Global Warming

Less than 24 hours after a devastating tornado ripped through Joplin, Missouri – killing at least 116 people – an MSNBC anchor was busy putting a political spin on the tragedy.

Tamron Hall wondered aloud on "News Nation" today whether climate change was to blame for the rash of hurricanes and tornadoes that ravaged several states, including Missouri, over the last few months.

Yesterday evening (late afternoon West Coast time), Phil Bronstein at the San Francisco Chronicle informed his readers that one of its reporters had been banned by the Obama administration:

The hip, transparent and social media-loving Obama administration is showing its analog roots. And maybe even some hypocrisy highlights.

 

White House officials have banished one of the best political reporters in the country from the approved pool of journalists covering presidential visits to the Bay Area for using now-standard multimedia tools to gather the news.

Like clockwork, an unusual weather event occurs and some shallow journalists immediately leap to speculating about global warming – even accusing humankind of causing the event. On Thursday night, looking at the tornadoes across the South, ABC’s Sam Champion ridiculously claimed “everybody is asking if climate change played a role here.” Brian Williams blamed humans: “What's going on here? Is this something we have done?”

On the NBC Nightly News, Williams prompted Greg Forbes of the Weather Channel:

Let's be candid here. When you and I go home, you see friends and family, you get e-mail from people you know. People ask the same question: What's going on here? Is this something we have done? What has happened to the climate because it seems so much of what we cover is relentless weather-related tragedy?

“For those of you who are confused [about global warming], you’re forgiven. It’s my fault.”

So hysterically said retired Minneapolis anchorman Don Shelby during a speech at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Tuesday:

A recent report from American University communications professor Matthew Nisbet examined the apparent decline of the environmental movement in recent years. For all the questions raised by the report over what happened to the moment, it does answer a pair surrounding the debate as it pertains to bias in the media.

First, the media was a force for, not against, liberal environmental policies. That will likely shock no NB reader, but many on the left are still convinced that the media is a force for conservatism, or at the very least against leftist political change (stop laughing). The AU report undercuts those claims, at least as they pertain to the environmental movement.

"[T]he major national news organizations overwhelmingly reflected the consensus view on the reality and causes of climate change," Nisbet concluded in his analysis of media coverage. The "consensus view," in this context, refers to the view that climate change is occurring and that human activity is responsible for it.

This just in, courtesy of Time Magazine: Mother Gaia is dying and your ice maker is the perp. Continue churning out ice with your automated cube-maker, and you'll be contributing to the plight of the 50 million refugees the United Nations insists anthropogenic global warming has caused will cause by 2020.

Time took a study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology showing significant energy use by ice makers and ran with it. Want to save the Earth?" the article asked. "Easy, just buy a couple of ice trays." The article goes on to educate "laypeople" (the actual phrase used) on the havoc their refrigerators are wreaking on the planet (h/t Moonbattery).

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, the United Nations in 2005 wrongly predicted there would be 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the previous decade as a result of global warming.

Aaron Worthing noticed Friday that the 'handy map" the U.N. had created to identify places most at risk for such population migrations has been removed:

As NewsBusters previously reported, a climate conference is taking place this weekend in Washington, D.C., where thousands of youth activists are sadly being brainwashed by the likes of Obama's former green jobs czar Van Jones and members of the International Socialists Organization.

Giving one of the keynote speeches Friday evening was Nobel laureate Al Gore who told attendees that the fight against global warming is like the Civil Rights movement of the '60s (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Saturday, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson will be giving the keynote speech at the Energy Action Coalition's Power Shift 2011 conference, a meeting of potentially 10,000 green youth activists in Washington, D.C.

According to the schedule, President Obama's former green jobs czar Van Jones will be speaking Friday evening, and members of the International Socialists Organization will be hosting a panel discussion Saturday:

During his Talking Points Memo at the top of Wednesday's O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, host Bill O'Reilly called out NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer for denouncing Republican efforts to cut spending on things like "climate control": "Are you kidding me, Lauer? Funding for climate control? Nobody can control the climate but God. So give a little extra at mass or services."

As NewsBusters reported, on Wednesday's Today, Lauer lamented: "...some of the things the Tea Party and others on the far right are asking for – no funding for Planned Parenthood, no funding for climate control, public broadcasting." In response, O'Reilly remarked: "Funding for Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting when the debt stands at 14 trillion? Have a telethon on the Today show for those concerns. Raise the money privately. This is nuts. The country's nearly bankrupt. China holds more than a trillion dollars of our debt and you guys want climate control funding? I feel a cold front coming on."

