Meet The Press, NBC News‘ Sunday morning political talk show, is hosting a “debate on climate change” tomorrow featuring children’s TV host Bill Nye and polluter-funded politician Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Deniers like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) admit in unguarded moments that they only deny climate science because they hate the solutions. Will host David Gregory force Rep. Blackburn to talk about inconvenient truths and the need for tough medicine, or let her spin him into talking about how it’s cold outside? How is it “serious” to talk about facing the deficit, but if you don’t feel like talking about climate solutions, you’re allowed to deny the problem exists?
As Salon’s Alex Pareene writes, it’s symbolic of how America’s media is either unable or unwilling move on from the settled science that proves manmade global warming to the question of what to do about it:
Unfortunately, “Meet the Press” cannot deal with any issue without framing it as a binary debate between two opposing partisans, with the assumption being that “the truth” lies directly between their views. The fact that, in this debate, the entertainer represents the “side” of the overwhelming scientific consensus is less important to the producers of “Meet the Press” than the fact that one “side” is also the consensus of the Democratic Party, while the view of a small fringe in the scientific community is the official position of the Republican Party. The political debate apparently trumps any responsibility the program might feel to present to its viewers an accurate picture of the debate, or non-debate, over anthropogenic global warming among actual climate scientists.
I predict with absolute certainty that one of Gregory’s questions to Nye will be some variation on “How can there be global warming if it just snowed a bunch?”
Next week’s debate: Do cigarettes cause cancer? An oncologist debates a tobacco executive!
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