Didn't we reach the point weeks ago

where everyone who had thought environmentalism would seize the public imagination because of the film "The Day After Tomorrow" got embarrassed and started to act as though they always knew the film was a preposterous summer disaster romp? Yet here's an AP piece printed today, about a serious, scientific UN report on the high rate at which the earth's land is turning to desert, that ends with the sentence: "The warning comes as a controversial movie, 'The Day After Tomorrow' is whipping up interest in climate change, and as rivers and lakes dry up in the American West, giving Americans a taste of what's to come elsewhere." Is the AP really that slow on the uptake, or do they think their readers are incapable of absorbing any scientific information that isn't sugared with pop culture references?