Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

It is almost too nice a spring day outside to be sitting in front of a computer writing a column, but there are a few things I have to say today besides talking about watching the revolutionary garden grow.

The tomatoes, collards, green beans and corn are coming up fine and will help offset the rising food prices this summer in Bush’s recessionary world.

But that’s not all that’s going on in the world, not that you would know it by reading the corporate news media and watching the public relations that passes for news on the local television airwaves.

The state of the economy seems to be affecting the news media as it often does in hard times. It is becoming harder and harder to find real news stories worth reading even in the national papers. Every news organization in the country is still talking about the Reverend Wright today, even as presidential candidate Barack Obama went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” for the full hour this morning and still sounded like the smartest, most reasonable candidate in the race.

While Senator John McCain continued to support Bush’s surge this week and made a strange appearance in Selma, Alabama last week, as if any African-Americans were ever going to vote for him, Hillary Clinton was showing her support for Israel with language much like Bush when she talked about “obliterating” Iran if they ever launch a nuclear attack on the Jewish state.

Of course what the American masses who barely keep up may not realize is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and will most likely never obtain one. Dick Cheney and the Israeli military will see to that - if Bush doesn’t send in the U.S. Air Force soon and start World War III.

Obama pointed that out for Tim Russert, who just had to raise the issue - even though he should know better.

Even Brian Williams, the anchor and managing editor of NBC’s “Nightly News,” pointed out in a blog column the other day that the New York Times circulation is down and said this:

“I must admit that on Sundays it becomes a tough paper to figure out. While (last) week’s paper featured an op-ed piece by Elizabeth Edwards bemoaning the lack of serious, in-depth coverage of the political race, it’s tough to figure out exactly what readers the paper is speaking to, or seeking.”

What Times Is It?

I’ve been wondering that myself, since I check out the Times Website a couple of times a day looking to see if they might be breaking another story on the illegal surveillance program being run by the Bush administration - or something. The paper is credited with breaking a big story on that back in 2005, even though we had been talking about it on the blogs already, but where is the followup?

The Washington Post has done some fairly interesting stories of late, especially Dana Milbank in his “Washington Sketch” column, which by the way is online only and not in the print edition of the newspaper. Here are a couple of examples.

Anniversary of ‘Mission Accomplished’ Draws Laughs

The Incredible Shrinking Presidency of George W. Bush

The fare was so weak today I turned to The Nation magazine, where at least I found this:

Our Lapdog Media

But even that is not as strong as what you can sometimes find here at the little old Locust Fork Journal, when we have the resources and the motivation to go out and find the good stories.

I mean the Birmingham News is focusing all it’s guns on going after another African-American Democrat these days, the poor new mayor of Birmingham, instead of focusing its investigative attentions perhaps on a big story like why Birmingham has some of the most polluted air in the country. Was that story on the front page? Of course not. It’s “bad news,” not PR or manufactured news designed to bash Democrats.

Birmingham in Top Eight Polluted Cities

I mean we know what causes the bad air, mainly Alabama Power’s coal-fired power plants, along with the lack of an automobile inspection program that would help get the old polluting cars and pickup trucks off the roads. But I guess all that Alabama Power advertising money keeps them focused on things like doing the PR for the State Troopers in their “Take Back the Highways” campaign to keep drunks off the road (and everybody else who might like to have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner out at a restaurant).

If the local press had put as much effort into investigating the causes of the bad air and potential solutions as they do drunk driving, we could have already solved the problem.

Here’s a simple suggestion no one in the press or the presidential race has thought about. What if every car on the road and every house in the suburbs had a white roof? That would reflect sun light back into the atmosphere like the glaciers that are now melting due to global warming.

And what if the federal and state governments switched the tax incentives to putting solar cells on houses instead of investing in oil exploration and bio-fuels, which is one of the major factors leading to high food prices.

If you are also disgruntled with the fare in the newspapers or TV news stations and want to help us chase those headlines and investigative reports, please consider making a donation today. You will be glad you did.

Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or “stand accountable before history for their failure to act.”

“We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,” Gore said in his acceptance speech.

Gore shared the Nobel with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for sounding the alarm over global warming and spreading awareness on how to counteract it

AP: Gore Gets Nobel Prize, Warns of Ominous Global Warming Threat

Al Gore’s Nobel Lecture as the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for 2007

by Glynn Wilson

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., April 13 - What will it take to make the American people wake up and actually do something to reverse climate change due to global warming caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels for energy?

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Sheryl Crow rocks a UAB crowd and preaches on the dangers of global warming.

It would be like preaching to the choir to tell you all, dear journal readers, what it is going to take. If you’ve found this Website and follow it regularly, you already know that we’ve written about it and posted headlines ad nauseam on the subject. As I told a few people at the “Stop Global Warming” virtual tour event Friday night at UAB, I’ve been writing about the issue since the 1970s.

