what would happen if....?

If the US media does derive any power and wealth from climate change denial then I hope that it will find other ways to generate money and influence, post-Bush. The world is waiting for the new administration to set America on course for environmental leadership, emissions reductions, energy efficiency and a low carbon economy.

First off, I'm going to disagree with Dana about the media. Journalism is supposed to be balanced. What he's saying, essentially, is that they're doing their job. Good. The general social and political climate, however, given 9-11, the Bush Administration, and many other factors, means people have become a skeptical lot. They want a smoking gun, they want in-your-face evidence.

In the process of deregulation and mergers, our media definitely lost something precious. They backed off, hid under the rug, abrogated their responsibilities to some extent by being slow to react to a number of issues, AGW climate change included. If the media 'changed their minds,' as you put it, the public would largely ignore it at this point. If the about-to-be elected President sets a different tone -- which I believe the public wants, overall -- people might again become more interested in such issues, and more open-minded in examing the facts. They might be able to accept a powerful theory like AGW without needed the hard evidence that simply can't be provided at this point. At least, not to the satisfaction of many.

People nowadays rely on a generally poor array of news sources. After the recent debate, I watched the commentary on PBS before switching over to ABC, NBC, CBS. I made sure I watched Bill Maher last night -- Garry Shandling was a hoot -- to get their spin. But fewer people are reading newspapers, more people are getting information from fewer sources or from sources owned by media giants.

The media is powerful, all right, but there's more in play than just that anymore. I think Americans are in some sort of a free fall in regards to the media and news. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I'm trying to stay informed, and to do what I can to inform others.

Well the reality about the media is that they create an anti-AGW bias. The media wants to be 'fair and balanced' about everything, so whenever they talk about AGW, they have to talk about skeptics, or when they interview a climate scientist they have to interview a 'skeptic'. So even though they comprise a small percentage of the climate science community, they get a significant percentage of the air time, which creates the false impression that there's significant debate among scientists.

The media is doing us a disservice by creating this false bias in attempting to be unbiased.

Agree 100% with Dana1981 above. In the UK, too, there was some debate about whether the BBC was being impatial enough. Now they have to be very careful about what they say so it's like self censorship.("Don't mention Global Warming")

First explain what welath is, then maybe I can come up with some kind of answer.

Unfortunately you are almost exactly 180 out from the truth. The mass media is one of three economic/political groups financing and promoting this pogrom to achieve their leaders political dream before he dies of old age.