Teasing an upcoming special on global warming hosted by Ann Curry, on Friday's NBC Today, news anchor Natalie Morales hyped the danger: "The head of the World Bank is warning that climate change will lead to violent conflict over shortages of food and water. And this Sunday night, NBC's Ann Curry shows us how ordinary people are already witnessing the impact of rising global temperatures." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
In the preview that followed, Curry proclaimed: "It feels like an all-out assault. For the last year and a half, it seems mother nature has thrown everything at us. What on Earth is going on?" She touted how "for more than a year" she and her news crew had been "searching for answers to what's causing these weather extremes."
Curry continued: "We've met ordinary people who've seen the changes up close and asked some of the world's brightest scientists, is the weird weather a coincidence or a sign of fundamental change is here?" A sound bite ran of one climate scientist ominously warning: "The planet is not just changing, it's changed."
A description of the documentary on nbcnews.com declared:
NBC's Ann Curry reports there is virtually no debate among climate scientists: 97 percent now believe climate change is real and the warming is largely caused by human activity. A year in the making, and less than a week after stunning predictions about the future from the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Our Year of Extremes - Did Climate Change Just Hit Home?," takes viewers on a journey to the Arctic at the top of the world, to drought stricken regions in the American West, to the edge of rising seas in Florida, and into extreme weather events all over the globe.
Curry has a long history of global warming activism on NBC's airwaves:
On the May 16, 2006 Today, Curry eagerly touted a concert to save the rainforest by exclaiming: "To also remind people, I mean, most scientists really agree that if we don't protect this band of rainforest in the middle part of, lower middle part of the Earth that we will, could affect the environment in a dramatic way."
On the May 17, 2007 edition of the morning show, as Curry pedaled a bike to power a blender, she raved: "You see, you can save the environment! It is possible!"
While promoting Al Gore's "Live Earth" concert on July 7, 2007, Curry gushed to the former vice president: "...without you there will not be the political will in the White House to fight global warming." She then urged him to run president.
Reporting from Africa during Today's November 17, 2008 coverage of "Green Week," Curry asserted: "Mt. Kilimanjaro's majestic, snow capped peaks are increasingly becoming a symbol of climate change. Scientists predict the glaciers could completely disappear by the year 2020."
On the March 27, 2009 Today, Curry fawned over actor Ed Norton's "really cool" effort to fight global warming known as "Earth Hour." Norton proceeded to compare it with the fight for civil rights: "In the same way that the, the march on Selma, Alabama was a symbolic gesture for the civil rights movement I think those who care about...climate change and carbon mitigation...are, are trying to find ways to symbolically demonstrate the, the unity of purpose around the planet..."
Here is a transcript of April 4 Today preview of Curry's special:
8:03 AM ET
NATALIE MORALES: The head of the World Bank is warning that climate change will lead to violent conflict over shortages of food and water. And this Sunday night, NBC's Ann Curry shows us how ordinary people are already witnessing the impact of rising global temperatures.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Our Year of Extremes; Ann Curry Reports on Climate Change]
ANN CURRY: It feels like an all-out assault. For the last year and a half, it seems mother nature has thrown everything at us. What on Earth is going on? For more than a year, we've been on a road trip to far corners of our planet, searching for answers to what's causing these weather extremes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN [STORM VICTIM]: This is a storm of the century.
CURRY: We've met ordinary people who've seen the changes up close and asked some of the world's brightest scientists, is the weird weather a coincidence or a sign of fundamental change is here?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN B [CLIMATE SCIENTIST]: The planet is not just changing, it's changed.
MORALES: And you can watch Ann Curry Reports; Our Year of Extremes: Did Climate Change Just Hit Home? this Sunday evening at 7:00. Social media users are invited to join the conversation online.
