Bill Blakemore, ABC's Resident Global-Warming Salesman, Set Up Al Gore

June 25th, 2006 7:40 AM

I ran out of time Friday to post the other transcript MRC's Brian Boyd did on global warming on Friday's "Good Morning America." To set up Bill Weir's fawning interview with Al Gore, ABC brought in their resident global-warming panic salesman, Bill Blakemore, calling him the "resident expert." 

So does Blakemore have a background in meteorology, or at least science in general? It doesn't look like it from his ABC biography. He's been a religion specialist, an education specialist, a war correspondent, and now he's a world-going-to-Hell specialist. As the bio suggests, "Blakemore coined the word 'spotcraft' to describe what he did for a living." That's not to say he doesn't have passion, as he's already acknowleged the "admittedly vain thrill" of being one of the first to be right on the approaching catastrophe. Here's the Friday story:

Bill Weir: "That scorching heat across the country, those wildfires in the West, those floods in the Midwest, all that extreme weather brings us to our special series - Global Warming: Global Warning. A new National Academy of Science study says the Earth is hotter now than ever and humans are to blame. Former Vice President Al Gore will join us live in just a moment, but first here's Bill Blakemore, ABC's resident expert on global warming."

Bill Blakemore: "The study reconfirms what scientists have been warning about: man-made global warming is real and underway. Americans can see effects right now out the kitchen window: five inches of rain in five hours in Toledo, Thursday. Downpours so sudden and massive."

Man on the street: "It's the watching your headlights go underwater is the signal that you're in trouble."

Blakemore: "This on top of the great downpours causing havoc in Houston this week and in the Northeast the spring. All fit exactly the weather patterns predicted for years by scientists warning us about effects of global warming. More frequent extreme weather they said, including heavier downpours. And all for one simple reason: the warmer the air, the more evaporated water it can hold. So winds pick up more moister from the hotter gulf and oceans as they sweep toward land and then dump it out in far heavier downpours. They'll be more frequent now say scientists as global warming heats the air."

Kevin Trenberth: "Very heavy rains, the top one percent has gone up 20 percent in the last century in the United States. When it rains, it pours now. Much more so than it did 30 years ago."

Blakemore: "Surprisingly say scientists it's for the same reason we see drought and wildfire on America's map right next to these downpours. Why? The warmer air means winter snow pack is melting out weeks too soon, instead of slowly over the summer. Snow pack in the mountains, like this here in the Sierras melts and flows down to the valleys where it provides three-quarters of the water supply for the American West.

"So, when it melts out too soon, more drought across the West. There may still be less extreme years, say scientists. Weather still has its natural cycles, but overall in any given year extreme weather is now far more likely. For Good Morning America, this is Bill Blakemore in the Sequoia National Park."