Wildfires

In a report on the Arizona wildfires on Tuesday's NBC Today, correspondent Miguel Almaguer touted how "The Forest Service says this historic wildfire season is caused in part by climate change." After promoting that politically charged claim, Almaguer declared that Senator John McCain had created a "firestorm" by noting that illegal immigrants have contributed to past wildfires.

At the top of the show, co-host Ann Curry proclaimed: "Heated controversy. A debate blows up over John McCain blaming some wildfires in Arizona on illegal border-crossers." Later, she framed an interview with McCain this way: "Now to more on that controversial comment by Arizona Senator John McCain....We spoke to the Senator earlier this morning. We began by asking him if he was trying to use this current tragedy for a political purpose."

Last winter, as blizzard snowfalls piled up into several feet in the nation's capital, conservatives mocked global warming alarmists for trying to link weather incidents to global warming. But as summer heat waves, volcanoes and sinkholes have appeared recently, climate alarmists proved they missed the point.

A top Obama administration scientist attacked global warming skeptics during the winter by pointing out that "weather is not the same thing as climate." ABC's Bill Blakemore argued the same thing in order to defend the existence of manmade global warming on Jan. 8, 2010.

But Associated Press, USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post have all promoted a connection between the extreme heat and weather around the world this summer and global warming. One CNN host asked if the events were the "apocalypse" or global warming. The Huffington Post proposed naming hurricanes and other disasters after climate change "deniers."

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

"Having given her sleight of hand stamp of approval to the birthers, Sarah Palin is now moving on to an almost equally popular far right mythology, climate change denial."

So began MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in his number one story on Wednesday's "Countdown."

"Getting her facts wrong and misrepresenting her record as governor of Alaska, again, not enough for Palin`s latest foray into opinion piece, this one for 'The Washington Post,'" said Olbermann. "So she went into full-on denial, climate change is all political mode."

The "Countdown" host then brought on the Nation's Chris Hayes who claimed that people who don't believe in manmade global warming are like folks who "argue that 9/11 was an inside job" (video embedded below the fold courtesy our friend Story Balloon, partial transcript with commentary):

Remember when the alarmists were taking the premise that anthropogenic global warming was more of a threat to the planet than just polar bears and penguins, but also sea levels and catastrophic weather patterns?

Jacob Weisberg, the editor in chief of the Slate Group and author of "The Bush Tragedy," presents seven things taken for granted that might not be completely correct in a column for the April 13 issue of Newsweek.

"A lot of premises have turned out to be wrong lately," Weisberg wrote. "I'm not talking about evanescent bits of conventional wisdom, but about overarching assumptions that were widely shared across the political spectrum."

On Thursday, ABC News took global warming hysteria to a new level.

After Chris Cuomo and Bob Woodruff previewed an upcoming environmental scare piece on "Good Morning America" as previously reported by my colleague Scott Whitlock, an article was posted at the network's website asking (emphasis added throughout):

Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?

Following this irresponsibly alarmist opening paragraph, the article continued:

This September, in Earth 2100, a dramatic ABC News 2-hour broadcast, the greatest minds across the globe will join together in a countdown to the year 2100 to tell us what we must do to survive the next century … And what may happen if we don't.

As Whitlock transcribed for your review Thursday, here were some of the key moments of hysteria on that morning's "GMA" (video available here):

As NewsBusters reported, ABC's "World News" aired a disturbing global warming hit piece on Sunday that disrespectfully attacked an esteemed scientist and emeritus professor, referring to his work as "fraudulent nonsense" that is "going to cost lives, and cause us lost species, and cost major economic damage around the world."

The subject of the report, Dr. S. Fred Singer, has been receiving well wishes of support from across the globe since this segment aired, including at ABC News's website where virtually all of the currently 128 comments submitted have been highly critical of this story and the way Singer was treated.

With this in mind, Singer has formally asked ABC for an apology and a retraction (presented with permission):

For years, climate realists have been wondering how the global warming alarmists would react when the planet actually cooled, albeit for an unknown amount of time.

