Slashdot Mirror
Rupert Murdoch Buys National Geographic Magazine
dywolf writes: In a move that has inspired "dread" among the publication's journalists, as well as long time readers, Rupert Murdoch has just bought a controlling interest in all of National Geographic's media properties. The move turns the long time non-profit into a for-profit media corporation in the process. Some commenters have pointed to Murdoch's previous collaboration with the National Geographic Society, the NatGeo TV channel, as well other once respected publications he has bought such as the Wall Street Journal, as an example of what to expect, and to explain their apprehension at the deal.
This raises a question for reader KatchooNJ: As many of you likely know, Rupert Murdoch has famously not been quiet about his denial of climate change. National Geographic gives grants to scientists... so, is anything going to now change with the focus of National Geographic's organization?
Why are journalists handing out grants to scientists (or anyone else) in the first place?
Because governments won't fund much science any more, and neither will for-profit corporations unless that science helps grow their profit in 1-2 years max, and neither will most people directly because they are too preoccupied with shiny, but people are willing to buy a shiny, intelligent magazine, and that magazine's (former) owners believed for more than 100 years that they should use those profits to fund science, so they did?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The linked article is unfortunately abbreviated and incomplete, and as a result, the conclusions being drawn are wrong.
First off, the Society itself is still an independent non-profit. It just no longer has 100% ownership of the magazine. The effect on the Society is that it will have more money to give to scientists (while 21st Century Fox will have no say in how that money is handed out).
Second, they did not sell a controlling interest; the Society explicitly retains 50% of the Board of Directors for the magazine. The "73%" is Fox's share of profits, not control.
That rollback occurred during the Gringrich congress which had a veto proof Republican majority. I'm not sure on this particular bill but if it's like the others Clinton didn't have any say in the bill as the Vote was veto proof.
Step 1) Show me a competent CLIMATE scientist that is arguing against anthropogenic climate change. ...
-There are many. Dr. Richard Lindzen, endowed professor at MIT. (Richard Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)
Christopher W. Landsea (born 1965) is an American meteorologist, formerly a research meteorologist with Hurricane Research Division of Atlantic
Step 2) Get them to explain how steadily increasing the amount of infrared-scattering CO2 gas in the atmosphere, acting in a frequency band that's still fairly transparent (and distinct from the frequency band scattered by water vapor) can have any effect *other* than raising the average global temperature
-The bands get saturated (Beer's law) so adding more CO2 has less and less effect. The true greenhouse effect warms us up by a degree from added CO2 according to IPCC. Further warming is based on speculative positive feedback mechanism. Many of these are probably negative feedbacks, which is what one would expect from a stable system that oscillates in temp in a few degree range for billions of years.
Step 2B) - if they deny that humans are responsible for the rising CO2 levels, ask them how exactly they explain the fact that measured atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing at roughly 80% of the easily calculated rate that humans are releasing fossil carbon into the atmosphere, and what exactly they would expect to happen if we magically stopped our emissions tomorrow.
-CO2 is not only from humans. Indeed CO2 levels have been higher in the distant past without coal burning power plants. These are vast natural processes.
Step 3) Ask them to explain what's *actually* causing the *observed* increase in global temperatures over the last couple decades.
-More than half the increase has been created by dubious data adjustments to the temperature records. The satellite measurements (RSS and UAH) have not shown warming for the past 18+ years. Those data sets are not beeing adjusted to serve political purposes. Also the USCRN is the USA best temperature measurement system. No adjustments needed or allowed because of pristine rural sites (no urban heat island warming or airport temp readings). ANd it shows for its entire 10 year history - NO warming in the USA at all.
Do that, and then we can have a reasoned conversation on the topic. And it's a conversation I'd love to have, truly, because frankly things are looking pretty bleak, and the only contrarian voices I've heard have been from self-important crackpots and heavily vested interests (and their lab-coated puppets).
-Things are not looking bleak, hurricanes and tornado are down for flat. A little warming is good for people, and CO2 is an essential plant nutrient, so plants the basis of life on earth are thriving, including crop production. The sea level is rising, but it has been for thousands of years since the last ice age, and our tide gauges show for the past hundreds of years. A slow few mm/year with NO signs of acceleration.
The bleak part is the UN and Obama trying to ram draconian energy restrictions down our throat, destroying the industrial economy of the US. And asking for billions of "climate reparations" from developed countries for the UN wealth redistribution program. That is bleak !