[Vision2020] Video of Journalist Hertsgaard Confronting Senator Inhofe (2-15-11) on Climate Change Science

[Ted Moffett]

Video and audio of confrontation with Inhofe can be experienced at
website below.  The fallout from this confrontation in the
political/media arena is described below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hertsgaard/climate-cranks-gin-up-the_b_825995.html

Mark Hertsgaard.Author, 'Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth'
Posted: February 21, 2011 11:33 AM

Climate Cranks Gin Up the Right Wing Noise Machine

The right-wing media machine is a large part of the reason why denial
of climate change persists in the United States long after the rest of
the world has acknowledged the problem. Over the past few days, I've
gotten a close-up look at how the machine works, because I've been its
target.

Last Tuesday, February 15, I went to Capitol Hill on a mission: to
confront the climate cranks who still refuse to accept what virtually
every major scientific organization in the world, starting with our
own National Academy of Sciences, has concluded: man-made climate
change is real, happening now and extremely dangerous.

I also wanted to highlight a fact I have often marveled at during my
twenty years of writing about climate change in books and for leading
publications around the world, including Vanity Fair, Time, The Nation
and most recently Politico. That fact is: virtually every major
political party in the world -- except for the Republicans in this
country -- accepts this mainstream scientific conclusion.

Yet the average American would not know this is the case. Why not?
Because discussion about climate change in the U.S. is dominated by
how the issue is framed by politicians and the media in Washington.
And inside the Beltway, denial of mainstream climate science is
regarded as a legitimate opinion rather than as an unfounded oddity.

As I wrote in an opinion article for Politico that appeared the
morning I visited Capitol Hill and that seems to have enraged the
right-wing, "If one judged solely by recent [U.S.] media coverage, one
would think that the deniers have a point. In an embarrassing display
of political gullibility and scientific illiteracy, news organizations
have repeatedly played into the deniers' hands: by implicitly
endorsing the deniers' unfounded accusations of fraud against
scientists whose emails were stolen, by portraying a single error
within a thousand page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change as reason to question the entirety of mainstream
climate science, and then by abandoning the climate story over the
past twelve months, even as mainstream scientists were turning out one
landmark study after another clarifying the extreme peril facing
civilization."

And here's why this journalistic failure matters so much:

"Despite having no more scientific credibility than the Flat Earth
Society, the climate cranks have held our nation's climate policy
hostage for decades now. One reason the United States has done so
little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the past twenty years
is that our government and media have listened as much to climate
cranks as to real scientists."

So, accompanied by members of the Sierra Club and Generation Hot --
the two billion young people around the world who have been condemned
to spend the rest of their lives coping with the hottest climate our
civilization has ever known -- I went to Capitol Hill to call the
cranks to account and urge my colleagues in the rest of the media to
do a better job of presenting the scientific truth about climate
change.

We spoke with a number of leading deniers, most notably Republican
Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Inhofe had no response when asked
why his Republicans are the only major political party in the world
that still denies the science behind climate change. Instead, he said
his scientists knew better than the overwhelming majority of
scientists who say climate change is real and dangerous. Later, a
leading public relations official for energy companies told us "the
science doesn't matter."

You can watch our video of the event here:

It didn't take long for the right-wing media machine to start its
attack. Inhofe's office posted its own video of our encounter a few
hours later, spinning it as "an ambush" of the Senator, a charge that
was repeated when the video later appeared online on the Fox network.
(I don't call it Fox News for the simple reason that it's not a news
outfit; it's a propaganda operation.)

It's hilarious to hear the right wing describe our questioning of
Inhofe as "an ambush," thereby portraying the Senator as a victim.
Here's what actually happened.

Inhofe was in a committee hearing room in a Senate office building,
along with other senators. Like countless reporters have done for
countless years, I waited outside in the corridor, as did a reporter
from a trade journal, hoping to buttonhole one or more of the Senators
when they emerged. When Inhofe came out, I walked up to him,
accompanied by the Sierra Club and Generation Hot representatives, and
asked if I could ask some questions about climate science. To his
credit, Inhofe agreed and spent about six minutes debating with us.

Memo to the right-wing media machine: that is not "an ambush." It's
called journalism, though I'm hardly surprised the Fox TV crowd
doesn't recognize the distinction.

Instead of engaging on the substance -- most especially, the grievous
wrong being done to the young people of Generation Hot by the deniers
of climate change -- the right wing machine has tried to shift the
focus to my journalistic tactics. They complain that I ambushed and
took advantage of Senator Inhofe -- as if the Senator is an innocent
child rather than a veteran politician who is used to being asked
tough questions by journalists.

They allege that I must have something to hide because I released an
edited rather than unedited version of my encounter with Inhofe.
Excuse me? Editing is a basic journalistic tool, used in virtually
every news story ever published, and I'm happy to share the unedited
video with anyone who asks. What's more, I have tweeted links to
Inhofe's own video -- that's how little I have something to hide.

I did make one mistake. In the haste of introducing myself to Inhofe,
I misspoke by saying I was "with Politico." I had intended to say I
"write for Politico," which I had done just that morning in the form
of the above-mentioned opinion article. My words came out wrong, which
I regret. But I refuse to allow this small slip of the tongue to
distract from the larger issue I was pursuing with the Senator: the
terrible price our children will pay for Republicans' unfounded denial
of mainstream climate science.

I take the right wing media machine's attacks as a badge of honor and
a sign that we drew blood. I suspect they're trying to shut down the
discussion about climate science and the impacts on our kids because
they know it's a losing conversation for them. So they try to distract
by talking about everything else.

Nice try, guys, but it won't work. No matter how nasty and deceptive
you are, we're going to stay at this and stay at it until Americans
are no longer being taken in by your disinformation campaign.

Meanwhile, it would be helpful if more folks who do care about
fighting climate change would speak out as well, including by
circulating our video of the confrontations. We need to keep the focus
on the science and our kids; that seems to scare the hell out of the
cranks. These people are bullies, and the only way to deal with
bullies is to stand up to them.

Mark Hertsgaard is the author of six books that have been translated
into sixteen languages, including HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty
Years on Earth.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett