Truth melts down.

ITEM: A release from the United Nations on November 8 reported." "The Arctic climate is warming rapidly, much larger changes are in store due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases from human activity and the global impact such as rising sea levels will be 'staggering,' presenting one of the most serious threats to humankind."

Mr. Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Program, also "praised Russia's recent decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change as an important step in the international fight to check global warming...."

BETWEEN THE LINES: A confluence of influences helps sell global warming as an imminent disaster. But upon scrutiny, "global warming" doesn't warrant the attention it has been receiving.

Consider Russia's recent ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Even the Russian Academy of Sciences concluded there was no scientific basis for the agreement. President Vladimir Putin admitted it was "scientifically flawed." So why ratify? Well, Putin went along with the game after the leaders of the European Union promised to support Moscow's entry into the World Trade Organization, the BBC reported. When the treaty takes effect, Moscow will be able to start selling its "emission credits" to Europe, raking in perhaps $5 billion annually. As Dr. Fred Singer of the Science & Environmental Policy Project has noted, that income transfer will come from European taxpayers, "households and industries that consume electricity."

While the mass media crank up horror stories (e.g., the Washington Post says warming "could cause polar bears to go extinct"), they largely ignore potential treaty implementation costs, including nearly five million lost U.S. jobs. Even the Clinton administration estimated Kyoto's burden at up to $338 billion (in 1992 dollars).

Kyoto's negatives get short shrift. A study by the Media Research Center's Free Market Project--covering network news broadcasts between Jan. 20, 2001 and Sept. 30, 2004--found that only one of 165 stories even mentioned that the U.S. Senate had voted unanimously, 950, against any global warming treaty that does not include commitments on the part of developing nations such as China and India on the grounds that these countries would gain a large economic advantage. Valid scientific objections to global warming theories, of which there are many, have been covered less often by the media than pro-global warming theories by a six-to-one ratio, and the huge costs of the protocol were only mentioned in passing in two stories.

The media distort the negative ramifications of global warming because shocking news gets the public's attention. Scientists release dire threats of global warming for self-serving reasons as well. Global-warming distortions are the subject of a well-written and fact-filled new book, Meltdown, by Patrick Michaels, a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. Therein he demolishes literally hundreds of myths. Michaels also details how the United Nations hyperbolizes wildly. Its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, "prefers to play up the possibility of disastrous climate change," as do those seeking grants. Asks the author, "What worker-bee scientist is going to write a proposal saying that global warming is exaggerated and he doesn't need the money? Certainly no one wanting advancement in the agency!"