Tweet [3]

[4] [5]

blog-feature-1084.jpg [6]

It is an early Christmas gift indeed to be writing on what will most likely be Sen. Jim Inhofe's last kick [7] at the climate change misinformation can. Tomorrow morning, the Committee for Public Works and the Environment will hear testimony on the media's reporting on the issue of climate change. Thanks to DeSmog's vast information network and army of DeSmog Detectives [8], we have received advanced copies of the all of the testimony, but I think we'll just give you a teaser today.

Attached is the testimony of Dan Gainor [9] who has absolutely no background in climate change and boasts a Master's Degree in Production Design. Mr. Gainor is a staffer at the Business and Media Institute, a subsidiary mouthpiece of the ExxonMobil funded Media Research Centre.

The introductory paragraph sets the tone for Gainor's unsubstantiated rant on the unfair treatment fringe scientists get from the media:

"Thank you Mr. Chairman, Senators, ladies and gentlemen. We’re here to discuss the media coverage of the climate change debate. But there’s only one problem, there is almost none of that debate actually in the media."

Of course, Gainor is compeletely incorrect according to this 2004 study by actual, real live researchers (attached), who found that, "of 636 stories published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal between 1988 and 2002. They found that 53 percent of these articles “gave roughly equal attention to the views that humans contribute to global warming and that climate change is exclusively the result of natural fluctuations.”

The rest of Gainor's testimony pretty much speaks for itself. Same old song and dance, and hopefully the last for Gainor and his ilk in front of the Senate Committee on the Environment.