Rupert Murdoch keeps trying to kill us all

The Wall Street Journal ran another opinion piece that is skeptical of climate scientists. This one was written by Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute and infamous denier, Roy Spencer. Rupert Murdoch published this article as an "opinion", though he knows it's not an opinion at all, but a virtual press release for the energy industry. He should not publish it except as an advertisement, and the WSJ should be paid for it. At least he should if he cared about journalistic ethics, but apparently he does not.

Rupert is flying high these days. He owns most of the newspapers in Australia, where 85% of the articles he runs on global warming are skeptical. Murdoch's long-term campaign has influenced the Australian electorate so well that the new, Conservative prime minister has proposed repealing the carbon tax, which will result in accelerated global warming and more unnecessary deaths.

Bast works for an organization which is neither a think tank nor a research institute. It is a public relations firm, bought and paid for by oil company money. Heartland has a long history of attacking scientists whose opinion is inconvenient to corporations. They are strong supporters of the tobacco companies, preaching that second-hand smoke is harmless. They are strong supporters of asbestos companies, preaching that asbestos is almost harmless, and even, in the long run, beneficial.

Now Heartland has taken on global warming, which it claims is unimportant, harmless, and exaggerated. It is using the same tactics it used against scientists who warned against the harmful effects of tobacco and asbestos. It takes money from the companies without giving any indication of where their money comes from. Check the Wall Street Journal article. Do you see any mention that Heartland takes major funding from the Koch brothers? Of course not. The whole purpose of this kind of PR campaign is to smear the honest scientists and reward dishonest ones for their assault on truth. Heartland does it very well. They should, because they have been doing the same thing for 30 years. 

Spencer does not deny his role in this charade. The only job of a scientist is to discover the truth. But Spencer says his job is

a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.

Spencer--a University professor--is supported by the government, but he gets extra income from climate deniers like the Koch brothers. Serious scientists have ignored Spencer for years because he has been wrong so many times in so many different ways. But he keeps on getting published in the popular press because it suits the purpose of those who profit from filling our atmosphere with deadly greenhouse gases.

The point of view of the WSJ article is that the claim that 97% of climate scientists accept global warming is a myth. The number comes from counting the number of articles that oppose man-made global warming which were published in peer-reviewed journals during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ninety-seven per cent of those articles either supported the theory of man-made global warming or didn't mention the topic. Only 3% of the articles opposed the theory, though not all of them dismissed it out of hand.

That 97% is an outdated figure. Between 1991 and 2012,  13,950 peer-reviewed articles have been published. Only 24 of them rejected the theory of global warming. Using the same method that led to the 97% figure mentioned in the article, we find the total percentage of scientific articles written by scientists who support the theory of man-made climate change is 99.8%.

Bast and Spencer argue with that figure. I suppose they must, since it makes the situation quite clear and they don't like the situation, nor do their energy-industry clients. But the figure is actually meaningless, because science is not determined by democratic vote. It is determined by scientific studies that can be repeated by other scientists. Using that measure, there is not a single study that contradicts the theory of man-made global warming. Not one.

Climate change deniers are not scientists. They do not care whether the temperature of the earth rises 10 degrees or sea level rises 50 feet. Their attitude is the same as the investment who abbreviated their rationale for capsizing the world economy: IBGYBG. I'll be gone, you'll be gone. This was their justification for causing millions of people to lose their life savings and millions more to lose their jobs. It didn't matter because the investment bankers would not suffer personally, someone else would suffer. IBGYBG.

When it comes to climate change, the lack of morality in that phrase, "I'll be gone, you'll be gone", reaches the level of obscenity. Yes, Rupert Murdoch will be gone. David Koch will be gone. You and I may also be gone. But we will be leaving our children and grandchildren to suffer. Many of they will die, from hunger, thirst, heat, or violence caused by the vicious struggle for survival in an uncertain future.

IBGYBG means many will die. Rupert Murdoch, by continuing to publish such propaganda, is causing people to die, just as certainly as if he took a gun and pulled the trigger. Rupert Murdoch is trying to kill us all.

