If anyone has a tape of the session, perhaps the question of whether it was my brain misfiring or a writer misquoting can be cleared up. Please let me know at dotearth@nytimes.com .

What’s most important, though, is simply getting the ideas right. For clarity’s sake, here’s my view on who to quote in what kinds of stories (as I’ve recommended in two book chapters on climate, environment, and the media, one of which is free online here):

When I’m reporting on climate science, I interview scientists who are focused on the specific questions in play (sea ice, biodiversity shifts, etc.) and I avoid anyone, PhD or no PhD, with a paid affiliation or agenda (whether libertarian or green, Cato or WWF).

But when i am writing on climate policy, essentially everyone has a legitimate voice.

For instance they are not permitted to report– there has been no net global warming in the last 10 years. Why not? Because this news is like reporting there were no drive-by shootings in Boston last night. Bad news sells papers. Good news does not.

But we must be made aware of the complete story on global warming; not just what the media puts out for our consumption. Otherwise how are we going to make the proper decisions on how our limited resources are to be spent. We could spend billions to bury all CO2 coming out of smoke stacks only to find out that this did not do a bit of good. Do not get me wrong, turning down one’s thermostat or putting in fluorescent light bulbs are fine for those who choose to do so. They will save themselves money. But putting a tax on CO2 emissions from all smoke stacks and exhaust pipes makes no sense. It only results in increased costs to us for our energy and transportation needs.

So what I recommend is a self study course to augment what we have learned from the media about global warming. The first reading assignment is listed below:

Antarctic is getting colder http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/print.php?extend.48.1

Arctic ice melts in the summer, So? http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history

Polar Bears on Thin Ice: Not Really: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba551/

Sea level is not rising: http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf

Where Humans Live, Coral fails: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23031708-12377,00.html

Natures Thermostat: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

IPCC Models are wrong;
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=22604

And so what if the temperature rises a bit? Won’t life actually get better? Won’t their be fewer deaths from hypothermia? Won’t crops grow better?

My training as an engineer made me skeptical from the start …. and after reading the actual IPCC reports and the “Exectutive Summary” along with certain “interpretations” of the words - some of which you used in your article - I have become more and more skeptical. GE wants us to go green and buy more expensive light bulbs (possibly a good idea), Toyota wants us to go green and buy more expensive automobiles (possibly a good idea), Al Gore wants us to go green and trade Carbon Credits through his companies ….. along with a whole host of other industries that are jumping on the bandwagon - including China - and in pretty much every case there is a profit motive behind their actions.

I am now more skeptical than ever.

Is the climate changing? Of course it is. It always does.

Is it a bad thing?

Call me back in 50 to 100 years or so.

But before you do, ask where your next meal is coming from, and whether it will kill you.

The media now is controlled by just a few corporations like the AP, Reuters, News Corp, GE etc. The editors in the news room decide the theme of the news, thus creating the Zeitgeist for the age, now the current theme is Global Warming. In the recent past, the themes have been terrorism, H5-N1 Bird Flu, suit case nukes, and the list goes on and on and on. I wish that I could point to a golden era of media, but all other previous eras have been even worse than the current era. Yes, now the mainstream news is in the hands of even fewer individuals than in the past, but thanks to the Internet people are now able to get their news from a variety of sources including independent websites and blogs created by random individuals with varieties of backgrounds and experiences. The science for and against Anthropogenic Global Warming are readily available at the click of a mouse.

The simplest case to understand is the case for AGW. CO2 is a global warming gas. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere should make the atmosphere warmer. What else do you need to know?

After spending a few summers in Dallas, Texas, I became a believer in Global Warming. Dallas is hot mother of a city, and on hot days the ozone caused by fuel exhaust is miserable, the traffic is always terrible, and I figured that when I died and went to hell it would look a lot like a Dallas freeway in August. I used my hatred of the Dallas heat and traffic jams to conclude that Global Warming must be true. Obviously this was not a very scientific argument, but it suited me for many years until I became curious enough to really look at the science of the issue.

Most likely, i never would have had the curiosity to look into the issue, if it did not seem to me that the media was making such a hard sell, and generating so much outright propaganda and lies about the issue of Global Warming that my bullshit buzzer started to go off. After my BS buzzer went off, then I felt obliged to take a serious look at the skeptics point of view, and the fact is that I had to learn a lot more science to understand the skeptics, but after I get through with all of the homework involved, I realized that had a much stronger case and that’s the reason that both sides of this issue are not presented, because the Global Warming people would lose.

Since my initial interest in Global Warming I have stayed current on the science, and it seems that the World is currently headed towards a cooling period and is in fact already in a cooling period, yet the media once again either fails to report on this phenomenon instead preferring to report on the Global Warming theme, although Global Warming is not happening right now, Global Cooling is. So if I wanted to learn more about the terrible cold in China this year, all of the news reports mention something about AGW too, same thing with the Floods in Australia, South America, the heavy rain fall in the Sahara, or the terrible cold in the mid west.

The science that says CO2 is causing Global Warming is anything but “rock solid” and more likely weak as a wet tissue. It only exists in computer models and does not exist in the real world at all. The Computer Models are nothing more than hypothesis’ and its up to empirical scientists in the field to present evidence to confirm these predictions, but the computer models fail the test, and after the media repeatedly cries wolf about all sorts of garbage that never come to pass that supposedly have all sorts of scientific backing, then why should we believe anything that they have to say now?