For many years, conservatives have been claiming that Paul Krugman makes up economic data to support his political conclusions.

Proving the point, the New York Times columnist said Monday, "Nothing in the [ClimateGate email] correspondence suggested any kind of scientific impropriety," and in the truly damning message from Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, "it’s clear that he’s talking about making an effective graphical presentation, not about suppressing evidence":

It was likely not a surprise to "Inside Washington" viewers that most of the usual suspects on the panel Friday saw the crisis in Japan as not being good for the future of nuclear powered electrical plants in this country.

What certainly must have raised a couple of eyebrows though was the strongest opposition to any further construction of such facilities coming from lone conservative Charles Krauthammer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal found a familiar villain for her Thursday Business story on the woeful state of Colombia’s coffee crop - "climate change"  (“Coffee Source In Colombia Suffers Setbacks – Climate Change Poses a Threat To the Popular Arabica Crop”).

Like most of the small landowners in Colombia’s lush mountainous Cauca region, Luis Garzón, 80, and his family have thrived for decades by supplying shade-grown, rainforest-friendly Arabica coffee for top foreign brands like Nespresso and Green Mountain. A sign in the center of a nearby town proclaims, “The coffee of Cauca is No. 1!”

But in the last few years, coffee yields have plummeted here and in many of Latin America’s other premier coffee regions as a result of rising temperatures and more intense and unpredictable rains, phenomena that many scientists link partly to global warming.

Can you spot the bias? From the New York Times, a March 8 report by John M. Broder, "At House E.P.A. Hearing, Both Sides Claim Science":

"For the sake of a cleaner planet, should Americans wear dirtier clothes?"

So comically began a New York Times article on the front page of the Gray Lady's Science section Tuesday ironically titled "When Energy Efficiency Sullies the Environment" (photo courtesy Viktor Koen):

Ralph Nader said Tuesday conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are part of a well-organized counter-scientific ignorance movement designed to prevent people from believing in the theory of manmade global warming.

Sadly, this was said to a bunch of impressionable students at the College of New Jersey (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Climate alarmists always want to point out the downside of a warming planet while never informing the public of the benefits.

Take for example Time magazine's Tuesday piece bemoaning global warming's impact on allergy sufferers but never once mentioning that a longer growing season for the dastardly pollinating plants means a commensurate rise in the growing season of things we eat:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration somewhat under the radar a few weeks ago rebutted Nobel Laureate Al Gore's claim that January's heavy snowstorms across the country were caused by global warming.

As readers might remember, the man that has been made rich advancing the myth that carbon dioxide is destroying the planet weighed in on the inclement weather at his blog on February 1:

For the second time in eight days, a prominent liberal has blamed the developing crisis in Egypt on global warming.

Following in the footsteps of climate alarmist extraordinaire Joe Romm Monday was New York Times columnist Paul Krugman:

Charles Krauthmammer on Friday said if Godzilla appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Al Gore would blame it on global warming.

Such marvelously happened when the discussion on PBS's "Inside Washington" turned to the nation's crazy weather (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Speaking to physicist Michio Kaku on Wednesday's CBS Early Show, co-host Chris Wragge fretted over the recent series of severe winter storms and wondered: "...nine storms in seven weeks, why is this happening?...a lot of people want to talk about global warming and thinking that that may actually come into play here. Is that accurate? Is that having an effect on what's going on?"

Dr. Kaku agreed with the suggestion: "Yes. It seems to violate common sense, but as the Earth begins to heat up, that means more moist air in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico on average. Which creates more precipitation, and eventually more snow." Wragge followed up: "Is this going to continue?" Kaku argued: "...on average, temperatures are going to rise. Remember, last year was the hottest year ever recorded in the history of science, next to 2005, since 1880. So the Earth is heating up. We can debate exactly what's driving it. But, hey, get used to it. We're going to have more energy sloshing around the Earth, more extremes, and swings."

Time magazine's Brian Walsh couldn't write up a story on the need for more electricity in developing countries without shoe-horning in a dire warning about climate change.

In a January 31st story entitled "Building a Country by Switching on the Lights," Walsh initially warned readers that in addition to the problems of fighting malaria and improving infrastructure that there was "a blind spot that does more than almost anything to keep the poor poor: they don't have electric power" but he then gravely added: "At the same time, the reality of climate change means that even the developing world needs to look for cleaner sources of energy because Western-style growth driven by fossil fuels could lead to catastrophe."