Environment

Bloomberg Business never lets an opportunity to push global warming pass by. On the Nov. 1 edition of BusinessWeek, the cover story was titled “It’s Global Warming, Stupid” which appeared in huge black letters with a red background on the cover. Underneath the title was a picture of flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The article, written by assistant managing editor and senior writer Paul Barrett, outlined how Sandy was, of course, made worse by man-made global warming. Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the lefty Environmental Defense Fund and former Bloomberg Business deputy editor, was quoted in the story saying that while we can’t assume Hurricane Sandy was directly caused by global warming, it is likely it was made worse. “Now we have weather on steroids,” he stated.

On Thursday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, host Morgan treated New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's endorsement of President Barack Obama as a significant threat to Mitt Romney, and ended up bolstering Bloomberg's concerns about Hurricane Sandy being the result of manmade global warming.

Without noting Bloomberg's liberal record, Morgan highlighted the mayor's complaints about Romney's "endless flip-flopping." Morgan:

CNN's Piers Morgan lauded President Obama's "excellent" work during Hurricane Sandy, and teed up liberal guest Michael Moore to bash Republicans on global warming. As NewsBusters reported earlier, on his Wednesday night show he didn't once press Moore about his despicable anti-Romney ad.

Morgan gushed that "whichever side you're on, you cannot say that President Obama has not so far done an excellent job." That came after Moore took a shot at President Bush. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Right on cue following Hurricane Sandy devastating the east coast, correspondent Harry Smith appeared on Thursday's NBC Today to sound the global warming alarm: "First it was Hurricane Irene, then last October's freak snowstorm, and now Sandy. Mother nature has put an unprecedented strain on the power grid and some experts are wondering if climate change is to blame." The headline on-screen wondered: "Is Global Warming to Blame for Storm Damage?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Previewing an upcoming report for Thursday's Rock Center, Smith warned viewers: "There is a growing consensus that this is all part of a new normal....Many a climate scientist say there is a reason this is happening." A sound bite followed of Ben Strauss from Climate Central: "We're seeing more and more extreme weather events. Leading to greater and greater economic damages. And I'm very suspicious that climate change is an important player for many of these."

Al Gore is concerned about Mother Nature. In a statement he released on his blog on Oct. 30 2012, he hyped the imminent doom of global warming. “Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come,” the Goricle stated. No big surprise that Gore would immediately link Sandy to global warming. After all, he’s gotten very rich claiming the sky is falling. Unfortunately, Gore wasn’t the only one.

Andrew Revkin, self-proclaimed global warming advocate, published an op-ed in The New York Times on Oct. 28, just as Sandy was starting to ravage the East Coast. Revkin’s piece appeared in his section Dot Earth, which, in a rare Times nod to reality, was moved from the news section to the opinion pages in 2010.

On Wednesday's NBC Today, correspondent Keir Simmons reported from the European Weather Center in Britain that projected Hurricane Sandy's path and touted how "Global warming could make their work more important than ever." The center's Professor Alan Thorpe explained: "If it turned out to be the case that such storms became more common, then our weather forecasting models need to factor that in." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Simmons then cited Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to bolster the point: "Already the scientists are planning more research to help them, and all of us, plan for the future. Because if it's true, as New York's governor says, that we are now dealing with extreme weather patterns in a way we haven't seen, then centers like the one you've just seen are more important than ever."

Politico promises readers who sign up for its subscription "Pro" service they they will have "No boring stories telling you things you already know."

Well, there's nothing more predictable and boring than stories about global warming and climate change which appear every time there's a major hurricane, serious flooding, or other weather-related catastrophe. Yet, as will be seen after the jump, the supposedly non-boring Politico Pro front page has two such stories in its top four.

Like ambulance-chasing lawyers, the heavy-handed liberal activists who populate much of the media raced to exploit Hurricane Sandy even as the storm was lashing the East Coast last night, citing it as proof of “climate change” and a reason to oppose Mitt Romney.

Yesterday afternoon, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir started a panel discussion by claiming that “people are wondering today if the current hurricane has anything to do with global change, climate change, global warming,” and then mentioned the “right-wing nut jobs” supporting Romney.