With the winter of 2008 ushering in record-cold temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere -- following similar, albeit mostly unreported, weather in the Southern Hemisphere's 2007 winter -- it seems the resolve of the believers has been a bit weakened, to say the least.

Take for example Sunday's New York Times article by environment reporter Andrew C. Revkin entitled "Climate Skeptics Seize on Cold Spell" (emphasis added throughout):

Just when you thought the economic doom and gloom couldn't get any worse in the news, "Good Morning America" has determined recession is now causing arson.

"We have news this morning on the home foreclosure front, word that cash-strapped homeowners are taking desperate measures," ABC co-host Diane Sawyer said.

The February 11 "GMA" has determined "cash-strapped homeowners" are taking "desperate measures," that is they are burning down their homes to avoid foreclosure. That notion ABC's Bianna Golodryga based upon two isolated cases of anecdotal evidence.

One home supposedly burned because Sheryl Christman, a 38-year-old Michigan woman, was three days short of foreclosure. She pleaded no contest after the Sept. 1, 2007 arson. The other case was a Colorado arson where a man "may have" committed arson before an "imminent foreclosure."

Sam Champion hyperventilated about the threat of extreme weather on Monday's "Good Morning America" and, once again, ignored the leftist connections of two cited experts. Scientists Michael Oppenheimer and Daniel Schrag, both of whom have vigorously slammed Republicans in the past, appeared in the segment to warn that global warming would only continue to cause unusual weather patterns as long as greenhouse gases keep increasing.

GMA identified Oppenheimer simply by his connection as a scientist for Princeton University. However, he has previously slammed Republican disagreement about climate change as "uniformed rambling." In the piece, Schrag scarily warned, "It's hard to overstate how big a change [climate change] could be in the weather we experience every day." This is same man who, in a Boston Globe column from December 2006, smeared GOP Senator James Inhofe, then the Chair of a Senate environmental committee, for using skeptical witnesses that Schrag derided as "a gathering of liars and charlatans, sponsored by those industries who want to protect their profits." To further make the point, the article is entitled, "On a Swift Boat to a Warmer World."

In his "Final Word" on Sunday’s "Face the Nation" on CBS, host Bob Schieffer denounced a fake news conference held by FEMA officials in the wake of the California wildfires. Not content to just say the staged conference was a bad mistake, Schieffer decided to be as arrogant and condescending as possible:

The last time I was at Disney World, they had sticks of a certain height stuck in the ground with signs that said something like, `You must be this tall to ride this ride.' Well, FEMA, the disaster relief agency, must use a variation of that to hire its public relations staff. Somewhere on their employment application there must be a clause that says, `Your IQ must be below a certain level to work here.'

Here's a heart-rending story out of Iraq media will likely boycott or downplay: a group of Iraqi soldiers in a military camp east of Baghdad collected $1000 last week to send to folks in southern California affected by the recent wildfires.

Certainly not something an anti-war media will want to quickly share with the public, wouldn't you agree?

Yet, there it was Monday evening at CNN.com, amazingly filed by Barbara Starr, the correspondent that told Howard Kurtz three weeks ago why good news from Iraq shouldn't get reported (h/t NBer Prester John):

I don't want to sound heartless towards the many victims of the California wildfires, but this L.A. Times piece is just a sob story shilling for illegal alien sympathy!

Flames were only one worry for some illegal immigrants in the fire zone. Equally scary were the crowded roads and evacuation centers, heavy with law enforcement officers, including U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Some wondered if they would be deported if they went to shelters.

It gets even better. The ACLU is really trying to pull at the liberal heart-strings with ridiculous statements like this one:

Immigrant rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union, however, claim that authorities have created a climate of intimidation through neglect and such policies as asking for identification at some shelters.

