Best press release in a while comes from The Israel Project:  “Israeli Climatologists Available for Comment on Hurricane Dean and Climate Change Developments.”

No doubt these experts been ready to talk about these type of phenomena ever since the Red Sea divided.

All the comments in the post below about the April 1975 Newsweek article on global cooling reminds this old hand of that great joke told by rowdy economists: If you put one foot in the freezer and one foot in the refrigerator, on the average you’re comfortable.

Jeff Jacoby has this fascinating opening in today’s Boston Globe:

Introducing Newsweek’s Aug. 13 cover story on global warming “denial,” editor Jon Meacham brings up an embarrassing blast from his magazine’s past: an April 1975 story about global cooling, and the coming ice age that scientists then were predicting. Meacham concedes that “those who doubt that greenhouse gases are causing significant climate change have long pointed to the 1975 Newsweek piece as an example of how wrong journalists and researchers can be.” But rather than acknowledge that the skeptics may have a point, Meacham dismisses it.

You’ll want to click here to read the whole piece. It’s worth it.

Turns out, that April 1975 Newsweek is getting passed around more than a cheap metaphor at the end of a sentence. Newsbusters captured Dennis Miller parading it on Jay Leno last year:

“Now this whole article is about the cooling world and you can see over here where they’ve got a chart where the temperature of the planet is dropping off and down here at the bottom is my favorite part. I’ve starred it. It says the solution to the global cooling problem is to deliberately melt the polar ice caps. Now this is like 30 years ago, this what we believed. Now we’ve changed — and I’m not saying that maybe in the year 2036 it doesn’t go back in the other way — I just don’t think we control it like we think we do.”

Personally, I like Miller’s interpretation of the article better than Meacham’s.

We learn this about New York:

Governor Eliot Spitzer Friday signed legislation requiring that automobile manufacturers affix “global warming index” stickers to new cars and passenger trucks beginning in the 2010 model year.

Fair enough.  Then we see this:

The index will be based on emissions of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to warming temperatures worldwide, in addition to methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

In other words, they’re basing the index on New Jersey.

Big media outlets are uniquely situated to define the terms of political language — how issues are framed, how people and events are defined.

Which makes this item in today’s Howard Kurtz ever so intriguing:

NBC and its cable networks devoted a total of 35 hours of air time Saturday to the Live Earth concerts, organized by Al Gore to call attention to what he calls a global warming “crisis.”
The worldwide series of concerts, featuring 150 artists from Madonna to Red Hot Chili Peppers, was also designed to raise money for the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit group chaired by the former vice president. Commercials aired at a reduced rate.
Doesn’t this strike a discordant note? Wasn’t NBC, whose news division covers the debate over climate change, providing a huge platform for advocates on one side of a contentious issue? And isn’t the network helping a prominent Democrat — who granted “Today” an interview last week in which he was asked again about his presidential ambitions — raise money?
Dan Harrison, an NBC senior vice president, does not back away from the message. He calls the Gore effort “an initiative we believe in,” including parent company General Electric. “I really don’t think climate change is a political issue,” Harrison says.
Really?
“Everyone agrees it’s happening. If it’s a political issue, it’s whether the political will exists to address that change. We know we need to do something, and this is a way to heighten awareness.”

Will be curious to see if next summer’s political conventions likewise get 35 combined hours of coverage each day.

We learn that one of the bands performing in Al Gore’s Live Earth concert in DC is a funk-rock band from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada.  The band is called The Breaking Wind.

The Breaking Wind?  Clearly a cheap knock-off of these giants:

Republican Rep. Bob Inglis’ fourth congressional district in South Carolina features a significant investment from BMW — the huge Zentrum factory in Spartanburg, where 4500 workers produce more than 100,000 BMW vehicles a year,

Inglis, the ranking member of the Energy & Environment Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, advocates the “Hydrogen Economy” and is a founding member of the House Hyrdogen and Fuel Cell Caucus.  All that dovetails well with the new BMW Hydrogen 7, a luxury performance sedan featured at Zentrum.

So it’s no surprise that in its new issue, BMW Magazine spotlights Inglis, including a full-page photo of him wading knee-deep into a BMW pool  (don’t worry: his trousers are rolled up at the knees) with this caption: “Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) stands by BMW while they help lead the way to a healthy, clean Hydrogen Future.”

But what might surprise some is this headline over a story about a Republican: “The Convert on Global Warming.”  And these Inglis quotes:

• “Human beings are a substantial cause of global warming.”
• “I shouldn’t be able to do something on my land that can do harm to my neightbor’s land.”
• Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” is “compelling”

Further proof that all politics is local — and looks real sharp in a sporty BMW.

Jack Tapper brings back the harsh 1992 memories with this anecdote at the end of his Al Gore story at ABCNews.com today:

After Random House published 200,000 copies of “Putting People First: How We Can All Change America” — the soporific campaign tome purportedly written by then-Gov. Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Al Gore — the ill-fated re-election campaign of then-President George H.W. Bush filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Republicans alleged that the book deal constituted an illegal corporate contribution to the Democratic ticket, which didn’t directly profit financially from the book though the publicity certainly didn’t hurt. How quaint that book must now seem to those Republicans.

Quick question: If you like your presidential candidates saying “global warming,” would you have appreciated more the April 26 Democratic debate or the May 3 Republican debate?

Likewise, if you prefer your presidential candidates saying “climate change” instead, would the Democratic or Republican debate be more to your liking?

The results — and the rhetoric — might surprise you.

April 26 Democrats:

• Hillary Clinton:  “I believe America is ready now for universal health care. It is ready for a new energy policy. It is ready to deal with global climate change.”
• John Edwards:  “On the issue of climate change, we ought to cap carbon emissions in the United States.”
• Bill Richardson: “I would have a major initiative on climate change.”
• Dennis Kucinich: “I think it’s important that we move away from global warming and global warring.”

May 3 Republicans:

• Duncan Hunter:  “Global warming and the need to be energy-independent gives us a great opportunity.”
• John McCain and Jim Gilmore both mentioned “energy independence.” 
• Mike Huckabee split the difference:  “The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists.”

It’s been far too long since Whac-a-mole made a White House appearance.

Fortunately, just like that dastardly gopher in ”Caddyshack,” the mole popped out of the hole today.

And for Dana Perino at today’s White House press briefing, it was a Cinderella Story:

Q   Does the President believe the tone is appropriate here, sharp words from this podium, sharp words from Senator Reid? Can that help get anything done?

MS. PERINO: Look, far be it from us to let us be “Whac-a-Mole,” and get whacked about the head and not respond.

Perino also used the waterhose when talking about Sheryl Crow and Laurie David nagging Karl Rove over global warming:

PERINO: We have big climate change challenges ahead of us, and I just wish that they would channel some of that Hollywood energy into something constructive, rather than baseless finger pointing.

It’s in the hole!  It’s in the hole!