Climate Change will make the end of the world even worse

Mencken once said that no man ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public. It looks as though newspapers have a new twist on that. No newspaper ever lost circulation underestimating the willingness of the American public to be frightened.

The International Herald Tribune has an article that reports that "many" feel that the UN pronouncements on global warming see the impact as too mild. In a world with more than six billion people, it's not hard to find "many" people supporting any position whatsoever. This is a fairly low threshold to make something qualify as newsworthy.

The head of the UN, Mr. Ban, is described as hitting various climate change hot spots, including place in Chile where children wear protective clothing to shield them from UV radiation that gets through the hole in the ozone layer.

Wait a minute. The ozone layer is way up there. It is being affected by certain manmade chemicals, which have been banned by the industrial nations and largely eliminated. Due to the long lag time, the layer will continue to suffer and will not completely recover for another half century. But it isn't climate and it has absolutely nothing to do with CO2.

Having reported that the UN may have underplayed the danger, the reporters might have shown why they said this. Like a quote that said that the situation was worse than reported. I've looked it over and there seems to be nothing. The report says things are bad. People have commented that things are bad. Nowhere does it show that anyone says it's worse than in the report.

So here's the state of journalism in the world today. When reporting on global warming, it is OK not only to report finding that the world is doomed, but to say that some unnamed people think it's even more doomed, and to make that unsupported claim the headline.