Hard as it to imagine, a recent government report was so ridiculously hysterical that even the New York Times noticed. The President’s Cancer Panel’s released a report entitled “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk,” which led to this Times’ headline:

U.S. Panel Criticized as Overstating Cancer Risks.

The verb “overstating” doesn’t go half far enough, but coming from theTimes that’s still pretty damning. The report was a collection of conjecture, unrelated factoids and, more than anything, a shrill call for more: more government, more studies and, of course, more money. Even the American Cancer Society found it a bit over the top. From the Times:

Dr. Michael Thun, an epidemiologist from the cancer society, said in an online statement that the report was “unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer,” and had presented an unproven theory — that environmentally caused cases are grossly underestimated — as if it were a fact.

(more…)

As a scientist, I have long been troubled by the way the mainstream media covers science in general and the environment in particular. Long before “global warming” became a watchword and Al Gore started burning tens of thousands of gallons in aviation fuel to lecture people around the world about their profligate energy use, journalists routinely butchered scientifically-focused stories so badly that it would make a high school physics teacher cringe. While many people have been shocked to learn how close the ties between leading global warming alarmists and some environmental reporters are, the only surprise for many of us in the scientific community is that it has taken this long to reveal those connections. For the truth is that global warming coverage in the mainstream media is merely a symptom of a larger disease.

The latest boil to burst forth upon the body of environmental journalism began to fester on Thursday, January 7, when the USEPA announced that it was proposing the latest, greatest and most-badly- needed-ever smog standard. (Officially the pollutant is “ground-level ozone”, but we’ll stick with “smog” for convenience). Mainstream media outlets everywhere fell over themselves to heap praise on the EPA for imposing a standard that administrator Lisa Jackson described as “long overdue.” This lead, from the Chicago Tribune’s lead environmental reporter/head Sierra Club cheerleader Michael Hawthorne’s January 8 story, was typical:

“Chicago and other urban areas across the U.S. would need to clamp down harder on air pollution under tough smog limits proposed Thursday by the Obama administration, which scrapped a George W. Bush-era rule that ignored the latest scientific advice.”

(more…)

All the Halloween movies of the past decade “got nothin’” on the scary stuff the media threw at Americans over the last ten years. Hardly a week went by without some new scare being reported on to frighten the masses into throwing out their veggies, wearing masks, or thinking their hard drive was going to turn into a cyber pit bull and put a dozen stitches into their iPod.  Herewith, a dozen of the most bogus:

12. Y2K

Jan 1, 2000. The decade began with a whopper. Computers were not going to be able to know how to register the year 2000 and systems as large as the Pentagon’s and as small as your cell phone were going to freak out and party like it was 1900. Of course, nothing happened. Everybody’s computers were fine and the new millennium began much like the last one, except this time we don’t have the very real fears of polio and the black plague to destroy our lives. (more…)