Posted on 09/20/2013 7:41:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For 125 years, National Geographic has enjoyed a reputation as a scientific and educational organization. It is so trusted that if a topic is covered within the pages of National Geographic, it has been accepted without question. Most of us grew up reading it in the classroom, and later, in the doctor’s office.
So what were they thinking when they chose to feature a nearly submerged Statue of Liberty on the cover of the September issue? Obviously, by using scare tactics and fear mongering, the editors have bought into the propaganda of man-made climate change. They are frantically trying to gin up support and make believers out of those who are agnostic toward the politically driven agenda.
Public support for the alarmist position has virtually disappeared. The American public indicates that dealing with global warming shouldn’t be a priority for the US. Pew Research reports: “This year, it ranks at the bottom of the 21 tested.”
Earlier this year, the price of carbon on Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (the only EU-wide environmental instrument) collapsed. The Economist reported: “The emerging network of global carbon trading and European climate policy as a whole could sink” and concluded: “policymaking will shift more to the national level.” Europe’s largest companies complained “that the ETS is imposing higher costs on them.”
Europe was an early adapter to policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions believed to cause global warming. Now, European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger is advising against them. Recently, he warned: “Industrial players could leave Europe to relocate elsewhere.” He specifically cautioned Germany against unilaterally overexposing itself to climate protection efforts.
Further driving the nail into the climate change coffin, Australia just elected Tony Abbott as its new Prime Minister. Abbott campaigned on a promise “to scrap an unpopular tax on carbon emissions.”
The popular and economic demise of climate change schemes has left the believers desperate to reclaim their high ground—and National Geographic became the surrogate. After all, if it is in the National Geographic, it must be true.
Jerry wants to believe the man-made side of the climate change debate, but still had questions. After seeing the story in National Geographic, it was all settled in his mind. He said: “Everything I read suggests that the vast majority of credible scientists consider global warning both real and a serious threat. Take a look at the current National Geographic.”
Let’s “take a look” at the Rising Seas cover story.
With the historically sound reputation of the National Geographic organization, readers should be outraged by the cover—which has Lady Liberty up to her thighs in water. From ground to torch, the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall. The base is 154 feet and the statue is 151. The graphic has the water almost to her waist, so we can easily assume a rising sea level of 200-250 feet—which the author, Tim Folger, calls “inexorably rising seas.” Yet the text, repeatedly suggests much lower numbers. In one place, he acknowledges that over the past century the earth has warmed by “more than a full degree over the past century”—which you know has to be only fractionally more than a degree. Given the propensity to hyperbole, if it was even slightly more than 1.5 degrees, Folger would have claimed “nearly 2 degrees.” Yet, the massive one-degree increase has caused the seas to rise “by about eight inches.” Hardly something to get alarmed about. In another, Folger writes: “many think sea levels will be at least three feet higher than today by 2100.” He adds: “Last year an expert panel convened by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration adopted 6.6 feet (two meters) as its highest of four scenarios for 2100.”
Despite the predictions of sea rise, Folger dedicates a full page to the Netherlands and its ability to adapt. He reports: “The country has been reclaiming land from the sea for nearly a thousand years. … Sea-level rise does not yet panic the Dutch.”
Of course, “our fossil-fuel driven civilization” is to blame. Folger claims: “Unless we change course dramatically in the coming years, our carbon emissions will create a world utterly different in its very geography from the one in which our species evolved.” But then contradicts himself when he states: “In May the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, the highest since three million years ago. Sea levels then may have been as much as 65 feet above today’s.” Folger later adds: “50 million years ago … the planet was ice free.” He cites that at that time, carbon concentrations were “around a thousand parts per million.” It must have been the SUVs.
Another of his many contradictions is about the storms and the potential flooding. Folger starts off with a story about super-storm Sandy—calling it “a preview of the future.” But then he quotes a woman, Kate Orff, whose only listed credential is that she has a landscape architectural firm located in a 16th floor loft with the “present day harbor shimmering outside her window.” She explains that the “archipelago that protected Red Hook”—islands and shallows—“vanished long ago, demolished by harbor dredging and landfill projects that added new real estate to a burgeoning city.” So, we are supposed to believe that “our fossil-fuel-driven civilization is creating, a planet where Sandy-scale flooding will become more common and more destructive for the world’s coastal cities,” while the expert he quotes—presumably a landscape architect—blames it on harbor-dredging?
Not once does the National Geographic cover story mention that there are many scientists who disagree. Nor does it talk about the hiatus in warming, about which the international weekly journal of science, Nature, reports: “Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century.” Folger never mentions the record-breaking 2013 mild storm season—which was predicted to be “more active than normal” and is instead a “dud.” Or the fact that after an unusually cold Arctic summer, compared to the same time last year, ice has increased by 60 percent—bucking predictions that global warming would result in the disappearance of the ice cap by 2013. Those facts might undermine his premise.
