Last year on Earth Day, we were treated to a full-page homage piece that honored the environmentalist cabal.

The author of that Times-Union article was a freelancer, who according to Reader Advocate Wayne Ezell, has neither educational credentials in science nor much environmental expertise.

The article quoted extensively from The Union of Concerned Scientists, which is an ultra-left lobbying organization.

The article had numerous errors that were not corrected, even after bitter complaints to Ezell.

I have had 83 e-mail contacts with the reader advocate for this paper and over a dozen phone calls complaining about lack of balance on global warming stories in this paper and numerous contacts with the newspaper's top management.

I have sent over 100 articles and studies of major scientists to Ezell, debunking global warming theory, several of which were members or reviewers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, claiming rank fraud and lack of scientific foundation or scientific methodology.

Yet, the management see nothing wrong with the Times-Union's coverage. The public opinion polls of the media range anywhere from 9 to 19 percent favorable. An F starts at 69 percent.

This paper is representative of what is wrong in journalism today. We are seeing a modern day rebirth of the old yellow dog journalism.

The media have adopted codes of ethics; the principal one can be found at The Society of Professional Journalists' Web site. In those codes, journalists are not supposed to adopt an advocacy position. They are also obligated to tell both sides of the story accurately and fairly. This is clearly not happening.

As an example of the environmental fraud, I call your attention to a new environmentalist commercial touted by Al Gore titled Black Balloons. It can be found by going to this link.

This commercial claims through TV animation, black balloons being filled up at different household appliances and the voice-over by Tommie Lee Jones that the balloons represent 2 ounces of carbon dioxide. Those balloons then pop free from the appliance and float out of the window and into the air, joining thousands of other black balloons floating up into the sky. It is slickly done and a good visual commercial. The commercial is an absolute fraud.

Those balloons were filled with a lighter-than-air gas, helium. Carbon dioxide is a heavier-than-air gas with a specific gravity of 1.52, which means that it is 152 percent heavier than air. This is part of the fatal flaw of global warming theory. It is a theory based upon flawed computer modeling rather than the scientific method.

Carbon dioxide sinks to the ground rather than rising into the atmosphere when released. In fact, scientists tell us that they measure 380 parts per million in the atmosphere; 380 parts per million is actually a fractional equivalent of 38/100,000ths of 1 percent.

We have the news claiming that most scientists agree on human-caused global warming. For example, The Union of Concerned Scientists, which is mostly made up of activists rather than scientists, claims 1,600 member scientists.

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine has over 17,000 certified signatures of scientists, climatologists and meteorologists who dissent.

We have had several member scientists and professional reviewers claiming scientific fraud on the part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We have other member scientists who claim that it is not peer reviewed and that there are only 300 comments listed, while others who dissent are rejected with no reason.

We have had other scientists, including a piece in The Wall Street Journal, being bullied and threatened with pulling of scientific credentials or research grants if they don't sign on to the environmentalist cabal.

The scientific method is being rejected out of hand. Instead, the environmentalists are claiming "consensus." Scientists from around the world are coming out with multiple major flaws and errors in Gore's schlocumentary.

And it is a dirty little secret that for the last eight years, not only have we not had any warming, but we are in the midst of a cooling cycle.

Finally, we are told that the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting precipitously. In fact, it has gained 268 feet of ice since 1945. There is much more, but I am only allowed 750 words here.

John Wilder of Jacksonville is a freelance writer.