http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/27/one-myth-about-the-washington-post-it-still-practices-serious-journalism/One myth about the Washington Post: It still practices serious journalism
No myth: Wind power HAS reduced Denmark's CO2 emissions a lot
April 27, 2010
The Washington Post has adopted many strategies to stave off its collapsing circulation. It has, for instance, gone tabloid, repeatedly publishing falsehood-filled op-eds by Sarah Palin, including one on climate science!
It also strains to print an unconventional “contrarian” analysis ever week in its “5 Myths” series, which is supposedly “a challenge to everything you think you know.” Of course, lots of what you know is true, and that means the Post has to print lots of stuff that isn’t.
In its 5 Myths about China’s economic power piece two weeks ago, “Myth” 4 was “China’s hunger for resources is sucking the world dry and making major contributions to global warming.” You may notice something about that myth — it isn’t one. China is making major contributions to global warming. One would have to categorize that as a fact. China is now actually the world’s biggest emitter, which must qualify as a “major” contribution even to the Post.
And the ‘debunking’ asserts, “unlike the United States, China has recognized that it cannot let its fossil-fuel appetite grow forever and is working hard to improve efficiency.” China, like the United States under Obama Administration, is working to improve efficiency, but right now China looks like it plans to keep building one or two coal plants a week for the foreseeable future — whereas U.S. fossil fuel consumption may well have peaked a few years ago and in any case will see little net growth from 2005 through 2020 and probably well beyond that. Indeed, but for a handful of Senators, we’d be on a path to an 80% reduction by 2050.
This Sunday, the Post published its most nonsensical piece in the series, “5 Myths about green energy.“ They farmed out the task to the right wing Manhattan Institute, which, surprise, surprise, has received $800,000 from the big-time polluters at Koch Industries in recent years, on top of money from ExxonMobil. It’s no surprise Big Oil and polluters fund right-wing disinformation. And I suppose it’s no longer a surprise that the Post reprint their misinformation as fact.
I don’t have the time to debunk the entire piece. Fortunately, Matt Wasson Director of Programs for Appalachian Voices, dismantled the first one thoroughly at HuffPost, which I excerpt below:
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