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 well–documented 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.
Lisa needs to read IPCC AR5
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
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
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!
Behind that pretty face…
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.
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
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.
There are too many “journalists”, period.
Sounds like yet another liberalized reporter in the pocket of BIG JOURNALI$M
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.)
She’s just a young thing and cannot leave her mother….
Smiled at that.
And there’s a tree to decorate this time of year …
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/12/07/18/4715DCBF00000578-5156857-image-a-59_1512672754445.jpg
That comment borders on the lyrical Joel and it is enhanced by the simple reason of it being perfectly true.
Bravo!
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.
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.
Pretty is so subjective. Now the pay must be good at the paper with teeth like that.
You forgot the “sarc” tag after “face”.
Patrick
Just maybe,, when they changed the teeth the “Brain? ” was (as normal) not looking in the mirror
“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.
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
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?
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 »
Wups. Forgot something.
https://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2017/12/07/satellites-show-no-acceleration-global-warming-23-years/
https://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2017/12/07/satellites-show-no-acceleration-global-warming-23-years/
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Obviously beauty is in the eyes of the beholder!
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.
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…”
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.
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.
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.
Oops ‘fattened’
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
Gary Pearse – December 8, 2017 at 8:31 am
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.
There is still an ongoing lull in global cumulative cyclonic energy with the total for 2017 about 20% below the average annual amount.
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?
That godamned nitrogen is next!
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. )
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.
Temperature in the south of the US.
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00950/gz9k1vpjl0kl.png
The stratospheric polar vortex pattern.
Surely she has it the wrong way round. Scary nonsense, climate scaremongering, is distracting from real issues.
Eamon.
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??
When politicians stop feeding them.
“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.
“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.
@ Mike – December 7, 2017 at 11:58 pm
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.
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.
“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.
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…
Another mindless fool employed by the Guardian to give us bad advice on energy policy. She writes
That is factually wrong. She also slags off nuclear power yet pretends to be a responsible voice in energy policy.
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”
Oh!? Media matters, eh? Oxymoron!
Never mind, not worth discussing anything/anybody from media matters.
Their name should be False media matters.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.”
I don’t come across enough creationists to hear them say such thing. May be they do, but that’s still heresy AFAIK
It’s a job. These people are paid to pump out apocalyptic hyperbole. After a while it has the same effect as Kim Kardashian.
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.
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.
“If this silly girl” that’s a bit patronising isn’t it?
How about “this idiot woman”? Is that less patronizing?
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.
“we need journalism to get better.”
Yes please!
Make Journalism Great Again!
“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.
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.
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?
Hilarious that The Guardian thinks there aren’t enough Chicken Little stories already.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
“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…”
Is it possible, just possible that there is no climate connection? Did she ever consider that she was wrong and the rest of the media was correct? Of course not.
Thinking of a song that she could sing, how does it go? Oh yeah, “If I only had a brain…”
So let’s translate it:
I am Lisa Hymas, climate and energy program director at Media Matters. My job is to have Americans willing to embark in the great crusade that will cost them three quarter of their earning and most of (what’s left of) their liberty, for the profit and power of my masters. And for that, the plan is to have TV news outlets scaring people into believing climate change is a disaster, that each and every harmful things happening, like, hurricanes, are man-made, as if they were a new thing on Earth.
And I fail.
I wish I were Goebbels and had his skills and means, but I am not and have not. I am now vox clamat in deserto, all attendance went to the MAGA circus show.
But that’s not my fault, nor is it non cooperating reality that just doesn’t fit in the storytelling, or the fact my show is boring as sh!t and i don’t even act myself as if it were as real as I claim. No. It’s Trump’s and other journalists, who are still not enough on board with me, not relaying enough of my propaganda”
when did i read such claims… Ah, I remember. Hillary, of course.
Could we have a pattern here?
Here’s a thought Lisa:
It’s called Winning!
I don’t know what she analyzed, but hurricane coverage here in DC was wall-to-wall about the extreme nature of the storms and did more than hint there was a global warming component.
The Graurdian is about to go tabloid! Their headlines will no doubt reflect their new aspirations to populism e.g “Lucious Lisa Lashes Lame Leader Trump”.
Silver Dynamite
I’m not sure I understand why the Graun hierarchy imagines that making the physical size of the paper smaller and adding a red top to it will make any difference to it’s circulation.
Unless they add a page three bird of course. Or perhaps a page three bloke, or both, along with a lesbian, and a bisexual, and a transgender, and a non sexual person, just to maintain their minority readership.
Had they any sense they would have charged for online access and employed decent journalist’s.
Wouldn’t they need to add a third page for that?
Shoot, even a first and second page of actual substance would go a long way
“…in a year when we’ve had string of hurricanes, heatwaves, and wildfires worthy of the Book of Revelation – ”
Sounds to me like a Freudian slip.
Lisa’s statements are laughably dumb, including this notion that Americans don’t understand “the problem”, because if we did, we’d be on board with “the solution”, and we need the media to “educate” us about “climate change”. If Lisa were’nt such a half-wit, I’d suggest she look up the word “propaganda”, which is what the media mouthpieces for Big Climate has been feeding us, in an ever-increasing hysteria for more than 20 years.
“Lisa’s statements are laughably dumb, including this notion that Americans don’t understand “the problem”,
Mmm Trump doesn’t understand or want to understand the problem. To him the possibility that there could be issues in the future is of little importance. It’s about making money now and to hell with consequences. Add to it that he really has no understanding of the issue and doesn’t want to have and you have a summary of the situation. Anyway he has far more pressing things to worry about at the moment…. like the friends his son has been keeping.
Simon says “TROLL!”
Trump is getting good things done. There is so much Obama/leftist damage to undo it will likely take him six or seven years to finish makingAmerica great again. That’s okay. We’re patient.
I love how all the Trump Haters KNOW what he understands or does not understand. Maybe he is just thinking 4 steps ahead of you…
Yeah, nice deflection, Simple Simon. The only problem with climate is in the minds of pea-brained Alarmists like you. Trump knows that making America great again is the key issue at hand, and that the “climate change” nonsense should be rejected and ignored, since it would have the opposite effect on America. Not that you care of course.
Simon
“To him the possibility that there could be issues in the future is of little importance.”
Or perhaps Trump knows more than you do, and as he has access to the greatest minds on the planet, that wouldn’t be difficult, with respect.
Some of those things could be the very real, and proven, not just theoretical, problems of reducing poverty across not just the USA, but the world. Or to be more precise, to ensure that, at the very least, the world doesn’t descend back into it because of green energy policy.
In the meantime, the only empirical manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 is that the planet has greened by 14% in the last 30 years. There is nothing else.
The catastrophic jump in temperatures predicted to track increased CO2 has just not happened. So in point of fact, alarmists are now restricting industrial progress, the lack of which, in developing countries is causing population explosions. The wealthy West’s birth rate is now in decline, clear evidence that wealth means fewer people.
If you want to understand what’s going on, stop obsessing about Trump and reading the Guardian.
And if Trump gets the USA off it’s backside and back to work again, it won’t matter a fig what his son has been doing.
Nor do I see hysterical accusations of US interference in Russian politics. And why would the Russians support Trump, he’s about to wreck their monopolisation of the European gas market with US fracked gas shipped in.
@ Simon…Most people know next to nothing about the details of the climate change story line. So it would be no surprise that Trump, being in the real estate business all of his life, would also no little about this issue outside of any stories he may have read, or programs watched. That is why he hires qualified people in the right places to aid him in his decision making.
HotScot December 8, 2017 at 11:59 am
Simon
““To him the possibility that there could be issues in the future is of little importance.”
Or perhaps Trump knows more than you do, and as he has access to the greatest minds on the planet, that wouldn’t be difficult, with respect.”
And that makes it even more devastatingly stupid by the man. He doesn’t listen to the advice he is given on climate by the people the taxpayer funds to do the job. And why doesn’t he… because it doesn’t suit his slash and burn strategies. Anyway I’m enjoying watching him fall step by step.
