What sells in the media is the "either-or" situation. Example: Either global warming is happening or it is not. As a reporter you are essentially required to create a 50/50 controversy -- you have to make it seem as if the scientific community is split down the middle. Even if there are literally only 6 scientists who continue to publish papers denying global warming, as a reporter you are strongly "encouraged" to call them up and get the "other side of the issue."

This makes for an interesting pop science story, but it does the public no good.

Penn & Teller are doing the same thing, albeit with the bias against one side or the other. I don't mean to pick on them, because I do enjoy the show, but they advertise themselves as skeptics, identifying the bullshit masquerading as good science. How exactly was this accomplished in this episode? What exactly did they unmask as bullshit?

We see a government official -- oh, well obviously he's full of bullshit. He's from the government.
We see a "tree-hugger" -- obviously her information is full of bullshit because she's a flake.
We see a "former director of Greenpeace" -- someone with an obvious axe to grind AGAINST the movement, and yet he's NOT full of bullshit?

Americans seem to genuinely WANT to do the right thing. We just hear so much conflicting information about what the right thing is that it confuses us into inaction. Apathy is created out of confusion -- we don't act, because we don't know HOW to act. We've been convinced by the media that every issue is "either-or" and that scientists just don't know yet which side is right.

It's important for us to START understanding this either/or dichotomy is myth BECAUSE we're expected as a voting public to make decisions around science. Do we want to encourage our representatives to vote for or against the clean-air act, the endangered species act, etc. The Superconducting SuperCollider project got killed because the American public didn't understand the science -- yet we'd already spent a BILLION dollars on the project. A billion tax dollars now wasted. A billion tax dollars that could have been spent on veterans' health care or natural disaster cleanup.

Its preposterous to maintain that human beings do not effect climate and geography, diversity, etc. Its not an accident that many animals have gone extinct in the past few centuries, that the Earth's forests are being cut down and that the supplies of edible fish in the sea are "drying up". Its also pretty clear that the hole in the ozone around the South Pole was the result of too much freon and the resulting O3 in the atmosphere.

For some reason though, some people continue to believe that pumping millions of tons in CO2 into the atmosphere every year is having no effect on our climate...

That's why I said, "and most believe that it is atleast in part cause by humans". your right, the controversy isn't if it's happening, it's if it's caused by human activity. And most scientists believe it is, not because most scientists are liberals bent on doing anything possible to harm the economy, but because that is what most of the evidence points to. For example, one study showed that in the Southwest US, average temperature cycles happen in 7 day period. There is only one process that happens in 7 days period, i.e. the 7 day workweek. Of course there is lots more evidence than this I'm sure. Fact is if you talk to the experts, climatologists, they will tell you that the evidence is overwhelming that it the warming is atleast in part, a significant part, cause by humans.

Now there is a more pertinent, and less agreed upon controversey by scientists who do agree that global warming has a human element (of course whether global warming is happening because of humans isn't "agreed upon" by politicians mostly, not scientist, but most of the people who don't agree aren't scientists, they are dogmatic and ultra-conservative anti-environmentalists, using the weak support of a fringe group of scientists ) about what is the best way to adress the problem, and how vigorously we should attack global warming. The concern is that the more vigourously we attack globabl warming the more the economy will respond negatively. The cost-benefit analysis isn't clear. That should be the controversy right now until the fringe group comes up with some strong counter-evidence to answer the strong evidence that global warming is caused by humans, something they've failed to produce, and have therfore resorted to hyberbole.