Actually Dawkin’s perspective on evolution is pretty far behind the times – he’s a Darwinist a hundred years to late. If you really want to know what the cutting edge of evolutionary theory looks like, try reviews written by someone like Joe Shapiro, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Chicago.
Popular books on science in rapidly evolving fields of study are usually even farther behind the times than the textbooks used in student courses.
As far as good media coverage of science? You have to look outside the spectrum of opinion-based PR media drivel – just look at Revkin’s (NYT) discredited sources, or at Eilperin’s (WaPo) refusal to even name her “skeptical sources”, and you’ll realize that they are dealing in propaganda, not factual news.
Another problem with media is that they attempt to separate the climate issue from the energy issue. What they’ve refused to cover is the manner in which research budgets for renewables are kept to a tiny fraction of that devoted to fossil fuels – a result of the influence of fossil fuel interests on the budgetary process at the DOE.
Thus, if climate scientists go to the heads of their respective institutions and ask them, “why aren’t we also pursuing a robust renewable energy research plan?”, their academic leaders will point out that without federal funding for public university renewable energy R&D programs, any such efforts would quickly flounder. If the scientist says, “What about DOE grants? I mean, aren’t they like the NSF and NIH grants that finance so much university research?” Well, no – the DOE has decided, again, not to set up that kind of project – everything will go the National Labs and to private industry – and far more is going to coal than to solar.
This means that a graduate student who really wants to go into renewables will need to leave the country for a program that does have state support – Australia, Germany, and Japan are all options, as is China – but forget about doing it here under this current setup.
What is the real agenda of the new administration on energy? Well, we do have a few reliable press outlets left:
Exxon’s $15 Billion Gas Project Gets U.S. Ex-Im Bank Backing.You have got to love Bloomberg – factual information devoid of loaded spin – even if you don’t like what you read. They are clearly at the top of the list, but their areas of coverage are somewhat limited. It’s not all bad news:
Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) — Exxon Mobil Corp. will receive $3 billion in financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for a natural gas project in Papua New Guinea that would be the largest foreign investment in that nation’s history. The funding from the U.S. and about $5 billion coming from export-credit agencies of three other governments will allow a consortium of companies to build a $15 billion pipeline and liquefaction plant, Phil Cogan, an Ex-Im vice president, said in an interview.
Oldest U.S. Oil Fund Targets Solar Stocks as Crude Outlook DimsHowever, what is the U.S. government really saying to that fund? We’ll give billions to Exxon gas projects, but only a paltry few million to solar projects – so what you have here is the U.S. government intervening in the market to give a giant subsidy to fossil fuels over solar, which will perhaps lead that fund to reconsider investing in solar.
By Joe Carroll
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) — Petroleum & Resources Corp., the oldest U.S. oil fund, plans to invest in solar- and wind-power production for the first time since its founding in 1929 as governments crack down on fuels linked to greenhouse gases. The $555 million closed-end fund, whose biggest holdings are Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., is analyzing wind- power, biofuels, solar and hybrid-car battery makers with an eye to making investments as soon as the second quarter of 2010, Chief Executive Officer Douglas Ober said.
If you don’t find this sort of outrageous as well as blindingly hypocritical on the part of Obama’s energy-climate team – well, I’d like to see a free-market economist try and justify this behavior. How is it not market distortion in favor of fossil fuels?
The NYT is not even going to address the issue, are they? They claimed in print that the natural gas pipeline to the tar sands, recipient of another $18 billion in federal subsidies, was really intended for the “Lower 48" – when every engineer in the business knows that without it, they won’t be able to expand tar sand production. I highly doubt they’ll take the Ex-Im Bank to task for delivering billions in taxpayer dollars to another international fossil fuel project, while large-scale solar goes largely unsupported.
Why? Printing it would upset the people who own the New York Times, I imagine. Look at what happened to CNN’s science team when they started covering global warming accurately. They were all fired within a few months, correct? Despite the fact the Miles O’Brien was one of the most experienced and accurate science reporters in the business… and if that’s not an argument for media anti-trust legislation, what is?
Link: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/who-you-gonna-call/comment-page-2/#comment-147357
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