According to the media website TV Week, "most TV news operations" deemed Arnold Schwarzenegger's grabbing of "Good Morning America" reporter Claire Shipman's hands during an interview to be "inappropriate." The exchange, which was first reported last Wednesday on NewsBusters, occurred after Shipman repeatedly tried to get the California governor to admit that some efforts to combat the state's wildfires were going poorly. At that point, the former actor seized the journalist's hands and proclaimed, "...You're looking for a mistake and you won't find it because it's all good news, as much as you maybe hate it, but it's good news." Apparently, Shipman found Schwarzenegger's actions "bizarre and amusing."

According to TV Week, the physical touching amounted to applying "force to a female reporter" and an attempt to "muscle" her. TV Week's Michele Greppi cited the MRC for highlighting the story: "The Media Research Center, founded by Brent Bozell to wage a war against liberal bias in journalism, posted a transcript of the interview....The headline was 'Arnold Grabs ABC’s Shipman, Demands: Stop Spinning Fire Coverage.'" TV Week also explained how the elite media reacted to the governor's grabbing. Greppi wrote, "At most TV news operations, the Schwarzenegger move was regarded as inappropriate on his part and smoothly handled on hers."

Leave it to the New York Times to portray illegal immigrants as the biggest victims of the wildfires. Try out this line from Glare of Fires Pulls Migrants From Shadows [emphasis added]:

There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,” said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. “It’s outrageous.”

Bonus points for "Mercedeses and Jaguars." Just wouldn't have been the same if people were fleeing in Fords.

Aren't they Grand?

On Wednesday's "Early Show," Harry Smith gushed over Bill and Hillary Clinton and how two "idealistic kids" transformed themselves into "political rock stars." Smith also took pains to point out that the Clintons are a "still-young couple." Over on ABC, Clinton-fan Kate Snow fawned over Bill and Hillary for being "masters at turning bad news into good." In general, she seemed to be impressed with the 2008 candidate's ability to spin the American public.

Global Warming: The Answer for Everything

NBC, predictably, kicked off the media blame game and assigned the cause of the California fires to, you guessed it, global warming. "Nightly News" host Brian Williams wondered, "Are these fires somehow a result of climate change?" CBS echoed a similar theme on "60 Minutes." CNN also used the tragedy in California to speculate about global warming. A CNN special, "Planet in Peril," which aired this week, failed to mention that one of the climate change scientists featured also happened to be funded by George Soros.

It’s “Attack the Insurance Companies, The Sequel,” for CNN.

Similar to criticism of insurance companies after Hurricane Katrina, the October 26 “American Morning” launched a similar assault against the business after the California wildfires – except this time, they’re starting early.

“[T]he California wildfires are leveling entire communities, leaving homeowners with nothing,” CNN “American Morning” host Kiran Chetry said. “But, what the fires don’t take, the insurance companies just might. A bad and costly situation for homeowners may have just gotten much worse.”

Business & Media Institute Director Dan Gainor appeared on the Fox Business Network October 25 to talk about business contributions to victims of the Southern California wildfires:

Every time there's a disaster, when we had Katrina and now with this disaster - [Businesses] immediately take out all the stops. Already I've seen at least $4 million contributed from charity from Wal-Mart, from Bank of America, from Disney, from Target, the business community steps up right away. When we had Katrina, there was like $70 million contributed within days ... and almost no coverage at all.

A few might be starting to catch on - CNN did mention contributions of Home Depot, MasterCard, Verizon, Sprint and Wells Fargo on the October 26 "American Morning."

Video (1:41): Real (2.12 MB) or Windows (6.11 MB) or MP3 (607 KB)

Fresh off her recent assault in which many suspect the culprit to have been 14 Bloody Marys, Air America radio talk host Randi Rhodes has now wandered into Moonbat conspiracy territory with her suggestion that Blackwater was the the cause of the current wildfires in California. Here is a partial transcript (audio available here) of what Randi said on the air on Wednesday:

I started just doing Google searches to try and figure out. You know, arson, arson, it was like crazy trying to figure out why is that being downplayed? Why is that, you know, just a small part of the story? And you know, every time I look for it what comes up, believe it or not, is that Blackwater wants to move to San Diego and build this giant complex in San Diego right where most of the evacuations are taking place and you know.

