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Jumping on the 'Greenhouse' Bandwagon
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19766 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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3 / 1991 |
2,577 Words |
| Author
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Richard Miniter
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The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) recently turned down a British science documentary that the London Financial Times has called "quite possibly the best science documentary of the year." Yet it provided airtime for another production claiming the end is near. Both documentaries were about global warming. What's going on?
Shown to British viewers in early August, The Greenhouse Conspiracy, a 55-minute science documentary, succeeded in convincing former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to temper her enthusiasm for "greenhouse" treaties. Only a few copies of this documentary have crossed the Atlantic, but it was recently screened before several federal and congressional agencies.
The Greenhouse Conspiracy highlights the scientific uncertainties in the global warming hypothesis. It relies upon the expert testimony of respected scientists from NASA, MIT, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and the British Antarctic Survey as well as atmospheric specialists from the University of Virginia and Arizona State University. Each of these scientists raised fundamental questions about global warming, questions that the press consistently chooses to ignore. In fact, PBS' National Board turned down The Greenhouse Conspiracy on the ground that it was "too one-sided."
While PBS turned down hard science, it served up science fiction. After The Warming, a two hour PBS special, claims that the Roman Empire fell because of cold weather, that Thomas Edison wreaked ecological havoc by inventing the light bulb, and that half of the world's rain forests will be deserts by 1994. While theories of global climate catastrophe are regularly touted on PBS, more responsible views go unheard.
"If you don't jump on the environmental bandwagon, then you will be ostracized by the scientific community ... because it's not fashionable to disagree with environmentalists these days," NASA's Roy Spencer told British Independent Television.
Why not air the concerns of scientists who are reluctant to jump on the bandwagon? "There are ways of confusing the public in putting ping-pong matches onto television which we did not particularly think useful," PBS senior producer Linda Harrar told Media Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group. "I'm not sure it's useful to include every single point of view in order to cover every base because you can come up with a program that's virtually impossible for the audience to sort out," Harrar
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