Guardian: President Trump Distracts Journalists from Reporting Climate Disasters

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

If you think you are being continuously bombarded with nonsense climate scares, think again – Guardian author Lisa Hymas wants more climate stories in the press. She has also accused President Trump of distracting her fellow journalists from reporting about climate disasters.

Climate change is the story you missed in 2017. And the media is to blame

Lisa Hymas

Some of Trump’s tweets generate more national coverage than devastating disasters. As the weather gets worse, we need journalism to get better.

Which story did you hear more about this year – how climate change makes disasters like hurricanes worse, or how Donald Trump threwpaper towels at Puerto Ricans?

If you answered the latter, you have plenty of company. Academic Jennifer Good analyzed two weeks of hurricane coverage during the height of hurricane season on eight major TV networks, and found that about 60% of the stories included the word Trump, and only about 5% mentioned climate change.

Trump doesn’t just suck the oxygen out of the room; he sucks the carbon dioxide out of the national dialogue. Even in a year when we’ve had string of hurricanes, heatwaves, and wildfires worthy of the Book of Revelation – just what climate scientists have told us to expect – the effect of climate change on extreme weather has been dramatically undercovered. Some of Trump’s tweets generate morenational coverage than devastating disasters.

Good’s analysis lines up with research done by my organization, Media Matters for America, which found that TV news outlets gave far too little coverage to the welldocumented links between climate change and hurricanes. ABC and NBC both completely failed to bring up climate change during their news coverage of Harvey, a storm that caused the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the continental US. When Irma hit soon after, breaking the record for hurricane intensity, ABC didn’t do much better.

Coverage was even worse of Hurricane Maria, the third hurricane to make landfall in the US this year. Not only did media outlets largely fail to cover the climate connection; in many cases, they largely failed to cover the hurricane itself.

If we are to fend off the worst possible outcomes of climate change, we need to shift as quickly as possible to a cleaner energy system. We could expect more Americans to get on board with that solution if they more fully understood the problem – and that’s where the critical role of the media comes in. As the weather gets worse, we need our journalism to get better.

Lisa Hymas is the climate and energy program director at Media Matters

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/07/climate-change-media-coverage-media-matters

What a shocker – normal people find President Trump’s efforts to make America great again more interesting than yet another climate warning.

Here’s a hint Lisa – If you want to generate interest, make an effort, try to find something new to say about the climate. Trying to paint every photogenic storm as a sign of the end times is lazy journalism. Repeating the same tired climate claims every time the wind blows a few trees down tries the patience of normal people.

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December 7, 2017 10:34 pm

Lisa needs to read IPCC AR5

czechlist
Reply to  Scute
December 8, 2017 4:53 pm

Thanks for the reporting, Lisa.
I honestly had not heard that Trump threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans.
Yet I was inundated with stories about Climate Change causing hurricanes.

“you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time – but don’t try to BS an old BSer”
Abraham Lincolnstein

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Reply to  Scute
December 8, 2017 5:30 pm

Please find below an abstract of my article submitted to a seminar to be held in this month:

Role of Climate Change on “Tropical Storms-Hurricanes-Typhoons”

