by Alan Caruba

About the author: Alan Caruba is a business and science writer. He is the founder of the National Anxiety Center, which monitors the media for scare campaigns.

Apocalyptic predictions are always a sure bet to capture the public imagination. And because seizing the public’s attention is one of the media’s driving goals, such predictions are often in the news.

This is certainly true of the environmentalist movement. Since its advent in the 1970s, the movement has generated countless headlines about global warming, disappearing ozone and forests, and dire health threats posed by asbestos, radon, and even water.

The Manipulation of the Media

In the United States and around the world, people are highly dependent on the media but are also particularly vulnerable when the information is inaccurate. Few editors and reporters have...