Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Michael Mann, inventor of the iconic Hockey Stick Graph, is concerned that TV networks might have been “compromised” into downplaying the climate crisis.
Why has climate change been ignored in the presidential debates?
While we rake over Clinton’s emails and Trump’s late-night tweets, climate has been the elephant in the room, leaving scientists and campaigners asking why there hasn’t been a single direct question about the crisis.
…
“I’ve been shocked at the lack of questions on climate change. It really is fiddling while the world burns,” said Kerry Emanuel, a leading climate scientist. “This is the great issue of our time and we are skirting around it. I’m just baffled by it.”
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have yet to face a moderator question on climate change during two debates in which time was found to grill Clinton repeatedly over her use of emails and to ask Trump about a series of late-night tweets he sent about a former Miss Universe’s sex tape. Lester Holt, the moderator of the first debate, was reportedly set to ask a climate question but ran out of time.
…
“It’s like a sort of collective cowardice,” said Emanuel of the omission. Michael Mann, another prominent climate scientist, added: “One has to wonder if television networks are compromised by the millions of advertising dollars they take from fossil fuel interests.”
…
Mann is not alone in wondering whether the media have been bought off – high profile British climate commentator George Monbiot asked the same question back in August.
Like many climate hypothesis, this conspiracy doesn’t hold water when you examine the evidence. There are plenty of hardcore greens in the media, including high profile presenters who have no qualms about embracing green extremism, who would vehemently reject any attempt to buy them off on climate issues. For example, back in 2014 MSNBC seriously discussed forced reeducation courses for “deniers”.
The real reason climate doesn’t attract more media attention is rather mundane, not nearly as exciting as Mann’s dark criminal fantasies. Back in 2014, senior NBC executive Patrick Burkey offered the following explanation.
“Weather coverage can drive ratings,” Burkey said, but “you have to be careful that you’re not covering weather stories that aren’t real news every night. It’s an easy way to lose the trust of the audience about what is really an important weather story.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/tv/article4446150.html
Bottom line, if climate advocates want more airtime, they need to make an effort to say something newsworthy.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The MSM has broadcast so much BS against Trump and so much BS for Hillary that they’ve simply run out of BS. Not even the tiniest little bit of bovine scat left over for climate change BS.
Dr Mann regurgitates a literally unsupportable talking point. The weeknightly PBS NewsHour is a case in point on easily quantifiable bias on the AGW issue – it’s a bit of a chore to go through their online broadcast archives all the way to 1996, but I’ve done that. On the ratio of IPCC/NOAA/NASA scientists offering detailed viewpoints on the topic vs skeptics scientists, it’s 34 to zero ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/?page_id=3834 ). From my own overall ongoing file, there’s been approaching 600 discussions / significant mentions of AGW on the NewsHour from the present back to 1996, and out of that number, just five of those instances had an indication of what’s found in skeptic science assessments, with one of those being the taped September 17, 2012 appearance of Anthony Watts.
PBS (and NPR) are broadcast apparatus of the Ministry of Information.
Thanks, Russell for your research.
That sounds like an interesting research project. You should consider submitting it as a guest post here.
Ah! Finally! Have we have reached peak BS…?
“Simply run out of BS” implies actual depletion of a resource. Which occurs long after the peak.
I assume that therefore peak BS occurred some time earlier, at the top of the mythical Hubbert Curve of BS.
But, don’t worry because we can just recycle all the old BS and nobody will notice the difference.
Nobody cares anymore. Disinformation leads to demoralization leads to apathy and disinterest.
Fabricated stories about fabrications – which themselves turn out to have been fabricated.
In the end people just shrug and walk away from the whole sordid affair. Expect a low voter turn out.
A.D. Everard — Nice one! — Eugene WR Gallun
To indefatigablefrog: Does “we can just recycle all the old BS” mean the greens have the perfect renewable resource – BS?
Most ‘peak’ claims are projections based on known exploitable resources. With legions of well-meaning alarmists and “concerned scientists” on the job don’t be surprised if the end up discovering some new, exploitable BS resources.
Peak Bullshit probably occurred at the time of ClimateGate and the Conpenhagen Summit. Now I think that we are on the decline of climate BS.
@Lucius von Steinkaninchen
“Conpenhagen Summit”
I see what you did there.
“…climate has been the elephant in the room, leaving scientists and campaigners asking why there hasn’t been a single direct question about the crisis.”
Er guys, maybe its because ‘climate’ is the mouse in the room
“maybe its because ‘climate’ is the mouse in the room”
Or a fly in the room? You know, the one that landed on Hillary’s face.
The Qu’ardian will publish any damned rot at all.
A pretty stupid slur, since a good proportion of the Guardian staff seem of jewish origin.
What did I miss. That went from damned rot to jewish origin in one comment. The grauniad does produce a lot of rot and will print anything green without even the basic checks and ballances
Your attempt to connect making fun of The Guardian to anti Semitism seems contrived at best.
In your opinion, Jews will only produce pro-Jewish news?
You have to feel sorry for Mann, Emmanuel, et al. They truly believe they have discovered the key and hold the future of mankind in their hands. That is pretty heady stuff. It’s tough being a prophet, if only in your own mind.
Oh, well, Pennsylvania State University professors have gone out on strike, so he will not be busy commenting on this matter for some time.
Let’s hope they stay on strike for awhile!
So, there is a chance some real education might happen while they are out ?
If he’s officially on strike then I guess Michael Mann must now be climate-whingeing in his free time.
Actually, I see Penn State opted out.
Incorrect. The unions at the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) schools are on strike. Penn State is not part of PASSHE. These used to be known as State Teachers Colleges. Think Slippery Rock State Teachers College.
The best way to control a nation is to control information (MSM) and knowledge (schooling) so what we end up with is propaganda. ” Propaganda is information, especially of a biased nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political cause or point of view. Propaganda is often associated with the psychological mechanisms of influencing and altering the attitude of a population toward a specific cause, position or political agenda in an effort to form a consensus to a standard set of belief patterns.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
Dear Mr Mann,
The climate issue has not been ignored. Its just that it hasn’t been hyped.
The reason it hasn’t been hyped is that the hype would harm Hillary, with respect to the votes she would lose if she had to talk about it.
Sounds like pretty clear signs of psychological denial. Hey the game’s over, the rest of the world has realised that there are more pressing issues. You really need to try to come to terms with that.
Sorry guys, your area of special academic interest is not the centre of the universe. Even if it made you feel very important for a little while.
The possibility of one or two degrees warming in a hundred years time probably does not seem like “while the world burns” to the hundreds of thousands of people in east Aleppo. Europe is flooded with refugees and they are not coming because it is 0.1 deg warmer than it was in 1990.
Half the world is in armed conflict. We’ll get back to you about “dangers” of climate change later.
But didn’t Monbiot claim that thermogeddon had already happened and the MSM were covering it up?
It’s clearly untrue that you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Dang, now that was.. cold.
Stealing
Both sides think it is too risky to bring up climate change as a major issue.
The Democrats pander to their base by putting out a low media response climate change policy that means nothing and the Republicans put out a low media response policy about energy that means nothing.
Does that signal that the public is really 50:50 on the issue or is it 25:25 with a :50 don’t care at all. Pushing it means losing several points from one of the bases without gaining anything on the other side.
This is a mistake for Republicans. They should push the left to stake out a real position so that several points are lost for the “interventionist” Dems. Just don’t get caught by being labelled as a den1er but more of a accept climate change but energy and jobs are more important for now position. Viola, gain 2 points in the polls which is all one needs in the partisan 50:50 split amongst voters in the US.
When the Republicans or the Democrats actually gain power by winning elections, that is when the real climate change philosophy/political position becomes evident. Republicans have failed to gain the margin to 52:48 by ignoring the climate change issue.
Exactly. The alarmists are very careful to avoid debates because they usually lose.
If CAGW became an election issue, it would be almost impossible to avoid debating the issue. It’s better for them if they keep their mouths shut until the election is over.
True Bob they always win. When has a believer in GHE/AGW won any debate? Every time one of them has spoken up it’s been a swift race to get behind some kind of censorship capability and hide like a shaking rat caught eating good grain.
The AGW/GHE crowd *invented* driving scientists out of the main debate on their own sciences and installing thermodynamically illiterate hacks who can’t connect-the-dots about the simplest phase of matter: gases. Compressible fluids.
For decades believers in the fraud called GHE/AGW have done their best to keep people from talking about the fact that there’s actually a separate law for solving temperature of gases;
and their fraud refuses to obey that law, and solve for the density of the atmosphere.
The entire scam is fake math that refuses to do the process right; claiming to solve the temperature of compressible fluids without taking into account the compression.
Everybody go look up, ” 33 degrees green house effect ”
then go look up right here on WUWT, ”Hyperventilating on Venus” and ”Venus Envy”.
These two threads, are where one of the world’s bloggers on GHE decided to simply check the story that there’s a green house effect in solving temperature of atmospheric volumes; on Venus, also here on earth.
Also see ‘Harry D Huffman: No Green House Effect on Venus’.
It’s a scam.
It’s thermodynamic law violating fraud. Blatantly. Everybody you meet who claims they believe it’s possible is an intellectual wreck – and in actual fact – everyone knows
it’s believers- not the real scientists who said the entire thing is a fraudulent crock – are the
sole reason
for that arm of pseudo-science to be the reputation sewer of the earth.
Wait Dr.Mann! That’s not true! I watched the 3rd debate, and somewhere in the middle, in one of her long, droning policy wonk meanderings, Hillary actually said something like “climate change, which is a very important subject” and then immediately veered off the topic onto something else. You got your 12 seconds of exposure. What more do you want? She has REAL challenges to deal with, like deleted e-mails and such.
A short video explaining Media and Democracy.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCkalT4JFCg
The problem is making Mann and friends look like fanatics, which should not be hard.
Micheal has to pay attention to the real world.