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

Formerly Chief Technical Advisor – WMO/UN & Expert – FAO/UN
Fellow, Telangana Academy of Sciences [Founder Member]
jeevanandareddy@yahoo.com; jeevananda_reddy@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
Hurricane Harvey followed by a string of Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia in the North Atlantic basin in 2017, has triggered questions on linkage between hurricanes and global warming. The concept is a warmer earth will generate stronger and wetter hurricanes. There is also science, which shows colder world is a stormier world. Classical examples to these are the pre-monsoon summer storms and the post-monsoon winter-storms (Northeast Monsoon season) in India. In the Southern Oscillation generally speaking, droughts are associated with El Nino (warmer) and floods are associated with La Nina (cooler). Before 1997-98 and 2014-16 El Nino events there have been clear cut pauses in global average temperature with no trend. In the satellite era, the global temperature presented clear cut positive and negative peaks with near zero trends in association, respectively, with El Nino and La Nina & Volcanic eruption activity periods. Also, many ignore, misrepresent, or exaggerate the science. There is well-established data about these matters. While doing so, they did not even care to look in to the historical pattern in the occurrence of hurricanes in US. Some counters this by saying global warming is acting through sea level rise in this hurricane belt of US. However, the sea level change in this belt is associated with several localized factors such as “land subsidence” in association with extraction of oil, gas, water, etc. The Greenland ice, so far the lowest in summer was recorded in 2012 and since then it is fluctuating between the mean and 2012 minima. Many a time the word “climate change” is used as de-facto “global warming”, which is in reality not true. Climate change is a vast subject. This article looks into these aspects in brief to get the clarity on the role of global warming/climate change on Tropical Storms-Hurricanes-Typhoons.

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

RockyRoad
Reply to  Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
December 9, 2017 4:43 am

Well, hey… some people don’t know the difference between land subsidence and sea level rise–to them it becomes a moot point when the water rises above their nose.

/sarc!

December 7, 2017 10:34 pm

Behind that pretty face…comment image

lies another soulless, empty shell.
Unable to think critically about what she writes. She apparently thinks major hurricanes never hit the US before in multiple numbers in the same year. She also seems to have forgotten (conveniently) the unprecedented 12 year no-Major hurricane hiatus for the CONUS. That somehow before man’s fossil fuel use, the Earth’s climate was an always-stable Garden of Eden.
So sad.
A brain is terrible thing to waste. And hers is gone. Smoked to ashes by the Liberal disease, and now blown away by TDS.

And yet there are so many out there like her.

george e. smith
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 7, 2017 10:56 pm

If journalists focused on reporting the news; about …. anything …. and quit trying to tell us what President Trump is or is not doing, in THEIR opinions, they would have time to properly report climate news; after all it comes along about every 30 years, so they can hardly miss it can they ??

G

Reply to  george e. smith
December 7, 2017 11:05 pm

Ms Hymas apparently writes and reports bias-confirming stories for the Liberal audience that reads Media Mutters. (The Guardian article is a side gig apparently). She is a paid muck-raker. It is what she does. Yellow journalism.

Media Mutters was founded as a far-left Media outlet that initially tried to disguise its politics. She probably is a good fit for that kind of “jornalism.”
But intellectually, that kind of reporting and writing always leaves one an empty shell after a few years. She will be a mental basket case if not already there. And she has at least 3 more years of Trump to go fully off the deep-end with TDS.

PiperPaul
Reply to  george e. smith
December 8, 2017 9:22 am

There are too many “journalists”, period.

Bryan A
Reply to  george e. smith
December 8, 2017 12:30 pm

Sounds like yet another liberalized reporter in the pocket of BIG JOURNALI$M

Editor
Reply to  george e. smith
December 8, 2017 4:32 pm

George et al ==> Today’s journalists [mostly] have given up the practice of Journalism altogether — a very small percentage follow the Professional Journalists Code of Ethics [ https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp ] or even think that they should.

My local Public Radio station (out of Albany, NY)– which I call “WDNC — a political outreach of the Democratic National Convention” — rants on with nothing whatever except anti-Trump propaganda — every show — even the nature specials (if live interviews) get a question prompting an anti-Trump answer. Sophomoric — sounds like a 1960s college radio station — unthinking anti-everything kids going on about their fantasy politics (except these are adults). I usually have to turn it off after a minute or two. The staff at the station are living in some kind of alternative universe, unrecognizable to me — radical two-party politics with a capital D.

Much of the MSM is the same way — no thought whatever of representing the viewpoint of the democratically elected government.

Very disturbing.

(PS: I am not a Trump supporter — I think two-party politics is what is wrong with America. Unlike most of the MSM “journalists” I recognize though that Trump was and is basic ally a third-party president. Neither the Dems nor the Republicans wanted him — but the was elected anyway.)

getitright
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 7, 2017 11:01 pm

She’s just a young thing and cannot leave her mother….

