Rupert Murdoch Falls For Global Warming Hoax

The big environmental news of the day is that News Corp CEO, Rupert Murdoch, has announced a major milestone in his empire’s march to “energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.” In a memo to employees he wrote…

Murdoch: I am proud to announce that News Corporation has reached its first major sustainability milestone: We have become carbon neutral across all of our global operations and we are the first company of our kind to do so.

With this statement Murdoch has revealed himself to be another cog in the worldwide conspiracy to concoct a crisis over claims of Climate Change and the environmental risks associated with it. Never mind that, according to Murdoch, News Corp will save tens of millions of dollars a year as a result of its eco-initiatives, in addition to reducing its output of carbon emissions by fifteen percent. The larger issue is the deception for which Murdoch is responsible and his promotion of Global Warming as a credible theory.

Rupert Murdoch

Fox News has been a stalwart clarion for exposing Global Warming as a hoax. Their indisputable proof generally consists of video of snow storms in New England during February. Sean Hannity has said that such compelling evidence proves that, “The debate’s over. There’s no global warming.” Glenn Beck contends that Climate Change is a conspiracy to enrich General Electric and other environmental profiteers. The network’s Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon, ordered his anchors and reporters to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed,” and to “IMMEDIATELY” (his emphasis) point out that the data has been “called into question.” He fails to note that the data was called into question by representatives of ExxonMobil.

With this history of attacking the proponents of Climate Change science, we should expect Fox News to begin its probing new series denouncing Rupert Murdoch as a deceitful purveyor of environmentalist propaganda any day now. He ought to replace Al Gore as the new eco-terrorist of the year. Perhaps they will even examine his relationship to environmentally friendly technology providers in the newsprint and workspace energy fields. There may be a financial incentive for his deceit. If so, I’m sure Fox will get to the bottom of it. Right after they’re done exposing the plot against incandescent light bulbs and the Global Teachers Union Caliphate.

Liba Rubenstein, News Corp’s global energy initiative director, confirmed the company’s commitment to the environment as well as its respect for an independent press saying that…

“Our corporate commitment from an operational and business leadership perspective doesn’t bring with it an editorial mandate.”

In other words, despite the fact that the parent corporation is convinced that Climate Change is a real problem, they will permit Fox News to continue to deceive their audience by falsely asserting that Global Warming is a hoax, even as Fox is required to participate in the reforms sent down from corporate. So we can expect Fox News to continue to bash environmental science, but I wouldn’t expect them to report on this announcement from their boss.

How Green? Is Fox News?

The folks at Fox News have published a new environmentally focused web site called “How Green?” The site appears to be in the early stages of development with just a few articles posted, mostly re-posts from Associated Press.

Once again, Fox News is demonstrating a measure of hypocrisy that flies off the scale. The right-wing network still regularly hosts Global Warming deniers, and its top anchors scoff at what many of them call environmental “hysteria.” For example…

Sean Hannity: One of the reasons we’re so energy dependent is because of the global warming hysteria and extremism.

In an article on Foxnews.com, James O’Brien, a professor from Florida State University, continued the hysteria theme saying…

“Global climate change is occurring in many places in the world,” O’Brien said. “But everything that’s attributed to global warming, almost none of it is global warming” […] He called sea level changes a “major scare tactic used by the global warming people.”

And Jennifer Lawinski of Fox News wrote this bit of nonsense: Children’s Books Use Christmas to Push Global Warming Agenda. These dangerous tomes include one wherein Santa is so moved by a young boy’s efforts to save his adopted polar bear, that he decides to re-use last year’s wrapping paper, recycle toys and start using wind to generate power for his toy shop. OH NOOO!

In an effort to support her premise, Lawinski quoted a critic of the book “Santa Goes Green”:

“The global climate change alarmists are now trying brainwash our kids by infusing their unproven and baseless climate change rhetoric into Santa books,”

Was this critic a scientist? A climate expert? An authority on literature? Nope. It was a review written by a visitor to Amazon.com. In fact, it was the whole review. And to be clear, Amazon permits anyone to post comments on their products regardless of their credibility, or lack thereof. In all likelihood, this reviewer didn’t even read the book. This is the authority that Lawinski cited to buttress her reporting. And it’s typical of Fox News who often imbue partisan propagandists and ignorant nobodies with qualifications they haven’t earned and don’t deserve. (see Joe the Plumber).

But what’s occurring here is more than hypocrisy – it’s schizophrenia. News Corp Chairman, Rupert Murdoch has become an outspoken advocate of reducing greenhouse gasses. He accepts that Global Warming is a real concern and that human behavior has an impact on climate. He pledged the corporation to reduce its carbon footprint 10 percent by 2012 via energy reduction initiatives, and to become carbon-neutral by 2010, by buying carbon offsets.

Despite that commitment, Murdoch’s minions still vigorously oppose any suggestion that there is a climate crisis that demands our attention. Everyone from Hannity, to Brit Hume, to Neil Cavuto, to Steve Doocy, routinely dismiss the subject as Junk Science. And to top it off, a poll on the How Green? website that asks “Is Global Warming Real?” presently has a 63% majority answering “No.”

That makes it pretty difficult to square Fox’s eco-activity with the views of its staff and audience. Their overt hostility toward the environmental agenda makes their token gestures seem all the more cynical and exploitative. Most likely, these fleeting eruptions of green are just an attempt to curry favor with millions of concerned conservationists. Fox thinks this will give them cover so that they can claim to be responsible citizens. And if it weren’t for the fact that they contradict themselves at every turn, it just might have worked.