Sunday 30 September 2012

ABC New´s warmist climate change reporter: "I am not an advocate to try to stop global warming"

ABC New´s veteran climate change reporter, warmist Bill Blakemore: "I’m not an advocate to try to stop global warming"!

Judge yourself. 


Are these the views of a "fair and accurate" journalist?:


"It’s warming. It’s caused by a human activity, human emissions. It’s coming far faster than was expected even five years ago. It’s very dangerous. It’s causing enormous changes to agricultural prices, [and] to seasonal rhythms. And the fifth part of the basics which, as the science keeps showing, that if humanity were to somehow figure out how to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions on a global scale—if humanity were to do that, then it could prevent this rise in temperature, which is…going to continue for at least twenty or thirty years, from then shooting up even further after 2050."


How do you approach this issue, given its politicization? As a journalist, fair and accurate.

"Yes, yes. I discovered the gravity of the global warming story—as described by the world’s climate scientists—about 8 years ago, about 2004, 2005. And I quickly came to understand it as an event story, not a politics story. That is to say: It’s not a politics story; it’s not about politics. It’s a political issue, of course, but the core of the story is an event that is happening, according to all of the world’s climate scientists. Like when Mt. St. Helen’s suddenly blew up, we didn’t feel compelled to give the other side equal time or something like that that you hear in political reporting. So, by and large, there’s been—I consider it an event story that you just keep covering, and ignore the false politicization of it.
Now this gets complex because there’s been a lot of solid, investigative, and academic journalism and research that shows that there is a vigorous disinformation and intimidation campaign trying to confuse people, especially in America, about how solid the science is. You talk to any credible, established, professional climate scientists, and they will tell you that the basics of global warming are as solid as science ever gets. And that’s the way I cover it. And if I should find it different, I’d be immediately ready to change it. But I just keep covering it as an event.
I know that there’s all kinds of confusions about the story, partly because it’s so big. It’s unprecedented in its scale. It’s not the elephant in the room, it’s the elephant we’re all inside of. For example, conversations that I and a lot of my colleagues around the country have with our editors is—those of us in the field—are telling our editors, “Look, this isn’t, please don’t think of this as a weather story primarily, or an environment story primarily. It’s not. It’s primarily a security story and a finance story.” So there’s all kinds of new categories that the whole profession of journalism is having to come to understand."

What do you think is most missing from this dialogue about climate change?

"I’ve heard lately a number of colleagues and other academics say that, in America, what’s been missing is discussion of what the realities would be if we—what the economic realities would be—if the government and the society in general did try to tackle it and sort of plan it out. Now, in fact, there have been a number of studies done. Lord Nicholas Stern in Britain did a study about, ‘if the world did this, what percentage of GDP would have to be lost every year?’
Another thing that I personally feel is greatly missing in the United States from the discussion about what to do about global warming is a healthy, strong Republican and conservative voice in this. It seems—and I have no party identity myself; I make a point of not have any; I’m not an advocate to try to stop global warming, I’m just trying to report it—but my impression is that as long as one of the major political parties has a large faction trying to pretend that, or claim that, the problem isn’t significant or isn’t there, their voice is sorely missing from the real discussion that I would suspect we need in this country about what to do about it."

 Read the entire article here

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