Steve Fraser
Reply to  getitright
December 7, 2017 11:32 pm

Smiled at that.

AJB
Reply to  getitright
December 8, 2017 1:31 am
Keitho
Editor
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 7, 2017 11:14 pm

That comment borders on the lyrical Joel and it is enhanced by the simple reason of it being perfectly true.

Bravo!

BoyfromTottenham
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 12:24 am

Maybe not an empty shell, but a clever propagandist, creator of dis-information and re-enforcer of left wing views. For example, maybe she doesn’t ‘think that major hurricanes never hit the US in multiple numbers in the same year’, she wants her readers to think that. Maybe her brain works fine, but it works for those who want to destroy capitalism and create a ‘new world order’, instead of the world that DJT wants. Don’t let hatred (or fear) of the Left cloud your rational thought processes. They are acting rationally within their frame of reference. We have to do the same within ours. Otherwise we lose.

Tom O
Reply to  BoyfromTottenham
December 8, 2017 12:14 pm

Excellent point, and not enough of those “not of the far left” consider it. They are “as crazy as a fox” and as empty as “a gas filled room.” Nothing to be taken as lightly as too many do. They have paddled that boat a long, long way against a tide of data that hasn’t even slowed them down. People may put “climate change” at the bottom of their list, and when they do, they tend to ignore what happens regarding it. In that way, those that are still buying the politicians end up winning with a losing hand because everyone else folded and left the table.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 12:50 am

Pretty is so subjective. Now the pay must be good at the paper with teeth like that.

DonS
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 3:59 am

You forgot the “sarc” tag after “face”.

Ziiex Zeburz
Reply to  DonS
December 8, 2017 4:27 am

Patrick
Just maybe,, when they changed the teeth the “Brain? ” was (as normal) not looking in the mirror

M E Emberson
Reply to  DonS
December 10, 2017 11:00 am

“Not just a pretty face” is a sarcastic observation in the Britain It usually means he or she is clever or too clever . Too clever by half is similar remark.

ralfellis
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 4:42 am

Nice summary of the Lisa thing.

As an aside I occasionaly browse the Daily Mail, which has the largest circulation in the UK. And the DM reports a climate disaster every day, which is all caused by global warming -apparently. But the good news is that each report is comprehensively kicked into touch in the comments section, so the readers are not being taken in by this barrage of propaganda.

Ralph

thomasjk
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 7:12 am

How many journalism majors do you reckon may have an above average aptitude for science and math?

Aren’t most journalists operating at a severe disadvantage when they try to report on scientific topics? Do they really have any choice about their practice of (usually) “soft” plagiarism if they are going to report on climate and/or climate change?

thomasjk
Reply to  thomasjk
December 8, 2017 7:28 am

I “borrowed” this one from today’s Technocracy News newsletter:

Satellites Show No Acceleration In Global Warming For 23 Years
By Michael Bastasch on Dec 07, 2017 08:30 pm
Technocrats will ignore any data that presents a contrary case against their own pre-conceived ideas and assumptions. In this case, another solid report from university scientists with funding from the Department of Energy!
Read in browser »

TA
Reply to  thomasjk
December 8, 2017 7:55 am

“Satellites Show No Acceleration In Global Warming For 23 Years”

ABC, CBS and NBC ought to be spreading this around to the public. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to do so though. This “pause” report will never air on any of those networks.

See Lisa, both sides of this issue have a problem with how the news is reported. You aren’t getting enough CAGW hype out of them, and skeptics can’t get them to tell the truth.

I suspect there wasn’t much “climate change” mentioned during the recent hurricane coverage because most of the commentators were meteorologists, and meteorologists, for the most part, don’t seem to buy into the CAGW narrative.

Reply to  thomasjk
December 9, 2017 7:57 am

As the old saying goes, “You don’t realize how ignorant journalists are until they write about something you know.” If all they have to do is report “who, what, when, where, and why,” they might be OK, but with science reporting, they are completely out of their depth.

Andy Pattullo
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 7:56 am

I think she may be missing a few key bits of information, and though one might think that a journalist would know how to find those little pearls through investigative initiative, that seems to be a passing phase for journalism. First fact – no evidence any of her treasured climate disasters are related to CAGW. Second fact – she is right about Trump being able to side track the media with his tweets, but that is because Trump understands the media way better then they understand Trump. They are doing his bidding and have no idea. It is not climate disasters that he is keeping them from focusing on, but the very important policy changes in environment, energy, security and foreign policy which just may get the country back on course. This journalist and most of the rest are blind to how they are being led around by the nose. Their persistent fascination with everything outlandish and bizarre, along with a existential dependence on advertising dollars prevent them from ever dealing with the real news.

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 8:10 am

Joel, you are on to something here! It seems logical that if you let your mind be captured without giving the topic an analysis to see if ‘they got game’ you are closing off a piece in F your brain. I believe an objective (if possible? ) IQ test would reflect lower intelligence. If you have burdened this wonderful thinking instrument on top of this with the omnibus prejudices that go along with the neo-left talking-points world view, you may have a self made idiot behind these fresh faces.

Sommer
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 10:19 am

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/2050-degrees-of-change
Just today CBC listeners in Canada got another dose of alarmism. David Suzuki and his daughter Severn were interviewed by Joanna Wagstaffe. The program might show up on the listings yet.

Carbon BIgfoot
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 8, 2017 5:25 pm

My late father had a theory about the good Lord and his creation of brains, additional orifices, and the effect of gravity on the hole process. Since he has been gone for over 20+ years I can’t seem to recall these words of wisdom no matter hard I try—but I think in this situation it has some application.

Jonny Scott
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
December 9, 2017 4:45 am

Obviously beauty is in the eyes of the beholder!

Cold in Wisconsin
December 7, 2017 11:08 pm

Works for Media Matters, the David Brock outfit. That kind of says it all. And even while decrying Trump, she made the news about him after all. Because it is all Trump’s fault, no matter what.

December 7, 2017 11:16 pm

How CAGW thinking goes:

Warmist in 2005: “Global warming will create more hurricanes and make them more powerful.”

Skeptic in 2017: “There hasn’t been a Cat 3 or above make US landfall in 12 years, and overall available energy is way down.”

[Two hurricanes above Cat 3 status make US landfall,j finally, in 2017.]

Warmist: “See how climate change made those storms worse? Otherwise, they would have stayed below Cat 3 level and missed the US, like the storms we utterly failed to predict would do in the last decade.”

Skeptic” [muttering] “I have a headache…”

sophocles
Reply to  James Schrumpf
December 8, 2017 12:58 am

With that lack of thought, there’s no point in telling her that there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas [pdf]
nor, because the atmosphere does not have a roof, then any
atmospheric warming
is caused by something other”
[pdf]
than a greenhouse effect attributed to a trace gas at a concentration
of a mere 0.04%, which means that storms are most likely not caused
by that trace gas
but by other other means.
[video].

So I won’t.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  sophocles
December 8, 2017 3:51 am

Right on, ….. Sophocles.

The basic difference between “greenhouse” gasses, …… ”outhouse” gasses ……… and/or “sewer” gasses, …….. other than their ”aromatic” qualities, …… is the interior “space” of the physical structure for which they are named.

Thus said, …. iffen one vented ”outhouse” gasses into a greenhouse, ……. they would automatically become “greenhouse” gasses with an “outhouse” aroma.

No different than iffen you had a greenhouse full of “blooming” Corpse Flowers.

Reply to  sophocles
December 8, 2017 8:31 am

To say it has small effect, fine, but to say there is No green house effect removes you from the topic in any real way. Yes, it’s not enclosed like a glass or plastic greenhouse; and yes the mechanism of the actual gardener’s greenhouse is not from ghg, but this unfortunately bad simile is meant to mean that ghg retard the unfettered exit of LWIR and therefore has a heating effect, even if negative feedbacks neutralize it all.