“Or perhaps Trump knows more than you do,”
Certainly more that you do.
“he has access to the greatest minds on the planet”
Yes he does, most of those minds know that AGW is a FARCE.
One day, even you might wake up to that fact.
Trump is doing his best to save the USA from the whole AGW anti-CO2, anti-human, anti-LIFE, agenda.
Step, by step, ..
…and as you show, the panicked squawking from the AGW cultists is hilarious to watch.
Sorry Simon, But the Taxpayer doesn’t elect who gets the funds…The Taxpayer pays the government and the (Obama) Government had selected who got the funds.
It is the people that the prior administration chose to fund that President Trump is not listening to thereby negating the wishes/intentions of the prior administration and forging his own path.
“It is the people that the prior administration chose to fund that President Trump is not listening to thereby negating the wishes/intentions of the prior administration and forging his own path.”
Good luck to Trump finding a team of climate scientist to go and work at NOAA who agree with him. I can think of three. Going to be a small Christmas party.
“Good luck to Trump finding a team of climate scientist to go and work at NOAA who agree with him”
I suggest that in reality, having acquired a true assessment of the priorities facing the US Government, President Trump doesn’t actually give a flying dog’s testicle about climate science or climate scientists, thus isn’t going to waste so much as a millisecond of his time trying to find any to hire.
Looking into firing them wholesale, on the other hand…
“Anyway I’m enjoying watching him [Trump] fall step by step.”
Wishful thinking.
The Leftists have nothing on Trump. This whole Russia/Trump collusion false narrative is a creation of Hillary, Obama and their minions, and the truth is about to be revealed.
There is no Trump/Russia collusion. There is definitely Hillary/Russia collusion. Hillary paid to have the Russian “Dossier” lies created and then they handed these lies over to the Obama administration who used the dossier as justification to spy on the Trump campaign and later the Trump administration, in hopes of undermining Trump.
But Trump won the election, much to their surprise, and now the Obama/Hillary Crime Syndicate are no longer in control of the narrative, although they do still have their partisan political appointments still in place causing trouble, but not for much longer.
The Stuff is just about to hit the fan.
The Obama administration was the most corrupt administration in history and we are going to find out just how corrupt they were/are in the future.
Had Hillary been elected this criminality and corruption and treason would have never seen the light of day. But she wasn’t elected.
Simon:
Which steps? Getting the travel ban though the Supreme Court? Reversing the “National Monuments” land grab that Obama slipped through in his last month? The tax reform package? Pulling the US out of the monetary commitments of the Paris climate accord? Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, as mandated by Congress back in the Clinton administration?
I’m not sure what you see there as “falling”, but to me it looks more like a president working to get his agenda in place.
Cat W…
“President Trump doesn’t actually give a flying dog’s testicle about climate science or climate scientists, thus isn’t going to waste so much as a millisecond of his time trying to find any to hire.”
And that was my very point, only you see ignorance as a good thing. Oh dear…..
You are absolutely correct that President Trump would have a tough time hiring a “Team of Climate Scientists”, but then President Trump will only be spending the Nation’s Tax Dollars where they are truly needed.
A “Team of Climate Scientists” is unnecessary given that the Science is Settled
Ms. Hymas has conveniently failed to explain the real reason Houston got hosed by the Hurricane. The problem as I understood it is when the Hurricane arrived moving northward there was a blocking high pressure system just North of Houston that kept the hurricane parked over Houston for 3-4 days.
Correct. The wind wasn’t even that damaging. There is some speculation that the wind estimates were off, and that Cat3 winds were not seen on land. The blocking high is weather, and has nothing to do with Climate Change (aka Global Warming, aka CAGW).
They’ve had their head’s so far up their arses for so long they are not up on current events. Climaggedon stories don’t get the clicks they used to. Maybe people caught on that if the climate were causing all these purported occurrences of doom, they wouldn’t need a news story to see it.
Does she qualify as a Climate barbie?
When your only tool is a hammer, everything you see looks like a nail!
And when you’re dumb as a hammer you can blame every bad thing on capitalism. Just ask climate Barbie.
