{"id":2968,"date":"2011-09-30T10:41:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T15:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/?p=2968"},"modified":"2011-09-30T10:41:52","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T15:41:52","slug":"how-inhofe-turns-balloon-animals-into-%e2%80%98news%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2011\/09\/30\/how-inhofe-turns-balloon-animals-into-%e2%80%98news%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"How Inhofe Turns Balloon Animals into \u2018News\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The professional deniers are at it again. Every chance they get, the people who are paid to spread doubt and confusion about climate change take some minor report or news event, fill it with hot air and twist it up like a balloon animal, then try to persuade everyone that it is alive and kicking\u2014that it \u201cproves\u201d that the planet isn\u2019t warming or human activities aren\u2019t the big reason why.<\/p>\n

This time, the professional deniers are seizing on a report from the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s inspector general.<\/p>\n

In reality, the IG\u2019s report upholds EPA\u2019s efforts to address climate change, affirming that the agency followed the law when it determined that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.<\/p>\n

But Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who says he thinks global warming is a hoax, and his team of professional deniers have been trying to pretend that their latest balloon animal is living, breathing proof that the EPA process was faulty and the underlying science flawed. And some news organizations fell for it \u2014 again.<\/p>\n

To make his claim, Inhofe had to ignore the crystal-clear opening sentence of the IG\u2019s report, which concludes that EPA \u201cmet statutory requirements for rulemaking\u201d when it issued its endangerment finding, the scientific basis for action under the Clean Air Act. The IG\u2019s report takes issue with some bureaucratic minutiae\u2014EPA procedures that have nothing to do with the validity of the agency\u2019s conclusions. These procedures were created by the federal Office of Management and Budget, and OMB agrees with the way EPA followed them, not with the IG\u2019s minor criticisms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one agency squabbling with another over which boxes got checked.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how my colleague Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, put it yesterday. \u201cLet\u2019s be clear on what this report does not do: it does not call into question any of the underlying science.\u00a0And the report affirmed that EPA complied with the law when making the endangerment finding.\u201d<\/p>\n

EPA\u2019s endangerment finding is based on assessments by the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program\u2013assessments that considered tens of thousands of peer-reviewed articles and involved thousands of scientists.<\/p>\n

Inhofe is peddling another balloon animal. No surprise there. But let\u2019s pull back the curtain and see how a balloon animal gets treated like news.<\/p>\n

Step One. It all starts when Inhofe himself demands that the IG look into the endangerment finding. \u201cThis evaluation was initiated based on a request from Senator James M. Inhofe,\u201d the IG report says\u2014and to carry it out, \u201cthe estimated direct labor and travel costs for this report are $297,385.\u201d So Inhofe, a putative champion of small government and enemy of bureaucratic waste, triggered almost $300,000 in unnecessary spending for the report. That\u2019s an expensive balloon.<\/p>\n

Step Two. Inhofe breaks the IG\u2019s embargo by putting out an overheated press release claiming that the report \u201ccalls the scientific integrity of EPA\u2019s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.\u201d In fact, it does nothing of the kind.<\/p>\n

Step Three. Inhofe\u2019s former communications director, Marc Morano, who runs a climate denier web site, trumpets the false charges, conservative outlets pick up the drum beat, and mainstream news organizations like The Washington Post and Politico quote Inhofe\u2019s specious charges. Headlines announce that EPA \u201ccut corners\u201d and \u201cneeded more data before ruling.\u201d Other journalists begin weighing in on the \u201cwide-reaching political implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, an IG report is news, no doubt about that. But reporters should know better than to believe that Inhofe\u2019s balloon animal is real. Anyone who looks at it can tell it\u2019s just a balloon. Can\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

This was originally posted on Eric Pooley’s blog The Climate War<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The professional deniers are at it again. Every chance they get, the people who are paid to spread doubt and confusion about climate change take some minor report or news event, fill it with hot air and twist it up like a balloon animal, then try to persuade everyone that it is alive and kicking\u2014that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5741,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[202,44],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greenhouse-gas-emissions","category-policy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Inhofe Turns Balloon Animals into \u2018News\u2019 - Climate 411<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2011\/09\/30\/how-inhofe-turns-balloon-animals-into-\u2018news\u2019\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Inhofe Turns Balloon Animals into \u2018News\u2019 - Climate 411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The professional deniers are at it again. 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