– Hillary is pushing climate change as a political point (see also Podesta’s leaked e-mails)
– the MSM is biased in FAVOR of Hillary’s talking points
– HRC and the DNC are driven by focus groups
Climate change must be REALLY low on the scale to get no MSM attention
WAKE ME WHEN IT’S OVER (no tune in mind)
everything we do leads to disaster – in time
if it’s whirling down the vortex ever faster, then fiiiiiiine
i finally got it- it’s worse than we thought
it’s the biggest crisis of all time!
so fine, let it blow cuz it’s time to get it over!
i’m tired of it preying on my mind.
when the end of the world just won’t stop being nigh!
ya know, i think i’ll just go do whatever i usuallly do and
wait for it…
hmm – what if the apocalypse came and went – and i never knew it?
i mean – what if armageddon happened… and i just sorta slept thru it?
hey- so wake me when oblivion is over- okay?
it’s hard to whip a fervor to a froth every day.
i’m not your hurry, see- so nothing’s gonna worry me-
listen to me when i say:
i’m yawning from catastrophe fatigue in a very big way.
so wake me when it’s over and done.
when it’s time for doing something interesting and fun.
a second coming’s just another rerun
i’d like to give a fuck but i don’t have a free one-
so wake me when it’s over and you’re gone, gone, gone!
wake me when it’s over and you’re gone!
“gnomish October 19, 2016 at 6:06 pm
it’s hard to whip a fervor to a froth every day.”
I dunno, Griff, Simon, Gore, Mann et al seem to do a good job.
Lack of audiance interest probably has a big influence. A poll last week listed only 6% being
very much concerned about climate change.
Presidential debates are staged events with topics covered agreed upon prior to the debates.
These are only question and answer events and not real debates.
Are they afraid that we won’t save the planet or are they afraid we won’t save the flow of their generous research grants?
The latter. Do you really have to ask that question or was it rhetorical?
Television networks compromised? Seems to be the least of your problems over there …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53nL_aQe_ek
But then there’s …
http://www.snopes.com/leaked-videos-clinton-voter-fraud/
[yes, the website makes fake clickbait articles, it isn’t an actual news source -mod]
Not sure which site you’re talking about. The BBC is an actual news source [of sorts] …
https://youtu.be/jsZsnrqmrnk?t=101
A proper case cannot be made for CAGW. That’s the reason the Leftwing Media don’t concentrate on climate. If they thought they had a good enough case, they would go after skeptics fullbore, but they know if they do then their sham will be exposed for what it is. So they stay away from debating the subject. They only make proclamations, they don’t want to argue the subject.
TA – agreed. The problem they face when “convincing the public” CAGW is a real threat is it is so easy to convince the public otherwise, particularly compared with all the other risks we face.
The alarmist main response to this social fact is a claim that the public is too ignorant to be allowed to form their own opinions. Executive action is required, and that means getting into the position of that executive – or creating a new post with new powers. Doesn’t that all sound familiar? Read the Copenhagen Agreement – the proposed text. It is enough to arouse the (politically) dead to speed from their sepulchres.
Isn’t that what elitist rule is all about? If people are to dumb to understand climate how can they possibly understand the need for pointless perpetual wars or the need to go fund-raising by pushing cocaine and crack onto a troublesome portion of the population? I mean if you had real democracy they would be electing all sorts of fools whose minions would be appointed to every post of influence down to the grass roots, right?
Sheesh, give it a rest.
Just because you believe the nonsense that if the West stopped defending itself, that all fighting would stop, doesn’t make it true.
And the lie about government pushing drugs on the black community has been refuted more times than the climate change nonsense.
They’re hoping that disinterest by most voters means they’ve got their eye off the ball, and Obama can make an “executive order” calling for carbon taxes, banning coal, mandating CO2 capture, and the full dysfunctional panoply of warmist Lysenkoism.
Here is a timely article:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/20/liberals-whine-that-wallace-didnt-mention-global-warming-in-debate/
I suppose Hillary could have brought the subject up if she so desired. Nothing to prevent her from doing so. No, they don’t want to discuss this subject.
Conspiracy Theorist Michael Mann…
Actually, there isn’t an “elephant in the room” – it is only a mouse.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once described writers as “the engineers of the human soul.”
“The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks,”
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/06/why-the-cia-distributed-pocket-size-copies-of-doctor-zhivago-in-the-soviet-union/371369/
Mickey Mann get so much cash from Green government lobbyists that he does not need to strike for higher wages like his “peers” and he does not need to fill IRS tax returns or State tax returns.
Actually Mickey does not consider professors of chemistry, geology, geophysics, mathematics, meteorology and physics, and certainly not computer science and engineering, his peers. They are beneath his genus.
Call him Ishmael.
Anthony Watts, that is. That’s not an elephant in the room but a whale an obsessed man will chase to his demise.
Ishmael sets the record straight.
“…say something newsworthy …” How about saying something that is both true and believable?
That would be newsworthy.
Is this dude kidding? What color do you think the sky is in his world? Unbelievable.
My guess is green.
Lewandowsky should be all over Mann and his conspiracy ideations
May God help us, that would make things much worse than all of us could possibly think. Put Psycho-dad and the Nerd in one room and the end of this world is nigh.