Let's call out the 'climate' cranks for what they are!

This just in my ‘inbox’ from The Nation:

Dear Nation Reader,

For years, climate “skeptics” have denied the near-unanimous scientific consensus around global warming in an effort to delay action.

But, they’re not really “skeptics” – they’re cranks and hacks, and it’s time to unmask those who are holding our nation’s climate policy hostage.

The Nation is partnering in a new initiative, galvanized by our environmental correspondent Mark Hertsgaard, to name and shame the climate cranks sabotaging our nation’s response to climate change. 

On Tuesday, February 15, Mark (author of the new book, HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth) and the rest of the team will head to Capitol Hill, the Fox TV bureau, the Chamber of Commerce and other hotbeds of climate denial.  Their goal?  Put the climate cranks on the spot and make them explain — on camera and in front of kids — why they have condemned the young people of “Generation Hot” (as Mark calls them), to spending the rest of their lives coping with the hottest climate in human history. 

Here’s how you can get involved:

Visit the Facebook page for Generation Hot. Post your suggestions for which cranks to target, what questions to ask, and how to use this action to transform the climate conversation in this country.

Post your questions and crank suggestions via Twitter, using the hashtag #climatecranks.

Join Mark and fellow activists in Washington, DC on February 15. You can sign up to help confront climate cranks in the morning or the afternoon. There will also be an opportunity to attend a talk at lunchtime.

Learn more about the campaign by watching this short video and reading a Nation excerpt from HOT.

All best,
Peter Rothberg, The Nation

Our media, our free press: Is it failing? What can you do?

When was the last time you heard a really big story covered on the mainstream nightly news - that hadn’t already been covered, better, sooner on NPR? I think we could count them on one hand, waking up to NPR every morning, hearing the real news - all the news - and then wondering how the big networks can miss so much.

When we read the ever shrinking Reno newspaper, the Gazette-Journal, we’re also amazed at how many things in the community aren’t covered, or are covered inadaquately.

Radio? What now passes for radio in America is shameful. It’s a sound machine made of right-wing propagandists and ideologues, the like of Howard Stern and host of wannabes, and programmed second tier pop music.

Internet? America has some of the slowest broadband in the world. So much for being the technological leader.

Comcast is on a juggernaut course to slurp up the rest of what remains of broadcast and internet - dooming any hope of maintaining internet neutrality.

Two of the best, albeit nascent publications, The Nation magazine and Reader Supported News are struggling.

Meanwhile, the media and internet in America is owned by fewer and fewer companies, as the entire thing continues to consolidate. There is less diversity. There is less freedom of opinion and expression. The messages are distorted, real information is in short supply.

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Friday Fish Wrap: April 3, 2009

TV Fare: HBO has gone and done it again, offering us a literate, richly textured slice of African life as seen through the eyes of a woman - who goes completely against type by opening The #1 Ladies Detective Agency with money from the sale of 180 cows left to her by her recently expired father. Our heroine, Precious Remotswe, throws an smarmy ex-husband, his equally weasel like attorney, and conventions to the wind to find her own unique place in her beloved Botswana.

We were both absolutely captivated by this show.

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