You just know wherever there is fire, this administration will be out there doing what it does best and that is fanning the flames, you know. It just spooks me, I can’t explain to you how creepy this whole thing is that you know, you’ve got these fires. Some of them are thought to be the work of arsonists and in the same breath you’ve got a community that’s on fire that just recently protested Blackwater West. Just recently said no to Blackwater and apparently you don’t do that.

Cheap shot of the night, a gratuitous reference to President George W. Bush's 2005 “you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie,” remark about then-FEMA Director Michael Brown's handling of the Katrina hurricane catastrophe. Dean Reynolds in Escondido, California, concluding a Thursday CBS Evening News story on Bush's visit to the fire-ravaged region:

Mr. Bush dismissed comparisons between Katrina and California and seemed generally satisfied by the efforts he witnessed today. But if he actually thought anybody was doing a 'heck of a job,' he didn't say so in public.

On the NBC Nightly News, John Yang managed to raise shortcomings following Katrina without citing the comment used by liberals to ridicule Bush: “After the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, the President has been offering a robust response to these fires. But the real test may come in the rebuilding, which could cost a lot of money and take a lot of time.”

Fox News, just as Glenn Beck previously, picked up on an observation that the rest of the mainstream media largely ignored: brush left in place under environmental groups’ pressure fueled much of the fires in southern California. While all of the network’s morning shows ignored this angle (NBC’s "Today," ABC’s "Good Morning America," and CBS’s "The Early Show") the October 25 edition of "Fox and Friends" contained this report from Adam Housley.

As media outlet after media outlet blame the burning of parts of Southern California on climate change, it was rather shocking to see a headline in Thursday's Los Angeles Times that read "Global Warming Not a Factor in Wildfires."

Maybe this is just another example of how folks should rely on local media closest to events rather than national press members.

Regardless, the Times piece, although it employed climate models to make the case that global warming could be a problem in the future, cited a number of scientists and studies suggesting today's natural disaster shouldn't be used by media to pat Nobel Laureate Al Gore on the back (emphasis added throughout):

A day after NBC blamed the California wild fires on global warming, CBS on Wednesday night cited global warming, but also gave equal emphasis to how years of putting out fires has provided more fuel for them in the form of thick trees and brush. From Escondido, California, anchor Katie Couric asserted the wild fires are “more intense today than ever, and John Blackstone reports, man may be at least partly to blame for that.” Blackstone first went to global warming: “Fire ecologist Tom Swetnam has a collection of tree rings that reveals thousands of years of climate history. He told Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes that global warming means a longer fire season.”

Then, however, Blackstone considered another cause: “A whole lot more fuel to burn, a result of a hundred years of fighting fires” since “putting out almost every fire is not what nature intended, says Richard Minnich, who studies fire history.” Minnich, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California Riverside, explained: “The fire suppression management over the hundred years, in fact, generates more severe fires than what would otherwise occur.” Plus, Blackstone noted, the destructive impact of the fires has increased because “the realization it's often good to let fires burn has met a big obstacle: more houses in forest and wild lands.” Concluding his piece, Blackstone returned to warming, but didn't blame it alone: “Firefighters are trying to keep up with the megafire threat, a threat that won't go away in a warming world, and a growing West.”

See Update at Foot -- FEMA Administrator flatly debunks Garamendi

Good on Tamron Hall.

On the one hand, as I've noted here and here, Hall let her liberal leanings show more than once when serving as a "Morning Joe" panelist. But the MSNBC anchor is also the daughter of a career Army man, and clearly knows and respects the military.

When Dem John Garamendi, the California Lt. Gov., appeared on MSNBC this afternoon, Hall took the occasion to challenge him over the misleading remarks about the California National Guard that he made yesterday to Chris Matthews during an interview in which he also spoke most ungraciously, as I noted here, about Pres. Bush's impending visit to California.

Comedian George Carlin blames the victims on the Southern California wildfires. Appearing on the October 24 edition of "The View" Carlin said, because many of these home owners "overbuild" and "put nature to the test," "they get what’s coming to them."