Also, it is an obvious mistake to marginalize CO2 because it is only a puny 0.04%. This puny gas creates and supports the entire biosphere which has a huge affect on climate. It is greening the deserts and has created 14% more forest cover, flattened existing trees, made more plankton and indeed is a negative feedback- photosynthesis is an endothermic process (cooling!) and preserver and F soil moisture. As with a greenhouse, it has even doubled world harvests! Sceptics shouldn’t adopt mantras and lazy talking-bytes like the warmer folks if you want to make headway in the battle.

Reply to  sophocles
December 8, 2017 8:33 am

Oops ‘fattened’

paqyfelyc
Reply to  sophocles
December 8, 2017 8:45 am

Your first link “there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas” is bad paper. Does contain some good stuff, like real experiment, but alas some sh!t ruins it all, including
1) claim that albedo figures are all wrong
2) claim that GHG theory would have a -273°C atmosphere (not so : the theory do include some non radiative warming, through conduction and condensation of water (*) )

(*) Note that condensation would heat atmosphere no matter what, so in absence of radiative transfer the conductive process would be the only way for atmosphere to lose energy. This process is so inefficient that bottom atmosphere would have to be very hot, and hotter than the ground (on average, which would occur most of the day except during max insolation) for it to happen

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  sophocles
December 9, 2017 5:07 am

Gary Pearse – December 8, 2017 at 8:31 am

To say it has small effect, fine, but to say there is No green house effect removes you from the topic in any real way. Yes, it’s not enclosed like a glass or plastic greenhouse; and yes the mechanism of the actual gardener’s greenhouse is not from ghg, but this unfortunately bad simile is meant to mean that ghg retard the unfettered exit of LWIR and therefore has a heating effect, even if negative feedbacks neutralize it all.

Gary P, in the context of your above “quoted” paragraph, was your two (2) references to ghgs ……. referring to methane (CH4) which has an average atmospheric concentration of 1.745 ppm …. or …. 0.0001745%?

Or was your two (2) references to ghgs referring to water (H2O) vapor which has an average atmospheric concentration of 25,000 to 40,000 ppm …. or …. 2.5% to 4.0%?

Gary, how much “greenhouse effect” does the atmospheric methane (CH4) generate?

And Gary, please tell me, has anyone ever measured the “greenhouse effect” in desert locales (Sahara, Gobi, etc.) that is directly attributed to the 400 ppm (0.004%) of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)?

“DUH”, of course they haven’t, …… cause they sure as ell don’t want to confirm the “junk science” of CAGW.

thomasjk
Reply to  James Schrumpf
December 8, 2017 7:21 am

There is still an ongoing lull in global cumulative cyclonic energy with the total for 2017 about 20% below the average annual amount.

December 7, 2017 11:33 pm

So Trump sucks the oxygen out of the room; and sucks the carbon dioxide out of the national dialogue…..Is there nothing that President Trump cannot do?

Jer0me
Reply to  ntesdorf
December 8, 2017 4:54 am

That godamned nitrogen is next!

Amber
December 7, 2017 11:35 pm

The Guardian is a sinking ship and their dogmatic promotion of earth has a fever alarmist
nonsense is just one reason why . It takes work to get the facts and lazy journalism is just more cost effective in the short term . Good riddance …. (well except to the women and men who actually work at creating the product their editors think will sell. )

climanrecon
Reply to  Amber
December 8, 2017 12:46 am

Supporters often cite the number of visits they get, but heck most of them must be because it is free, even I go there daily for a good laugh.

ren
December 7, 2017 11:37 pm

Temperature in the south of the US.
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00950/gz9k1vpjl0kl.png
The stratospheric polar vortex pattern.comment image

Eamon Butler
December 7, 2017 11:46 pm

Surely she has it the wrong way round. Scary nonsense, climate scaremongering, is distracting from real issues.

Eamon.