For at least 24 hours, the mainstream media have been trying to figure out a way to make Hurricane Sandy an aid to Barack Obama's re-election.

On Monday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews had a related concern asking guest John Nichols of the Nation magazine, "How long do you think it’ll take for Donald Trump to take a crack at the President for engineering this?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In his weekly radio address on July 3, 2010, President Barack Obama announced that "the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments from the Recovery Act to two solar companies." Neither of them was named Solyndra.

One of the two companies Obama did name was Fort Collins, Colorado-based Abound Solar, which Obama touted as a company which would create "more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs" at two new plants which "When fully operational ... will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year." As Amy Oliver detailed at Townhall a year ago, Abound is a classic case of Obama bundler cronyism. In July, just shy of two years after Obama's address, the company, which benefited from $400 million of Department of Energy loan guarantees, filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday, a Colorado District Attorney announced a criminal investigation. So far, it's only local Colorado-area news (internal links added by me; bolds are mine):

In their third Presidential debate analysis, the Jurassic Press Media last night and thus far this morning have failed utterly in their role as fact checker and record-corrector - at least when it comes to what President Barack Obama had to say. 

As but one glaring example, there were the President’s absurd assertions regarding the auto bailout and China.

Martha Raddatz boosted President Obama on ABC after the final presidential debate on Monday evening, just as she did during the earlier vice presidential debate that she moderated. Raddatz asserted that Obama "humanized what he was talking about. He talked a lot about the troops; he talked about the survivors from 9/11; he talked about the people in Israel. So if, in fact, he was going towards the female vote, he probably got their attention with that sort of approach." [audio available here; video below the jump]

ABC's post-debate coverage also spotlighted a Tweet from Nightline's Bill Weir, who channeled something that Al Gore had whined about just minutes earlier on Twitter: "Four #debates come and go without a single question on climate change."

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes is no stranger to making extreme and outrageous statements on his weekend show Up with Chris Hayes, but he forgot to filter his leftism for mainstream American consumption on Friday when he appeared on the noontime Now with Alex Wagner program.

The Ivy League-educated Hayes ridiculously compared the environmentalists' fight against global warming to the struggle of 19th century abolitionists to end slavery:  [See video below.  MP3 audio here.]

For many years, climate realists have pointed to expanding ice in Antarctica as a counter to the claim that decreasing ice in the Arctic is necessarily proof of anthropogenic global warming.

The folks at the Associated Press on Wednesday came up with an unbelievable answer to that in an article unbelievably titled "Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic ice":

Tuesday's Washington Post devoted Metro section front-page real estate to the story of a Potomac, Md., homeowner clearing trees from his own property, painting the incident as a scandalous affront to the environment and to hikers on the nearby C&O Canal. Yet nowhere in Miranda Spivack's 22-paragraph article was any comment from property rights advocates who would argue that Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens should not have to pay a fine for felling trees on his own property.

From the get-go, readers were treated to a thoroughly one-sided narrative in Spivack's October 9 article headlined "Lockheed CEO cited for tree-cutting." Here's her lead paragraph:

There are reckless protesters in Texas chaining themselves to trees, houses, and halting precious jobs, but you won’t hear about that on ABC, CBS, or NBC broadcast news programs.

Extending the Keystone pipeline, which Obama blocked earlier this year, has actually been embraced by people on both sides of the aisle. According to a news story titled “Democrats Joining the G.O.P. on Pipeline” in The New York Times published on April 20, 2012, Democrats in the House joined with Republicans to back this project because of the strong union support and the many jobs that it would generate.

At the Associated Press on Saturday, Gosia Wosniacka did something one rarely sees any more in wire service coverage, actually blaming a government policy for an industry's financial problems -- in this case, state-imposed price controls on the California dairy industry.

But price controls in the highly tarnished Golden State, while very relevant, have been around for decades. Ms. Wosniacka ignored the most recent cause of farmers' difficulties, namely the government-mandated diversion of much of the corn crop towards ethanol production. Several paragraphs from her report (also carried at CNS News) follow the jump:

Two weeks ago, Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016: Obama’s America” passed Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” for second place on the all-time box-office money list for political documentaries. It now has a box office gross of more than $32 million. But if you’re an independent or a liberal who’s unplugged from conservative websites and talk radio, you’d never know.

