Detroit Free Press GW Propaganda

On Sunday Jan. 7th. the Detroit Free Press ran an editorial titled Ice Alert with sub-title "The melting Arctic Ocean may doom polar bears and get people and politicians into action." Of course the Freep has every right to its opinion. I'm not going to fisk the entire editorial except to point out a few of the fallacies
it routinely commits on this subject. It starts with:

"The polar bears must truly face trouble for the Bush administration to consider listing them as threatened species--and because of dwindling Arctic ice, no less. Such a designation requires a concession that global warming might actually have started having a major impact."

Right. It's not possible that Bush is caving in to 6 years of pressure from the Marxist press, enviros, Democrats and half his own party. Nope! Why if Bush says so it must be true. This from a paper that has opposed Bush as being wrong on almost everything since he was elected. The only reason the Freep now supports this Bush action is so they can get away with their blatent appeal to authority. It's true because the President says so.

They then give an anecdote: "Munising, which lies in the Upper Peninsula's usually reliable snow belt, has had its first snowless Christmas since 1911." Well, New Zealand just had its coldest December since 1928 and Marble Bar Australia had it coolest year in 92 years. So this is evidence of global cooling right?

Obviously, NZ and Marble Bar are no more evidence of global cooling than Munising is of GW. The Freep editors commit the fallacy of the small sample or 'hasty generalization.' To do this the editors must have a low opinion of their reader's intelligence. There is no way the editors can fail to know they are using logical fallacies. They know what they are doing and they're doing it deliberately

The editorial also advocates some common sense ideas we can all do to conserve energy and I do some but not to save the planet. I do them to save money. Anyway, on page 3 there was 10 replies from readers (via the net) on the editorial. Five of them were for government to start the use of force against businesses and the public to stop GW. Two were in favor of more conservation and three were opposed to government force.

On Wed. Jan 10th. the Freep ran 4 LTEs under the heading "Put global scare tactics on ice" in which 3 were rejecting the 'it's all man's fault' doctrine and one favored government force.

So, the final tally is 6 readers for force, 6 readers against force and 2 for voluntary conservation. I had thought that most readers would fall for the Freep's propaganda. At about 50/50, there is hope for a rational citizenry yet.