8/20/2006

Don't Like The Findings Of Actual Scientists Doing Actual Scientific Research?

Hire Steven Milloy
-- FOXNEWS "science" commentator and paid corporate shill

Once again the environmental ostriches over at OTBL are posting the corporate propaganda of their favorite scientist Steven Milloy. It amazes me that he is the only scientist they ever post anything on. Amazingly enough, he gets paid large sums of money from Exxon to do scientific research -- from his home,

Below is an interesting article that discusses some of the reasons Milloy and other "journalists" spout the half-truths that help support the misinformation needed to confuse the public above health and the environment. God forbid we try to tamper with free-market capitalism by working to clear water, fresh air and a sustainable environmental balance.
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PUNDIT FOR HIRE.
Smoked Out
by Paul D. Thacker

n his final column of the year, FoxNews.com science columnist Steven Milloy listed "the top 10 junk science claims of 2005." For number nine, Milloy attacked the research of Michael Mann, a Penn State scientist who, in 1999, published research showing a dramatic rise in global temperatures during the twentieth century, after hundreds of years with little climate change. Calling Mann's science "dubious," Milloy praised Representative Joe Barton of Texas, whose calls for an investigation into Mann's methodology last June were cut short when the scientific community and members of Congress protested it as a witch hunt. Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, wrote to Barton, "The only conceivable explanation for the investigation is to attempt to intimidate a prominent scientist and to have Congress put its thumbs on the scales of a scientific debate."

Another conceivable explanation for the investigation is that Barton, as chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, is swimming in donations from oil companies. But that probably didn't bother Milloy, because he receives his own sponsorship from ExxonMobil. As revealed in Mother Jones last spring, between 2000 and 2003, ExxonMobil donated $90,000 to two nonprofits Milloy operates out of his house in Potomac, Maryland. Milloy's defense of Barton--and excoriation of Mann--is typical of his corporate-subsidized science reporting, in which he has attacked not only global warming, but also secondhand smoke studies and clean air regulations.

Over the past year, there have been several instances of political columnists shilling for the Bush administration. In January 2005, Tribune Media Services booted Armstrong Williams after discovering he had taken a government contract to write columns favorable to Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. And, in December, Copley News Service dropped Doug Bandow after discovering that he was taking money from Jack Abramoff to write columns favorable to the Republican lobbyist's clients. But the trend in paid-for-punditry seems to have spread to the world of science journalism as well. Earlier this month, BusinessWeek Online reported that, in 1999, Scripps Howard columnist Michael Fumento received $60,000 from Monsanto, one of the biotech companies he later covered in his columns, to help pay his salary at the Hudson Institute and to cover some of the overhead of his book BioEvolution. Fumento had not disclosed the Monsanto money to Scripps Howard.

Read more@ New Republic Online.

More explanation of where the money comes from to fund the propaganda of the likes of Milloy and others:

From Mother Jones:
Climate of Denial by Bill McKibben
As The Wrold Burns by Chris Mooney

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