Beck's global warming special dominated by industry-funded "experts," serial misinformers

from MediaMatters for America

Summary:

CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck's May 2 hour-long special, Exposed: The Climate of Fear, purported to present the "other side of the climate debate that you don't hear anywhere." Introducing the show, Beck stated: "I want you to know right up front, this is not a balanced look at global warming." Indeed, Beck relied heavily on people with energy industry ties and others espousing positions on global warming that have been soundly debunked or rejected by the overwhelming majority of scientists studying climate change.

Here is a list of those featured:

* Marlo Lewis: Lewis is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an institution funded by the energy industry. As Colorado Media Matters has noted, Lewis has said that "global warming is real and humans play a role," but has argued that "[t]rying to do too much to stop warming would be a waste of money better used on new technologies." As The Washington Post reported on March 19, 2006, CEI, "which widely publicizes its belief that the earth is not warming cataclysmically because of the burning of coal and oil, says Exxon Mobil Corp. is a 'major donor' largely as a result of its effort to push that position." According to Lewis' biography on the CEI website, he once appeared on C-SPAN to explain "why taxing the oil industry for 'excessive profits' is counterproductive." On February 10, the Post reported that Kenneth P. Cohen, Exxon Mobil's vice president for public affairs, said that "Exxon's foundation, which he heads, decided in 2005 to cut funding [for CEI], though that came to light only last fall."
* Timothy Ball: Ball is a climatologist who is also the chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, a Canadian environmental think tank whose three-person board of directors includes an executive of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto-based lobby firm that specializes in 'energy, environment and ethics." Timothy Egan, High Park Advocacy Group president, is "a registered lobbyist for the Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Electricity Association," in addition to serving on Natural Resources Stewardship Project's board. Ball was previously an adviser to the industry-funded Friends of Science, which, as the Toronto Globe and Mail reported in August 2006, was supported by "a coalition of oil-patch geologists, Tory insiders, anonymous donors and oil-industry PR professionals." Additionally, according to ExxonSecrets.org, Ball has contributed to Tech Central Station. As Media Matters for America has previously noted, Tech Central Station Daily is a website that from 2000 to October 2006 was operated by the Republican lobbying firm DCI Group, which, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is also a "registered ExxonMobil lobbying firm."

Ball has consistently repeated debunked claims aimed to cast doubt on global warming. For instance, in November 2004, Ball claimed that global temperatures have "warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it's been cooling down. The evidence for warming is because of distorted records. The satellite data, for example, shows cooling." Ball added: "[S]ince 1940 and from 1940 until 1980, even the surface record shows cooling. The argument is that there has been warming since then but, in fact, almost all of that is due to what is called the 'urban heat island' effect -- that is, that the weather stations are around the edge of cities and the cities expanded out and distorted the record. When you look at rural stations -- if you look at the Antarctic, for example -- the South Pole shows cooling since 1957 and the satellite data which has been up since 1978 shows a slight cooling trend as well."

(Continued here.)