You didn’t see D’Souza on CBS or NBC (although he showed up on ABC’s “Nightline” in late night). There were no cover stories in Time or Newsweek. The film opened on just one screen in Houston when it premiered on July 13, and then spread to 10, and eventually to 1,000 theaters in August and 2,000 theaters in September. A cultural sensation, yes – but somehow not newsworthy.

At the end of an interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer turned to the subject of climate change and fretted: "We've had a crazy week in this – year in this country of extreme weather. Are you seeing around the world the kind of motivation and will that's necessary to, A, admit there's a problem, and then address the problem?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Blair replied in part: "This climate issue is real, and we are very irresponsible for future generations if we don't deal with it and we should recover, I think, a sense of urgency about it." Tossing all objectivity aside, Lauer joined in the advocacy: "I hope we will."

The Jurassic Press have long had a field day puffing up bailed out General Motors (GM) and their electric automotive windmill - the Chevrolet Volt.

When it came to August Volt sales numbers, the Media were Justin Bieber-excited.

If you had any doubts about the level of zealotry involved in today's global warming movement, they likely will be erased by the goings on at PBS the past few days.

Since allowing well-known climate realist Anthony Watts on NewsHour Monday to voice his views on this controversial issue, PBS has been under attack for doing so (videos follows with transcripts and commentary).

Soda was demonized by the media and food police groups for years, long before New York City’s Board of Health voted Sept. 13, overwhelmingly approving Michael Bloomberg’s controversial ban on certain sizes of soda.

The act, which Bloomberg claimed “will save lives,” will prevent the “sale of sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces, smaller than the size of a common soda bottle” at certain establishments. It does not prevent people from merely buying multiple drinks if they choose, something Bloomberg admitted on MSNBC in May 2012.

Volyndra?

That might be the best description of General Motors' Chevy Volt according a scathing review of that car. And the source of the review? None other than the editorial board of the liberal Washington Post so Obama administration supporters can scarcely write off the criticisms as "right-wing propaganda." Before you even get to the text of the story you can see the WaPo editorial board slam the Volt in the title, GM’s vaunted Volt is on the road to nowhere fast:

If you restrict the supply of something, the price will go up.  It’s one of the laws of supply and demand.  Thus, cap-and-trade energy rationing schemes drive the price of energy up, by capping the supply.  President Obama has conceded that in his unguarded moments.  In a January 17, 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama said that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his cap-and-trade plan to fight global warming.  He also said that under his plan, “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”

But journalists are not economists, and often have difficulty understanding the most basic principles of economics.  (Some cannot even do basic math).  What is clear to any economist or any college graduate who has taken Econ 101 seems disputed or unclear to many journalists, who are more familiar with trendy fads in college English Departments, and left-wing critical race theory, than they are with basic economic truths.

Gas prices have risen to a nationwide average of $3.80 per gallon, per gasbuddy.com early this afternoon, and an Ohio average of over $3.90.

Is Asjylyn Loder at Bloomberg worried about the effects on drivers' pocketbooks and travel plans over Labor Day? Don't be silly. Loder is worried about its impact on Dear Leader's presidential reelection prospects, and avoids the implications of the ten-year rule of another Dear Leader, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, on the current situation. Her first three paragraphs in graphic form, plus a few more on Venezuela, follow the jump:

The severe drought affecting the Midwest this year has caused the latest corn projections to be the lowest since 1995. With such a small corn crop, the government mandates that make some of that corn be used for ethanol make even less sense, and will raise prices even further.

The drought has been a big news story for the network morning and evening show in the past six months, earning 55 stories about facets of the drought including struggling farmers, predictions of increased food prices and coverage of wildfires. That figure did not include weather reports that also often mentioned drought.

New York Times environmental reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal's latest 1,600-word attack on air conditioning,"The Cost of Cool," made the front of the Sunday Review. " The text box: "Air-conditioning makes us feel better, but it's hurting the planet."

Rosenthal previously argued in a June 21 post on the paper's "Green" blog complaining that she can't buy an environmentally correct air conditioner and so chose to suffer (but not in silence) in the name of fighting "climate change," which she assumes is a proven fact and a clear danger to humanity.