Back to back Washington, D.C. blizzards prompted conservatives to mock the global warming crowd last week.
Grandchildren of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., built an igloo on the National Mall and christened it "Al Gore's New Home." Fox News anchor Glenn Beck employed his trademark sarcasm to make fun of the "disappearance" of warming priest Al Gore and devotee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. since the snowfall. Beck picked on Kennedy because of a 2008 op-ed lamenting that global warming had changed the D.C. climate leading to "anemic winters."
Left-wingers online at place like Huffington Post and Daily Kos, as well as members of the national news media were furious that the "wingnuts" were using the blizzard to make fun of them. They rushed to defend their theory of man-made global warming (anthropogenic global warming or AGW) by claiming that the snowpocalypse was, in fact, caused by global warming.
"Science Guy" Bill Nye was so upset by it he attacked "unpatriotic" climate skeptics on Feb. 10 during the "Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC.
"To deny what scientists or scientific evidence is showing, is inappropriate. And as I said earlier, to me, when I get wound up, it's unpatriotic," Nye declared. But there are more questions than ever regarding the science. Prof. Phil Jones, formerly of the Climate Research Unit, admitted this week to losing track of climate change data used to support warming theory and that there hasn't been "statistically significant" global warming since 1995.
Some of the critics lied about what most conservatives were arguing, accusing the right of saying the historic snowfall disproved global warming. That wasn't the case, conservatives were merely turning the tables on the left: using mockery to show the absurdity of assigning a cause and effect relationship from weather events to climate change.
The fact is that the weather is not climate. Before the "snomageddon" (as many in D.C. called it), AGW believers constantly connected every weather event from heat waves killing thousands in Europe to Hurricane Katrina with global warming. It wasn't until the weather started acting against them and conservatives suggested it might undermine their theories that they got touchy on the subject.
ABC's Bill Blakemore admitted that weather is not climate on Jan. 8 in a feeble attempt to prevent critics from saying that a "cold snap" across the northern hemisphere disproves global warming. Blakemore has a long history of advocating for global warming alarmism on ABC.
Of course weather isn't climate, but the global warming alarmists like Blakemore want it both ways. They want weather and natural disasters to be proof of warming, but never proof contradicting it.
But it's not just weather. The media and the left have even more ridiculous assertions about climate change. Like the Kevin Bacon game they seem willing to connect everything to AGW.
Actor Danny Glover blamed global warming for the Haitian earthquake in January 2010. Leaving no tragedy unturned, Joseph Romm, a former Clinton official, actually wondered if the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007 was a result of global warming.
In a blog post, Romm wrote: "some may object to even asking the question, 'Did climate change contribute to the Minneapolis bridge collapse?' My guess is those are the same people who deny that global warming is caused by humans or that it is a serious problem - the same people who inevitably say 'we can adapt to whatever climate change there is.'"
A media outlet called GMANews.TV based in the Philippines was concerned that global warming was forcing poor women into prostitution. The Nov. 19, 2009 story said, "The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade."
Dr. John Brignell, a British engineering professor, has created a Web site linking to hundreds of media stories blaming AGW. In 2007, he had already posted more than 600 links with a number of unusual connections.
Contradictions like growth or shrinking of coral reefs, destruction or growth of bananas, and heavy or reduced snowfall were all on his list. A number of health ailments including allergies, asthma, cardiac arrest, cancer deaths in England, West Nile fever, cholera, malaria and yellow fever have also been linked.
Snowpocalypse Can't Stop Faith in Warming
According to AGW believers in and out of the news media, weather can only ever support global warming theory. Not even back-to-back East Coast blizzards that dumped more than two feet of snow in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area can freeze their faith.
The "snowpocalypse" that shut down the federal government, schools and many businesses for several days became one more "extreme" weather phenomenon in a long list attributed to global warming. It joined heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, tropical storms, cyclones, tornadoes, ice shelf and glacial melt, dying polar bears and even lack of snowfall.
MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan told viewers on Feb. 9, "Here's the problem - these ‘snowpocalypses' that have been going through D.C. and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming."
Ratigan and others have been upset by conservative mockery about global warming, given the record snowfall of the 2009-2010 winter. The MSNBC host criticized an ad by the Va. GOP designed to ridicule proposed climate change policies that could hurt the state's job situation.
Talk about polar opposites. In 2010, Ratigan blamed blizzards on global warming. But just one year ago, NBC's (MSNBC's parent company) presidential historian Michael Beschloss claimed global warming could be responsible for the lack of Inauguration Day snow.
As the camera turned to President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and their two children walking to the reviewing box, Beschloss described the scene: "And this wooden path that they're walking down actually dates to many previous inaugurations because a lot of them had snow. It may just be that because of global warming the last few have not."
That was a frigid January day - 28 degrees at noon plus a severe wind chill - and the coldest inauguration since 1985. Still, according to the news media it was a sign of the destruction caused by fossil fuels, SUVs and other human activity.
But that's just it. Logic doesn't matter, according to alarmists the planet is warming, its mankind's fault and so everything is a result of global warming.
Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the Business & Media Institute that "global warming alarmism isn't really a scientific theory as much as it's a political program." That becomes most obvious, Ebell said, when they "explain away the facts" such as more snowfall in the mid-Atlantic despite the IPCC prediction of less snow in the region due to global warming.
Even a tragic Air France plane crash was connected with global warming in Russia Today (RT) on June 4, 2009. Alexei Kokorin, a climatologist for the left-wing World Wildlife Fund's Russia Climate Program, told RT ""A consequence of global warming is that the frequency and severity of such events (severe weather conditions) is higher. Unfortunately, the risk for airplanes, especially in tropical areas above water, will be higher. This could be difficult for pilots to understand."
Another horrible disaster, Hurricane Katrina was also linked to manmade climate change. On May 23, 2006, "Good Morning America" featured two previews: one of the hurricane season and one of Al Gore's global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore has been criticized by some for his "very heavy-handed" use of Katrina footage in the film.
Diane Sawyer linked the two saying, "And of course, there are a lot of people who believe that global warming is in fact to blame, in part, for this surge in hurricanes. One of them, former Vice President Al Gore, who has re-emerged, leading a kind of call to action." She wasn't alone, CBS's Hannah Storm and NBC's Robert Bazell all tied hurricanes to global warming that year.
But there are scientific problems with that assertion that even television meteorologists have criticized. And in May 2008, National Geographic reported that a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study found global warming could actually decrease hurricane activity by about 18 percent.
Newsweek, a newsmagazine that had repeatedly attacked climate skeptics as "deniers," has stated that there is "unequivocal" evidence of global warming and "90 percent certainty" that humans are responsible. In July 2007, the magazine called the 2003 European heat wave that killed thousands "a human fingerprint" of global warming. They didn't consider any other factors such as the lack of air conditioning in much of Europe.
Citing a scorching U.S. heat wave in 2006, CBS's Bob Orr declared: "Gulledge says there's no longer any serious debate" on climate change. When it comes to the media there certainly isn't "serious debate," there isn't a debate at all since skeptics are outnumbered 13-to-1 on the broadcast networks and often excluded or buried in other reports.
According to the media, everything is proof of warming, even if scientists - including CNN meteorologists - contradict them. Ebell offered one reason that for the media's constant defense of AGW.
"I think part of it is that the media which from time to time portray itself as anti-establishment is actually an integral part of the establishment (the liberal establishment). So you can be a bomb-thrower if you're going after Richard Nixon," Ebell said. "but if they went after someone on their side" they would lose support. So whenever challenged on an issue like global warming, the media "circle the wagons and defend their own."
Want to know what else the media have blamed on global warming? Find the rest of the article at Business & Media Institute.