Rupert Murdoch has turned Wall Street Journal into Political Rag

Investors need to know the truth. They need to know what is really happening that may affect the price of gold or oil so they can plan accordingly. That is why business journals have a reputation for telling it like it is. Their readers demand that they do.

That was before the advent of fact-free journalism, however. Rupert Murdoch, an advocate of fact-free journalism, has been encouraging Fox personalities to read the idiot cards without straying from the Republican Party line. Murdoch's most successful huckster at Fox, Bill O'Reilly, strongly advocates the doctrine of the Catholic Church. At least he did when Benedict was Pope. Pope Francis has led O'Reilly to challenge the papacy, however.

Francis has made the welfare of the poor the cornerstone of his mission:

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.

O'Reilly, who always contends that he is a good Catholic, addresses the problem of the poor quite differently, because he believes that

some people are the cause of their own poverty. “If you’re an [addict] and you can’t hold a job, and you can’t support your children, […] then you’re bringing the havoc. You’re asking people who may be struggling themselves to put food on the table to give their tax money to you, […] and then you’re going to buy booze and drugs with it.”

So O'Reilly is now arguing with the Pope, who is the spiritual leader of O'Reilly's professed faith. Francis states that market capitalism is the cause of inequality and inequality is the root of social ills. O'Reilly says we shouldn't help the poor because their condition, poverty, is their own fault. These two sentiments share no common ground. Either you help the poor by ending inequality, as Francis preaches, or you don't, as O'Reilly recommends, because the poor are not worthy of our help.

O'Reilly is an author who uses a tv show to sell his books. Murdoch is a media mogul who uses his outlets to sell his philosophy. His philosophy is simple: rich people should be protected against threats to their wealth from poor people. This means poor people should be taxed more to keep taxes low on rich people.

This philosophy also means that all corporate actions, especially dangerous and illegal acts, should be protected in the courts and in the press.

In the past 50 years, no corporate actions have been more destructive of property and human life than those of asbestos manufacturers and purveyors of products made using asbestos. My article gives details of the long struggle to force corporations to pay for their deliberate poisoning of the environment. The struggle is not over.

Here comes the Wall Street Journal with an article that ignores the existence of the struggle for justice. The WSJ accepts claims by a single bankruptcy court judge that it is really the plaintiffs--the people suffering from asbestos poisoning--who are causing problems. The victims, according to the judge and WSJ, are corporations who fought for 50 years to prevent the public from finding the truth about asbestos, who spent millions to pretend that some forms of asbestos are safer than others, who successfully lobbied for laws that made it more difficult for victims to get justice.

This judge took it upon himself to accept the asbestos-using company's estimate of $125 million in damages because, he said, plaintiff's lawyers lied about how many claims they were filing. The decision says, in effect, the damages to plaintiffs may be $1.3 billion, but the plaintiffs should sue other companies for it.

The judge accuses plaintiffs of a "pattern of misrepresentation", though the well-documented actions of defendants in outright lies about their products is just as serious. Defendants introduced 15 cases to support their thesis. The judge asserted that "more extensive discovery would show more extensive abuse", but this was an assumption, not evidence. Since there may have been thousands of asbestos cases over the years, 15 cases is hardly a large sample. These cases were chosen by defendants as being particularly supportive of their claims.

The judge repeats the falsehood, fostered by asbestos producers and the government of Canada, that chrysotile asbestos is "relatively less potent" than other forms of the mineral. In fact, studies have shown that chrysotile asbestos may be more toxic, not less.

The WSJ also states that several states have passed laws against plaintiff's practices, but fails to note that industry lobbying groups and the right-wing front group ALEC were influential in passing those laws.
Only at the tail end of the article did WSJ quote spokesmen for the plaintiffs, who correctly observed that the opinion of this judge was out of step with the vast majority of other courts that have ruled on this issue in recent years.

Once again and predictability, the WSJ has come down on the side of corporations and against their victims. Their coverage appears fair until you look more closely and discover their bias, subtle but absolute.