Yet global warming skeptics continue to infiltrate media outlets as mainstream and reputable as PBS'
"The NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer, which failed to acknowledge the industry ties of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, while giving the group a free pass to call Gore's film "alarmist." One of the most widely read critiques of the science in the film has come from longtime climate-change skeptic Robert C. Balling Jr., a professor of climatology at Arizona State University, who has received more than $400,000 from the coal and oil industries, according to the
Center for Media and Democracy. On the industry-backed Web site
Tech Central Station, Balling posted a purported
fact-check of the film titled "Inconvenient Truths Indeed," which charges that the movie is "not the most accurate depiction of the state of global warming science," casting doubts on its claims about melting glaciers and intensifying hurricanes. The article has made the rounds of the right-wing blogosphere as a takedown of Gore, and the Philadelphia Daily News published it as an Op-Ed without any acknowledgement of Balling's well-documented ties to industry.