Hyping a story on global warming for Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, fill-in anchor Lester Holt proclaimed: "Sounding the alarm. A leaked report about the danger happening all around us tonight." Introducing the segment, Holt declared that the study "from one of the world's most prestigious groups of scientists...has a lot of people taking notice because of the alarming conclusions about climate change." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Curry lead off the one-sided fearmongering by warning viewers: "The key finding in this leaked draft report is that it's, quote, 'extremely likely,' as in greater than 95%, that human activity is the main cause of the planet's temperature rise in the last 60 years." She cited a recent trip to the Arctic to bolster the case: "At the top of the world in Arctic, Greenland, scientists like Dr. Jason Box study the icy landscape. He says all this might be lost to climate change, mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels."
A sound bite followed of Box asserting: "There's no debate, it's really quite simple. We've overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gas, and the rest are just details."
Continuing to hype the danger, she announced: "Greenland's Inuits, once called Eskimos, don't need a scientist to tell them about climate change....Inuit leader Aqqaluk Lynge says melting ice means his people struggle to reach traditional hunting grounds. Some have even fallen through the thinning ice and died."
Speaking to Lynge, Curry fretted: "You're saying that a way of life is so threatened it could die? It could be lost forever?"
Lynge replied: "The only humans around the North Pole in the Arctic are us. We have been here for thousands of years. And we tell you, things are changing. And you will feel it, maybe tomorrow."
Curry concluded: "His message essentially is that we in the industrialized world are using more than our fair share and that our children and our grandchildren will pay the price." Holt responded: "Very sobering."
Lynge's climate change activism has included his opposition to the expansion of an airport just outside London, arguing: "Everything we do, particularly industrial plans, should be looked at in terms of how it impacts on climate change."
Here is a full transcript of Curry's August 20 segment:
7:00PM ET TEASE:
LESTER HOLT: Top of the world. Ann Curry tonight in the place they call iceberg alley, with a breathtaking view that's disappearing fast.
7:13PM ET TEASE:
HOLT: Still ahead here tonight, sounding the alarm. A leaked report about the danger happening all around us tonight. Ann Curry from the top of the world with a firsthand look as the water rises.
7:16PM ET SEGMENT:
HOLT: Tonight a leaked report from one of the world's most prestigious groups of scientists, winners of the Nobel Prize, has a lot of people taking notice because of the alarming conclusions about climate change. NBC's Ann Curry recently traveled to one of the most breathtaking places on Earth, where folks are seeing their way of life disappear before their eyes. She joins us now in the studio. Ann, nice to see you.
ANN CURRY: Nice to see you, too, Lester. Well, the key finding in this leaked draft report is that it's, quote, "extremely likely," as in greater than 95%, that human activity is the main cause of the planet's temperature rise in the last 60 years. Well, recently our news team went looking for answers in a place where the ice melt is unprecedented.
At the top of the world in Arctic, Greenland, scientists like Dr. Jason Box study the icy landscape. He says all this might be lost to climate change, mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels.
JASON BOX: There's no debate, it's really quite simple. We've overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gas, and the rest are just details.
CURRY: The new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seems to confirm what Box and other scientists had been warning long before the draft was leaked. Among the findings, the main cause of long-term warming is carbon dioxide emissions, that sea levels could rise about three feet by the end of this century, and that even if we stop producing carbon emissions now, climate change will persist for hundreds of years.
Here in what's known as iceberg alley, Box, who's been studying the Arctic for 20 years, says the ice is now melting at a pace never seen before, affecting weather systems.
So in ways that people don't fully yet realize, climate change has affected us in America and across the world?
BOX: Yeah, there are manifold ways that climate change is having impact. The Arctic is a very useful bellwether of change, and it's – it's ringing.
CURRY: But Greenland's Inuits, once called Eskimos, don't need a scientist to tell them about climate change.
AQQALUK LYNGE: The sea ice are disappearing.
CURRY: Inuit leader Aqqaluk Lynge says melting ice means his people struggle to reach traditional hunting grounds. Some have even fallen through the thinning ice and died. You're saying that a way of life is so threatened it could die? It could be lost forever?
LYNGE: The only humans around the North Pole in the Arctic are us. We have been here for thousands of years. And we tell you, things are changing. And you will feel it, maybe tomorrow.
CURRY: His message essentially is that we in the industrialized world are using more than our fair share and that our children and our grandchildren will pay the price, Lester.
HOLT: Very sobering. Ann, thank you.
