The Trump Administration’s decision to undermine America’s economy and future prospects by its announced intent to reverse the Clean Power Plan and expand its denial of that Chinese Hoax, climate change made headlines and created an imperative for serious news coverage. Last evening, the PBS News Hour — often the gold standard when it comes to broadcast news coverage — had a segment examining this. The News Hour team decided to adhere to classic ‘he says, she says’ reporting: first having a serious discussion with the former EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, and then turning to coal mining executive Robert Murray. Simply put, as will be shown below, the ‘interview’ with Murray was essentially stenography — asking questions to which Murray responded with specious talking points and deception with the journalist then asking the next question without ever questioning or challenging Murray’s skewed (or, more accurately, baseless) #AlternativeFacts.
“We paid out $15 billion, the American taxpayer did, last year for windmills and solar panels in subsidies. It costs 26 cents a kilowatt hour. Coal-fired generation costs 4 cents a kilowatt hour.”
Energy analysts have made the point again and again that fossil fuels, not renewable energy, most benefit from supportive public policy. Yet this fact, so inconvenient to the conservative worldview, never seems to sink in to the energy debate in a serious way. The supports offered to fossil fuels are so old and familiar, they fade into the background. It is support offered to challengers — typically temporary, fragmentary, and politically uncertain support — that is forever in the spotlight.
“Gina McCarthy and Barack Obama destroyed reliable, low-cost electricity in America”
In FACT, the US grid, while sadly lower quality than that of countries with far more renewable power (like Germany), saw real improvement while McCarthy was at EPA.
the latest annual analysis of grid reliability conducted by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which found that most metrics of grid reliability are either improving or staying the same. For example, 2015 saw a drop in the number of incidents causing a temporary loss of supply. Frequency and voltage has remained stable as the amount of power from renewable energy sources has grown, it said, and the industry has been getting better at modeling changes to the grid to assess risks.
“The retirement of aging or uneconomic resources has not led, in any region, to an observed reduction in BPS (bulk power system) reliability from either resource adequacy or system security perspectives”
What is amusing is that Murray’s words might better describe the George W. Bush Administration, as the IEEE article warned in 2010 that the US electrical grid gets less reliable. Amid deregulation, from 1995 to 2010, “outages have steadily increased as R&D steadily declined”. The Obama Administration allocated resources (in part stimulus package money) to the electricity sector and, in fact, help shift the situation toward an improved, more reliable grid.
And, US electricity prices were essentially stable in kilowatt terms through the Obama Administration even as the system was improving (including reduced pollution) and the average user is reducing electricity use (due to adoption of energy efficient options, like LED lights). There was a slight increasing of electricity prices — in no small part because of investments (such as in grid) to improve reliability.
Scientists and Carbon Dioxide as a Pollutant
TRUTH: Scientists have determined that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that is having an impact on the climate and the oceans (acidification) and creating risks for humanity.
Murray #AltFacts perspective
“My stand is that the endangerment finding needs to be repealed, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. I have 4,000 scientists that tell me that it is not a pollutant.”
In FACT, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are a pollutant. To be clear, just like arsenic, carbon dioxide is natural and found in nature. However, just like dumping arsenic into drinking waters is pollution that creates risk, dumping (massive) amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is pollution that creates risks.
Now, the world’s scientific bodies have (the scientific community has) a consensus about climate science that include understanding of carbon dioxide as a pollutant primary driver of climate change. Just who are Murray’s “4,000 scientists” and what validity do these theoretical 4000 people (supposed scientists) in asserting otherwise?
Financial Motivations for Climate Policy Engagement
TRUTH: The vast majority of those concerned about damage to the climate and seeking to address these damages are not motivated in their actions by financial rewards. And, there are (literally) multi-trillion dollar industries (which Murray, as a coal CEO, is a poster child of) facing disruption from serious actions to mitigate climate risks and investing significant resources to distort science and public discussion to prevent action.
Murray-ite sleight-of-hand #AltFacts world
“A lot of people, John, have made money off of promoting the politics of climate change”
TRUTH: This is a sleight-of-hand distortion of the discussion. Putting aside all of the ‘it needs definition (define “a lot of people” and what is “made money” and, in any event, what is “the politics of climate change”), this is better seen of as projection. Far greater amounts of money are being thrown at seeking to delay if not stop movement toward climate mitigation. It is Murray and his ‘friends’ who are actively undermining understanding of climate science, who are investing resources to confuse the public, whose politics donations are centered on politicians who will enable greater profitability from fossil fuel exploitation and pollution.
Concluding Thought
Read the PBS News Hour discussion … the News Hour team allowed him state falsehoods (or, at best, incredibly partial truths, #AlternativeFacts), don’t engage nor challenge those statements, and move on to the next questions which allows repeating and/or introducing new falsehoods and deception. The News Hour team owes their viewers, American democracy, and, well, basic journalistic ethics better than they did in this interview.
Notes:
- This evening, Frontline is airing a show on ‘The War on the EPA‘. Let’s hope that they held themselves to a higher standard, when interviewing climate science deniers, than occurred last evening.
- Murray is a leading “War on Coal” voice. That has been shown, time after time, to be a falsehood: perhaps regrettable considering how damaging burning coal is (coal’s war on humanity), there is no such thing as a War on Coal. Amid this, a key deception have been false claims that regulations are the reason for coal’s decline when economics are the key factor.
UPDATE: See Marianne Lavelle’s excellent Inside Climate News examination “Coal Boss Takes Climate Change Denial to the Extreme“. Lavelle lays out many of Murray’s falsehoods and deceptions, including some not covered above.
But Murray, who is head of the nation’s largest privately held coal company, adamantly propounded some of the most common, and thoroughly debunked, talking points of the denialist camp.
“The Earth has cooled for the last 19 years,” he said—an utter falsehood.
As to the cooling canard, Skeptical Science’s escalator makes the denialist game explicit:
The Science Denialist Escalator
1 response so far ↓
1 Edward Averill // Oct 12, 2017 at 4:29 am
Great article and criticism.
An OPB membership recruiter came to my door and asked why I dropped out. I told her that PBS and NPR failed on climate. Pushed fracked gas as a part of the news. Nova, is entertaining, but fails to address the issue of our age.
I see current PBS as facade of what they were.