And speaking of Senator James Inhofe, many of our new readers might not be familiar with Inhofeโs communications director Marc Morano. DeSmogBlog used to cover Moranoโs activities a lot closer until his bossโs fall from grace as the chair of the powerful Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.
So why am I bringing up Morano again if he is now nothing more than a spin-doctor for a low-ranking political dinosaur?
Well, because itโs almost time for this yearโs Society of Environmental Journalistโs National Conference. A conference that last year saw Morano received way too much attention for his bossโs โcontroversialโ viewpoint. You can check here (podcast) for more details on what transpired. In a nutshell, Morano challenged members of the SEJ to a panel debate on the mediaโs coverage of climate change.
Rising to the challenge were NYUโs Dan Fagan, ABC Newsโs Bill Blakemore and NY Times reporter Andrew Revkin.
To be fair to Morano, it took a lot of guts to get up on stage to square off against the likes of a senior journalist like Revkin. But the entire discussion was a gong show and really didnโt accomplish much other than entertaining us all on a Thursday night.
The only thing it may have accomplished is raising the profile of a spin-doctor whose boss refuses to accept the realities of human-induced climate change, despite the lack of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Itโs one year later, and the scientific realities of global warming are even stronger, making Morano and Inhofeโs point-of-view considerably more out of sync with reality.
This year, I hope the SEJ organizers do not delve into the fantastical world of Inhofe and Morano, and we can spend our Thursday night instead talking about things that matter around the issue of climate change.
