Global warming hysteria has often been compared to religion, and rightly so. But, there’s also many theatrical elements to be found, facets of the genre “green drama” that are so very familiar to those of us who have spent our professional careers watching environmental tragedies debut year after year.

Global warming is the blockbuster production of the environmental movement. It’s the Broadway hit that has maintained the rapt attention of environmental activists and policy-makers throughout the course of three decades. The players are familiar, having honed their roles after years of practice.

The directors naturally, and predictably, cast big, bad corporations as villains, with Exxon-Mobil supposedly skulking behind the scenes, passing out bribes to spineless skeptical scientists and obstructing the heroic politicians and activists trying to save innocent mother earth, before it’s too late.  And what a victim to have! Sure, your average activist would be happy to be part of the local neighborhood production of: “Stop Building That New Factory Before It Kills All The Babies In Town (The Musical)”, but the Global Warming Show is truly big time. It’s not just the babies in town that are in danger, it’s everyone’s babies, everywhere. This production has innocent tribes living on sinking tropical islands and disappearing glaciers and forlorn polar bears. Global Warming; it’s the show that’s got it all! (more…)

A quote often attributed to Otto Von Bismarck in the 1930s — but really belonging to poet John Godfrey Saxe over 60 years earlier — tells us that “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”

“Original Old Media reporting” belongs on Saxe’s list.

In all three cases, the temptation to look away is great. In all three, we must resist. All require strong surveillance to ensure a quality product.

For all of their considerable accomplishments, New Media watchdogs have not done a particularly good job of proactively monitoring wire service and other original-source stories as they move through the assembly line from breaking news to supposedly settled narrative. As a result, as often occurs when legislators and sausage plants aren’t closely watched, product quality is often pathetic, and is sometimes downright dangerous. (more…)