Beginning Friday, 23 May 2003, John Stossel will co-anchor ABC's 20/20 program. This is not an encouraging development. We invite our readers to take a journey back in time and see what Stossel did almost two years ago:
On Friday, June 29, 2001 ABC aired a John Stossel special entitled "Tampering With Nature".
The program's message was that environmentalists' dire warnings are overblown - even false. The special was divided (roughly) into three segments: on pollution, global warming, and genetic engineering. Clips were shown of non-mainstream environmental activists making emotional appeals to get involved. They looked, and sounded, silly. Stossel contrasted this with low-key, sober interviews with people skeptical of alarmist claims.
As part of the program, Stossel promoted the skeptical-of-warming view through the use of misleading and irrelevant material.
One of the scientists interviewed, Richard Lindzen of MIT, said people should not be concerned with a mere degree increase in global temperature because that's the kind of fluctuation we all experience within minutes. An absurd comment. One could just as easily dismiss a ten-degree increase in overall global temperature. Because after all, that's the kind of fluctuation we experience over the span of a day. Lindzen knows better. Why does he make such a poor argument? And why does Stossel allow it to be part of the discourse?
But here's the kicker: Stossel said, "You may have heard that sixteen hundred scientists signed a letter warning of 'devastating consequences', but I bet you hadn't heard that seventeen thousand scientists signed a petition saying that 'there's no convincing evidence that greenhouse gases will disrupt the earth's climate.'"
While Stossel was narrating, images of the two petitions (with highlighted excerpts) briefly flashed by on the screen. But nowhere in the program - in the narrative or closing credits - were the petitions identified. Stossel simply gives the viewer a 'body count', with global-warming-skeptics having a petition-signer advantage: 17,000 vs 1,600. It's important to know more about the petitions in order to make a judgment as to their worth. On abcnews.com, there is only a capsule description of the program*. No other links or resources are provided.
Replaying a tape of the show, and slowing down the petition images, one can determine that the first one - concerned about global warming - was issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
What about the other petition, the one Stossel said was signed by 17,000 and which dismissed concerns about global warming? Again, going to the tape, we find no letterhead, just text. However, a little searching on the web brings forth a listing for a site devoted to an 'Anti Global Warming Petition'. It's the one Stossel was referring to. The petition's website is hosted by the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM) a tiny outfit with a faculty of 6, and with headquarters in the hamlet of Cave Junction, Oregon. The petition itself is spearheaded by Frederick Seitz (of La Jolla, CA), and requests that individuals be part of the petition by sending in a card listing:
one's name, degree (BS, MS, PhD), field of study, and address.
That's how the 17,000 signatures were gathered. Go to the web site, pick out some names, and see (via web searching) what their field of study is. These were called "scientists" by Stossel - presumably ones working in the fields of climate and related fields. Take a look at who some of them are. They include:
Alejandro Dopico, PhD Asst. Professor Department of Pharmacology University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Dion R Ehrlich, MD Ophthalmology Abingon Memorial Hospital
Michael Marchese, DDS
Jerome Bromkowski, MD
Paul C Broun, MD
Thomas D Brower, MD
Allan Briney, MD
Gilbert Douglas Jr, MD
W Campbell Douglass III, MD
William K Elwood, DDS
John Joseph Ennever, DDS
So, the next time somebody is fretting about global warming, you can reassure them that John Stossel has checked with gynecologists, veterinarians, mechanical engineers, and dentists, and can confidently assert that there is no cause for alarm.
The media imply that scientists agree with all the dire predictions, but do they? A group of 1,600 scientists signed a letter warning of "devastating consequences" if we don't quit our lowdown, polluting ways and curb global warming. But I bet you hadn't heard that a group of 17,000 scientists signed a petition saying there's "no convincing evidence" that greenhouse gases will disrupt the Earth's climate. Despite what we hear from the media, there is no consensus that global warming is harming the planet. Some climatologists point to the often-overlooked fact that huge piles of funding are at stake.
And we'll end with this item from the Miami Herald story about Stossel:
... neither his wildly enthusiastic fans nor his implacable enemies should be misled: If anything, Stossel will be reporting even more stories on 20/20 -- including a coming segment that asks, why shouldn't poor people be able to sell their kidneys to the rich?
''I knew you'd like that one,'' Stossel says in a telephone interview as a reporter laughed and an ABC publicist buried her face in her hands.
REFERENCES:
It should come as no surprise that Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has a section devoted solely to Stossel. In includes a critique of the program we discussed above. Of note is this excerpt:
Though OISM's signatories did include reputable scientists, it also included dentists, nutritionists and others with no expertise in climatalogy; the only requirement for signing on was a bachelors degree in science. In fact, OISM's screening process was so lax that for a time the list also included a number of gag names added by environmentalists, including Ginger Spice and Michael J. Fox. The OISM petition also came under fire for being deceptively packaged: The petition was accompanied by an article purporting to debunk global warming that was formatted to look as though it had been published in the journal of the respected National Academy of Sciences. The resemblance was so close that the NAS issued a public statement that the OISM petition "does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."