December 7, 2017 11:58 pm

What do climate disasters have to do with climate change? They have always happened and always will. When will this religion die? The sea level is rising less that 1mm per year. (this from the worlds #1 authority)
The weather has been a little hotter lately, not the climate. If we take the ”climate” as being a 30 year block, it has hardly warmed at all. It will most likely start cooling in the next couple of decades. All this information is out there for anyone to see. When will this religion die??

Auto
Reply to  Eric Worrall
December 8, 2017 1:59 pm

“Eric Worrall December 8, 2017 at 12:26 am

When politicians stop feeding them.”

Eric, thanks for your hugely appreciated efforts.
Might I help a bit here:
A possibly improved reword: –
“When politicians stop feeding them £avi$h£y.”

Auto
[I know I should be able to type the final y as a yen/Yuan sign . . . ]

Something to learn this weekend, along with, perhaps, Faceb00k.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Mike
December 8, 2017 2:25 am

“Mike December 7, 2017 at 11:58 pm

The weather has been a little hotter lately, not the climate. If we take the ”climate” as being a 30 year block.”

No, “climate” is the AVERAGE of 30 years of weather. So “climate” is made up.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  Mike
December 8, 2017 4:43 am

Mike – December 7, 2017 at 11:58 pm

What do climate disasters have to do with climate change? They have always happened and always will. When will this religion die?

Given the literal fact that 40% to 60% of the world’s population that is greater than 5 or 6 years old are mostly all addicted “passionate” fans of ….. hearing about, …. reading about …… and/or viewing TV, video or movies whose content consists of scary, frightening, bewildering, fear-mongering, imaginary science fiction rhetoric, ………. thus the fear-mongering religious beliefs about the evil and destructive nature of CAGW will be a longtime dying.

It is ……. “Godzilla vrs. the Denialists” …. and the “addicted” populace believe it.

Reply to  Samuel C Cogar
December 8, 2017 4:18 pm

Yeah, it was a rhetorical question really. I can see how the system works but it continues to amaze me that this green agenda has become so widely accepted without question. Or, if there is question, it is shouted down so aggressively. The way I see it is that it somehow started in the Universities which became more and more left leaning for whatever ideological reason of the day. Perhaps some of those reasons where well founded. Now it has morphed into a green monster which feeds on itself. Graduates from the Universities find their way into the media and from there it’s pretty easy to indoctrinate everyone. The Australia Broadcasting Corporation here has become so ”politically correct” they seem to be afraid of their own shadows. Thank heavens for sites like this one which continue to swim against the tide.

Crispin in Waterloo but really in Bishkek
December 8, 2017 12:15 am

“Repeating the same tired climate claims every time the wind blows a few trees down tries the patience of normal people.”

No, it exhausts their patience.

These are media people. Surely they understand that crying ‘Wolf!’ 180,000 times a year leads people to believe there is no wolf. When they finally locate a beagle they want to re-wolf the air. Talk about sucking up all the oxygen.

If they don’t understand that it is Delta T that drives hurricanes, not enthalpy, they can expect to be ignored even when they are in full climate-cry. The Persian Gulf is much warmer and has no hurricanes at all.

Frustration is the result of expectations not being met. I can’t think of any facet of global warming that is not frustrating to the Guardian.

FWIW, I am reading the story of Alan Turing – the book behind the movie. In it there is a comment that he didn’t hang out with the nest of leftists in Manchester at the Manchester Guardian and the BBC office who would have tolerated his homosexuality. Perhaps if he had, he would have lived long enough to produce a working climate model and all this nonsense would never have come about.

SAMURAI
December 8, 2017 12:34 am

Too bad for the Lunatic Left that IPCC’s 2013 AR5 Report finally admitted that over the past 50~100 years (depending on weather phenomena) there have been NO DISCERNIBLE INCREASING TRENDS in severity/ frequency of: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tornadoes, floods, droughts, thunderstorms, tropical storms, subtropical storms and hail…

I agree that “journalist need to do a better job” in reporting the facts, and not reporting FAKE NEWS to achieve Leftist political agendas…

December 8, 2017 12:43 am

Another mindless fool employed by the Guardian to give us bad advice on energy policy. She writes

“numerous studies and grid experts have concluded that the electrical grid can incorporate increasing amounts of renewable energy and become more secure as a result, not less.”

