Deep Blade Journal

Not fit to print in the Bangor Daily News

Sad to have had to hear this story on Democracy Now!

Maine TV Stations Stops Covering Global Warming
In media news, journalists at two TV stations in Maine have been ordered not to cover stories related to global warming. The policy affects both the ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor Maine. Michael Palmer, the general manager of the stations said in a memo when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories… Until then no more.” Palmer said that he placed global warming stories in the same category as ‘the killer African bee scare’ from the 1970s or, the Y2K scare.

The original story seems to have come from Monday’s New York Times Media & Advertising section. The reporter did an excellent job in receiving comments from a real climate scientist:

Dr. James Hansen, the director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, said in an interview yesterday that the station’s policy on coverage was irresponsible.

“If you wait until Bar Harbor is underwater, it’s too late,” Dr. Hansen said. “It won’t be just Bar Harbor that is underwater, but many places around the globe including parts of Florida, Bangladesh and the Nile Delta.”

I second what the Lieutenant General says…

Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president’s conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

But reality can no longer be avoided….

The author is Lt. Gen. WILLIAM E. ODOM (Ret.), senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. [alternate link to the oped]