But since no other media outlet in Alabama is doing anything on the subject, it might be worth telling a story about someone who is rich and famous and in the music business, since the American Idol craze has swept Birmingham into a music frenzy in recent years.

The problem is, the people of the Birmingham area are more likely to hear about the issue from a religious nut weatherman such as James Spann of ABC 33/40, who somehow still has his job after making national news recently with his claim that there is no such thing as global warming. He still claims that global warming has nothing to do with creating more violent storms like Hurricane Katrina.

Remember the “it’s all cyclical argument?”

There’s only one fact Mr. Spann needs to know to change his mind, and it’s right there in his weather data. The warmer the ocean water in the path of a hurricane, the stronger the storm will become before making landfall. When Katrina hit the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi on the morning of August 29, 2005, temperature readings showed the warmest water in the Gulf of Mexico ever recorded during a hurricane. So Katrina’s eye wound tighter and faster as it approached land, making it into what real weather experts call “a perfect storm.”

If she had not veered east going up the Mississippi River on that fateful morning, there may have been nothing at all left of New Orleans. Instead, Katrina’s main wrath wiped out the less populated Mississippi coast and simply broke the levees protecting New Orleans, creating the flood that will go down in history. New Orleans will never fully recover from that trauma, no matter what the politicians say.

Will other American cities have to be destroyed before people wake up?

Someone in the audience asked Sheryl Crow how she first became aware of and involved in environmental issues.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Sheryl Crow singin’ sweet at UAB

If you’ve followed her life and career at all, you may know that she moved from St. Louis to LA in the late 1980s, and jump started her music career with the Tuesday Night Music Club, where she met Don Henley, the drummer, singer-songwriter for The Eagles.

In 1990 Henley founded the Walden Woods Project to help protect Walden Pond from development. The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods was started in 1998 to provide for research and education on arguably America’s first naturalist, environmental writer, Henry David Thoreau.

Ms. Crow said Henley had a major influence on her and she’s been involved ever since.

So earlier this year, Crow hooked up with LA producer Laurie David, now famous as the producer of Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and went on the road drawing crowds at universities across the country to try to jump start the movement against global warming among college students.

“This is the most important movement of our time,” Ms. Crow said on a break from the music to have a dialogue with the crowd of about 500 at the Bartow Arena.

While Ms. Crow helps draw a crowd with her music and celebrity, there is a concrete message there about what people can do to make a difference, from using energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs to driving hybrid cars - and pressuring the university administration to get onboard the green campaign.

In her presentation to the crowd, Laurie David indicated the University of Alabama at Birmingham was chosen as a stop on the tour because it scores high on the use of carbon and because it is the largest employer in Alabama with 35,000 faculty, staff and students.

“Imagine what you could accomplish here,” Ms. David said. “We are asking people to make a change. This is going to impact everyone. The science is all there. This is a problem that is happening now.”

“And this is not ‘belief.’ It is a fact,” Ms. David said in response to a question about the contradictory information being put out by weathermen like James Spann and other mainstream media outlets, who report more on the controversial nature of the subject than the facts about it.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Sheryl Crow “getting down” on the accordian at UAB

Like I always say, “It’s philosophy 101. There are matters of opinion. And matters of fact.”

Too bad public opinion in America these days is driven more by beliefs than facts. Maybe some people will believe Sheryl Crow even if they don’t believe Al Gore or a major consensus of scientists.

Ms. Crow played acoustic guitar, bass and accordion and sang five songs in all, including her own hits, “A Change Will Do You Good,” “Every Day Is a Winding Road” and “Soak Up the Sun.” She also sang the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out.”

Ms. Crow said she will have a new album out in the fall with one song about global warming.

“It’s a sweet little rockin’ global warming song,” she said.

Maybe her story and appearance can inspire others to get involved, according to several members of the Black Warrior Riverkeepers environmental group, one of the best non-profit groups operating in Alabama. The group was instrumental in getting the Global Warming Tour to Birmingham - and signing up more than 5,000 people to get involved in the tour, the most of any local organization in the country, according to Black Warrior Riverkeeper founder David Whiteside.

To get involved, head on over to the StopGlobalWarming.Org Tour Website and sign up. Hey, it’s your world too. Don’t just sit there. Do something…

Academy Award winner and former Vice President Al Gore blasted the mainstream media’s coverage of global warming and climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels at a media ethics discussion on Tuesday.

He said there are many reasons why world leaders aren’t doing more about global warming, “but one of the principal reasons in my view is more than half of the mainstream media have rejected the scientific consensus implicitly.

“They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen balance as bias,” he said. “I don’t think that any of the editors or reporters responsible for one of these stories saying, ‘It may be real, it may not be real,’ is unethical. But I think they made the wrong choice, and I think the consequences are severe.”

Read the fuill story from the Tennessean here.