That is factually wrong. She also slags off nuclear power yet pretends to be a responsible voice in energy policy.

alastair Gray
December 8, 2017 1:00 am

Next time you observe it to rain cats and dogs its man-made animal abuse and its all the fault of big oil , Koch Btos and everybody else’s;dSDUV but yours. The Grauniad has skopen!! To increase climate awareness could we say “Its raining polar bears and bearde seals”

December 8, 2017 1:19 am

“Lisa Hymas is the climate and energy program director at Media Matters”

Oh!? Media matters, eh? Oxymoron!
Never mind, not worth discussing anything/anybody from media matters.
Their name should be False media matters.

CodeTech
December 8, 2017 1:39 am

Remember when they all had Bush Derangement Syndrome?
Isn’t it amazing that when a Republican is President everything is his fault, but when a Democrat is President, NOTHING is his fault?

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  CodeTech
December 8, 2017 5:35 am

It is a known fact that, Christian Religious wise, ……

Everything good that happens, God is given the credit.

Everything bad that happens, the Devil gets the blame.

And likewise, it is also a known fact that, partisan political Democrat wise, ……

Everything good that happens, the Democrats quickly claim the credit for.

Everything bad that happens, the Democrats quickly blame the Republicans.

And that is EXACTLY why the Democrats are fighting “tooth n’ nail” and via dastardly deeds ….. to prevent the decrease in taxes that President Trump wants enacted into Law.

The free-spending, partying, deplorable, dishonest Democrats ….. absolutely, positively DO NOT WANT the Republicans to be given credit for anything that the voting populace is in dire need of and would love and appreciate.

The Democrats really don‘t want their partisan “voting populace” to find out that the Dems have been lying to them for at least the past 80 years.

paqyfelyc
Reply to  Samuel C Cogar
December 8, 2017 6:44 am

Actually “Everything good that happens, God is given the credit. / Everything bad that happens, the Devil gets the blame.” is NOT a christian religious fact. That’s in fact a christian heresy, related to Manicheism. In standard christian theology, only god has power, and the devil can at most offer temptation, but it’s up to man to resist or to sin. Some bad things (like famous Lisbon Earthquake) are just dealt with “the lord ways etc.”

And, to be fair, democrats have no monopoly of the “get credit of good, blame bad on opposite side” scheme. Just each and every politician has to use the trick.

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  Samuel C Cogar
December 8, 2017 1:52 pm

paqyfelyc says “… the devil can at most offer temptation”

The C. Pope wants to change the wording in the Lord’s Prayer to reflect that ‘God does not lead us into temptation’ – – –
Maybe this will distract the MSM from the next weather event.

Samuel C Cogar
Reply to  Samuel C Cogar
December 9, 2017 3:59 am

Actually “Everything good that happens, God is given the credit. / Everything bad that happens, the Devil gets the blame.” is NOT a christian religious fact.

But, but, but, but, ….. paqyfelyc, …… surely you have heard a few Bible believing Creationists who claim to be living right at the “foot-of-the-Cross”, …… noinfrequently exclaim in a loud voice …… “The Devil made me do it, ….. the Devil made me do it.

paqyfelyc
Reply to  Samuel C Cogar
December 9, 2017 4:28 pm

I don’t come across enough creationists to hear them say such thing. May be they do, but that’s still heresy AFAIK

icisil
December 8, 2017 3:26 am

It’s a job. These people are paid to pump out apocalyptic hyperbole. After a while it has the same effect as Kim Kardashian.

Reply to  icisil
December 8, 2017 7:33 am

Go deeper than that: It’s a job requiring reporters to repeat insupportable talking points. One of us could easily pen a lengthy article or blog post titled “‘Inadequate Time Devoted to Climate Change Reporting’, Say Reporters who Report Nonstop on Global Warming”, followed by a list of places where reporters over the last 20 years have bemoaned the lack of such reporting despite news items mentioning it practically everywhere. Case in point is the PBS NewsHour, with its ratio of 49 IPCC/NOAA/NASA scientist guests vs zero skeptic climate scientists over that span of time ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/?page_id=3834 ), along with its direct discussions of the topic or significant mentions of it as a done deal, which number nearly 800 times since 1996. Do the math on that – it averages out to more than once every two weeks.

arthur4563
December 8, 2017 3:26 am

If this silly girl is what Media Matters considers a “climate expert” you have to wonder at the intellectual abilities of their “non-experts.” We’re talking ,monumental ignorance here, folks. Monumental.

Simon
Reply to  arthur4563
December 8, 2017 10:14 am

“If this silly girl” that’s a bit patronising isn’t it?

F. Leghorn
Reply to  Simon
December 8, 2017 10:21 am

How about “this idiot woman”? Is that less patronizing?

F. Leghorn
Reply to  arthur4563
December 8, 2017 10:19 am

No big surprise they’re ignorant. Cheerleaders don’t need to understand the intricacies of the game. They just need to smile and occasionally flash a little thigh. All the while yelling loudly how bad the other team is.

December 8, 2017 3:35 am

“we need journalism to get better.”

Yes please!

Reply to  HotScot
December 8, 2017 10:31 am

Make Journalism Great Again!

Bruce Cobb
December 8, 2017 4:09 am

“Trump doesn’t just suck the oxygen out of the room; he sucks the carbon dioxide out of the national dialogue.”
Hack writing like hers doesn’t just suck: it blows chunks.

Pop Piasa
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
December 9, 2017 7:07 pm

The liberals have declared a four-year open season on Trump. Instead of introspection to learn why they lost, the Dems are concentrating on the vilification of the clown that the people chose over the socialist crook that they fielded. They had better figure out just who the core of this country is, and where we want it to be headed, before fielding the next group of candidates.

December 8, 2017 4:10 am

Discussing Media Matters gives some insight into how the US left and greens (an overlapping characterization) so easily fall into conspiracy theories about climate skeptics and the right (again overlapping).
Media Matters is funded by a small group of wealthy individuals, and spreads deliberate misinformation about their opponents. Ever seen that theme with reversed politics?

John
December 8, 2017 4:20 am

Hilarious that The Guardian thinks there aren’t enough Chicken Little stories already.

cirby
December 8, 2017 4:55 am

Here’s the most simple line that gives it all away:

“or how Donald Trump threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans?”

No, he was throwing paper towels TO Puerto Ricans. Who were happy about it.

If you’re so petty as to try and slant something so simple, you shouldn’t pretend to be a reporter at all.

Gib
December 8, 2017 5:01 am

A response from the senior scientist at the local weather bureau, in response to my assertion that their stance on AGW was predictable and sad, stated that “I am confusing climate with climate change”. Used to be ‘we were confusing weather with climate’.

michael hart
December 8, 2017 5:13 am

Her problem is that she wants to have her cake and eat it. The Guardian et. al. want to blame everything on Donald Trump and blame it on Global Warming at the same time. But there just aren’t enough hours in the day, or inches of column space in the paper to do everything all the time.

…and that is before they get around to simultaneously blaming everything on Brexit, Theresa May, and the Patriarchy.

Jc
December 8, 2017 5:25 am

Don’t you just love the Guardian’ ABC1 high-flying readership’s comments?

Well usually I do, they’re usually trying to out do one other at being alarmed that someone else’s affluent lifestyle is burning up the world, but today it looks like there’s a bit of in-fighting amongst them.

Must be the cold winter air making them all hot under the collar.

Oh, and one of them is still yakking about the 97% of scientists. Must’nt have gotten the memo on that scam.

Great entertainment for the bleak mid winter.

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