After reading the cover story, John Clema, a geologist and a life member of the National Geographic Society, responds: “I continue to be disappointed by the lack of real science and the fear mongering on the side of the alarmist greenies. The ‘Rising Seas’ article ignores the geological fact that the planet is constantly changing. We are still in an interglacial period and warming has been happening for hundreds of years—yet National Geographic has chosen to use the fossil fuel/anti-human scare tactic.”
Folks like Folger and the editors at National Geographic want you to believe that it’s anthropogenic global warming and that big-oil is spreading lies when it is really agnotologic global whining—culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.
Author’s Note: Written in cooperation with Michael J. Economides, Ph.D.
Meanwhile the IPCC admits their numbers were all lies and that the Earth has not warmed at all in 15 years.
When Scientific American went over to the soft science propaganda side, I was much more outraged. That magazine is basically Newsweek these days. Newsweek with some complex equations now and then.
I really like to watch some of their nature programs. But I hate how they always try to slip in some unsubstantiated comment about how man made global warming is threatening an ecosystem.
What bothers me the most...is that for decades, the management staff would never have allowed a bogus image or untrue picture to appear on the cover. They used drawings to tell a story, but pictures had to be true to the circumstance. In this case? It’s a joke.
I quit NG in 2004 after the election piece they ran on global warming. Every single page....not just one article....was used for this huge slant attack. I sent a personal letter in and noted that I was finished with the magazine, and would never touch it again. I didn’t mind them running one single article in a publication....but to time this massive effort like this? It was purely political.
NG is trash journalism and I wouldn’t advocate it for any kid or any school library. You might as well sign up for some science fiction UFO magazine....if you desire that kind of entertainment.
“The ‘Rising Seas’ article ignores the geological fact that the planet is constantly changing. We are still in an interglacial period and warming has been happening for hundreds of years—yet National Geographic has chosen to use the fossil fuel/anti-human scare tactic.”
That is the money quote. The greens approach the subject with a religious ferver pushing asside any contradictions. It is important that we understand just what the introduction of carbon to the atmosphere actually does. It’s a complex problem as it requires a better understanding of climate overall. I am skeptical that it can be done in the current “climate”.
What would George Bailey do?
Perhaps a project for Mechanics Illustrated....how about just dismantling the statue and moving it to Montana? It’s not really a piece of concrete....it’s metal, and there’s no law that says it must remain in NY City.
I suspect the NG crowd would get all fussy if this was the public perception...taking the move-the-statue philosophy at a higher rating than global warming.
He’d wish that NG went back to what it was and throw a rock through a window at the old Granville House.
....you know the address, don’t you?
Way behind the curve. National Geographic has been an outrageously Leftist Rag for years ... but with pretty pictures.
Geographic has been commandeered by green weenies and multiculturalists. The photography is still stunning but the writing is shopworn marxist boilerplate.
I canceled my subscription to them during the Apartheid years. They showed a picture of a couple of black guys in a gold mine sweating as they worked. Lead caption: “Eyes devoid of hope” (sob).
A few months later I ran across a subsequent copy and their readership was chewing them out “for politicizing one of the few remaining neutral magazines”.
The liberals corrupt everything they touch. They can’t resist in going over the top and turning everybody off.
Pandering to the fraudulent Warmist cult.
I agree with you. I let my NG subscript go a while ago because of the liberal atheist attitude. I then subscribed to Scientific American and found it to be light reading. So then I changed to American Heritage. They don’t even seem to distribute the thing! They stopped mailing.
“For 125 years, National Geographic has enjoyed a reputation as a scientific and educational organization. It is so trusted that if a topic is covered within the pages of National Geographic, it has been accepted without question.”
Bull Shi’ite. NG has been pushing the unproven hypothesis of evolution longer than I’ve been alive. NG has funded the Leakeys since the 1950s at least. They dig up a crumbled frament of a monkey’s cranium and from there engineer a complete skeleton and artist’s concept of a new hominid line from 4 million years ago. Maybe their ancestors descended from monkeys, but mine didn’t.
NG has devoted too many issues on topics that have nothing to do with geography.
On TV they have an overwhelming fascination with incarceration, along with several other leftist channels.
They are not only pretentious...they are liars about a whole raft of things.
I can't even watch their nature shows. The doom and gloom is pervasive complete with looking-down-the-nose narration, and new age music.
I wish some of the old fashioned nature shows were on Netflix.
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