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Article: Looking past El Nino.(Editorial)
- Article from:
- World Watch
- Article date:
- September 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Worldwatch Institute. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Children, one old aphorism had it, should be seen and not heard. Quaint as this view may seem today, it befits the mainstream media's treatment of one of the biggest babies to make headlines in recent years. To be sure, reporters witnessed - and recorded with religious fervor - the Christ Child, or El Nino, of 1997-98. But were they really listening to it?
Most press were not immediately converted to the cause of El Nino. When a succession of prominent scientists began - as early as the summer of 1997 - to warn that the phenomenon could become one of the century's largest, some cast them as preachers of the apocalypse. Others, impatient with its initial mildness, ...