This rant was too much even for noted left-wing co-host Joy Behar who felt his statement was "a little harsh." Carlin continued that he "can’t wait for the sea levels to rise" and "for some of these cities to disappear." Carlin added that these people who "do all this moron stuff" are selfish and "want their toys."

Carlin should note that these homeowners who "do all this moron stuff’ were let down by their government who did not properly manage their own forests.

The transcript is below.:

As wildfires rage throughout Southern California, media have predictably begun to blame this awful natural disaster on President George W. Bush much as they did almost exactly two years ago when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

On Tuesday evening, MSNBC's Dan Abrams set up an interview with California Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Cal.) thusly:

But the fire storms in California`s raising tough questions about what the National Guard is extended too much to handle emergencies at home. Back in May, before the fire started, "The San Francisco Chronicle" reported that the California National Guard was down a billion dollars worth of equipment. Two hundred and nine vehicles in Iraq, including 110 humvees and 63 military trucks. According to report the California guard should have had 39 diesel generators on hand. They say it had none. The Kansas governor raised similar concerns earlier this year when she said the deployment of National Guard troops to Iraq hurt the emergency response to a deadly tornado in her state. The question -- is this another unanticipated cost of a prolonged and expensive war effort?

On Wednesday morning, CNN's John Roberts asked a similar question of FEMA Administrator David Paulison:

Wednesday’s CBS ‘Early Show’ had a recurring theme in its coverage of the Southern California wildfires: the federal government failed to provide resources. Co-host Harry Smith opened the show by exclaiming that "...a fire chief says it's "the absolute truth," with more air resources, we would have been able to control this." In a later segment of the show, co-host Hannah Storm asked FEMA Administrator David Paulison, "Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California complained the ability of the state's National Guard has been compromised because too much of their equipment and personnel is in Iraq. Is that true?"

In addition to Smith’s blame-the-government show intro, he later observed in a report from the fire line that "I'll tell you, resources is a big part of this story...There are just not enough planes, there's not enough people, there's not enough equipment." Smith then sent the coverage to CBS reporter Bill Whitaker, who asked a firefighter if the wildfires could be brought under control, to which the firefighter responded "...if we get the resources..." Whitaker then remarked, " Now, considering how stretched resources are all across Southern California, that is a big "if."

Reporter Claire Shipman did her level best to get California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to say the efforts to combat the state's wild fires were going poorly. Shipman interviewed the governor on Wednesday's "Good Morning America" and wondered about "the comparison to Katrina that everybody's making in the back of their mind..." At one point, Governor Schwarzenegger cut off Shipman's pleas for negative assessments of the effort by grabbing her arm. He bluntly scolded, "Trust me when I tell you, you're looking for a mistake and you won't find it because it's all good news, as much as you maybe hate it, but it's good news."

Video (1:21): Real (2.21 MB) and Windows (2.51 MB), plus MP3 audio (632 kB).

Earlier, the ABC correspondent attempted to deflate Schwarzenegger's sunny optimism by mentioning unnamed officials in Orange County who asserted the state doesn't have enough resources, including firefighting aircraft. The former actor simply wouldn't go along with this premise of victimization. He firmly retorted, "Anyone that is complaining about the planes, just wants to complain because it's a bunch of nonsense." Schwarzenegger then proceeded to point out that the state has 90 planes and only wind has hampered their use.

The hills of Los Angeles are burning and the media keep finding reasons to blame global warming.

CNN found a way to work global warming into its reporting on a national tragedy on October 23.

During “Anderson Cooper 360: In the Line of Fire,” CNN’s Tom Foreman even looked into his crystal ball to predict the future by warning of a possible “century of fires, just like what we're seeing now” as a result of global warming.

Foreman cautioned viewers that, “greater periods of rain” that fuel “increased vegetation growth” over the next century may provide a “potential link between these fires and global warming.”

Video: Windows (2.57 MB), or MP3 audio (335 kB).

Earlier in the broadcast Cooper also plugged CNN’s documentary: