accounted for 6~7% of GDP, and 20 million people from around the globe left everything to escape the the tyranny of their counties and to be a part of the fastest growing standard of living and the highest wages the world has ever seen.
The US government now devours 40% of The private sector’s wealth, another 10% in needless rules regulations and mandate compliance costs and perhaps another 10% in inflation to fund it all….. Accordingly, the US has become just another failed socialistic country.
Imagine the world we’d live in had the world followed US’ example of limited government and maximum free trade, with $100’s of trillions kept in the private sector instead of wasted by governments, and invested to develop new technologies, new businesses, new education technologies, new infrastructure, new factories, pay higher wages, more savings, revolutionary medical drugs and technologies, new industries, new modes of transportation, etc….
It boggles the mind… But, alas….
Louis Hooffstetter said:
January 9, 2014 at 5:38 pm
………These boys are chooming!
Can’t help wondering: are those boys for real?
Not available in Region 4 format. NWO is on the ball today. Must be dangerous propaganda film, like South Pacific.
SAMURAI:
Thankyou for your thoughtful post addressed to me at January 10, 2014 at 7:49 pm.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/09/climate-campaigners-start-to-eat-their-own-over-cleantech-crash/#comment-1532182
in reply to my earlier response to you in my post at January 10, 2014 at 6:16 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/09/climate-campaigners-start-to-eat-their-own-over-cleantech-crash/#comment-1531478
Your post I am answering concludes by asserting
But earlier in that post you write admitting your desire is not achieved when you write
I have made no comment on the value of your desire. I merely observed that US government can be and is – to use your language – “bought and sold”. My post you are answering said
Any desire or method to retain or to change that is solely the right of US Citizens.
Richard
Richard-
220 years ago, the citizens of the US tried a bold idea and established a limited-government Constitutional Republic.
That Constitution is now imerely a relic only existing in spirit in an hermetically sealed vault in the Library of Congress.
In practice, the US Constitution no longer exists after 100 years of its slow and steady erosion by judicial review, intent upon reinterpretation of the Constituion rather than its protection.
That erosion has led to: $17 trillion in national debt, $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, $1.7 trillion/yr in rules/regs compliance costs, an out of control NSA/DHS, $1 trillion/yr QE debt monetization and a zombie economy.
In my option, the US is on the verge of an economic collapse on a scale nerver seen before, after which, the US will have a choice to either restore its Republic or finish its journey down its Road to Serfdom..
I guess i can watch 60minutes again. Can’t wait
for the letter segment next week.
Gail Combs says:
“the Otto Cupler Torpedo Company split off and produced its own nitroglycerin in plants near Titusville until the last plant exploded in 1978. Tallini’s company continued using liquid nitroglycerin until 1989 – when the last of the nitroglycerine supplier’s plant exploded in Moosic, Pennsylvania.”
Now here is a market nitch that is apparently not presently being served. Anyone for opening a nitro plant with me?
“Public Editor”. Or in other words, a Ministry of Truth.
Cleantech Network, LLC, Brighton,MI
Keith Raab, CEO & Co-founder, and on Board of California State Teachers Employees’ Retirement System.
Board includes:
Nicholas Parker, Co-founder
Vinod Khosla
F. Habicht ll, Capital E., LLC, along with Joe Romm
James Waring, California Transportation Commission
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/people.asp?privcapId=9362616