I’m waiting patiently to actually see an unprecedented man-made ‘climate catastrophe’ happen in real life. I cannot re-call a single one so far. Literally everything has been seen and been worse many times previously. These people just spout BS to keep the $$$$ flowing. I really wish Trump would come down on them like a tone of bricks.
I invite all readers to view my petition at change.org here: https://www.change.org/p/the-honourable-james-gordon-carr-minister-of-natural-resources-open-letter-to-the-government-of-canada-re-climate-change.
Signatures probably won’t affect policy in my country, not with Son of Trudeau in power, but it couldn’t hurt. Peace on earth to people of good will –
M.A.
Progressives’ belief in Obama as omnipotent messiah have morphed into Trump as omnipotent anti-messiah. Is there no damage Trump cannot do, no havoc he cannot wreak, no CO2 he cannot out of the room suck?
The front page December 6 headline of the Rockport (Texas) Pilot — “Slow pay on insurance claims could mean second disaster.” The article is mostly about the half dozen plus hotels that are damaged and not receiving adequate insurance payments. Most of these were built above the tree line and/or in open areas and look like the boilerplates you see everywhere. While the article correctly worried about the loss of tax revenue, due to the high reliance on tourism, there was nothing about the people living in tents on Copano Bay having difficulties with new government requirements to raise floor levels before acquiring permits.
Some of this had been covered by the paper previously. Some damage was avoidable despite the severity of the storm, easily with 4 or greater winds. Tornadoes, which did occur, vortices, winds of tornadic velocity, will probably get the blame. Some of us were lucky, but there are clear examples of more likely to be lucky if homework was done. This was predictable but not in specifics.
I think I posted some of this before, but worth repeating. This a quote from a local history book, “Aransas” from a few years ago deceased member of an old family.
“I guess one of the greatest fears I have is the ultimate hurricane. We’re going to get it one of these days, and its going to alter this town severely. It has in the past and its going to do it again.” Rockport was a major port lost to the higher land Corpus Christi, mostly from the 1919 storm. Developers here are meeting not only the hurricane threat, but an expanding whooping crane population and windmills marching north from Corpus Christi.
Many companies had pulled out of the coast and the state started insuring wind, similar to the Federal flood insurance program, which I recently read is going broke. The future is going to be a problem for a rapidly developing area that didn’t do its homework, bad enough even if they had. Nevertheless, the early response, which will eventually be covered, was (and still is) exceptional. Not sure about the press, the worst, we were a “suburb of Houston,” maybe prescient.
But the First Lady was here and it snowed last night. We had a white Christmas a little over a decade ago. Remember Harvey the invisible rabbit?
“Even in a year when we’ve had string of hurricanes, heatwaves, and wildfires worthy of the Book of Revelation”
And that likely occurred in every century since then. Not every decade, however.
That’s what it takes today to qualify as extreme weather/climate…….something that hasn’t happened in a decade.
The reality is that if we didn’t have extreme weather events that break instrumental records going back just over a century(NWS in USA)………that would be more extraordinary.
What are the chances that the weather during a 30 year period or even 10 year period would never venture outside of the previous 130 year period on numerous occasions………when that 130 year period, represents a minuscule time frame worth of weather for that location?
There has been absolutely nothing unusual with recent weather and climate that exceeds the expected range. In fact, decreasing temperature gradient with latitude because of more warming closer to the poles has DECREASED some measures of extreme weather…………as physics and meteorology 101 tells us should have happened.
The atmosphere does not need to work as hard to redistribute the massive imbalance of heat.
Global warming has warmed the coldest places at the coldest times of year(and night) the most.
Somebody help me with this. Am I missing something, or is this an example of climate change fiction writers being so stupid that they can’t even put together a coherent sentence? This excerpt is from – https://newrepublic.com/article/146140/california-climate-change-wildfires
That’s a good one.
Got my vote. But what do we call the awards? Instead of “the Oscars” I suggest “the Forrests”.
OK, to be fair, the author obviously meant “this year” or “this February”. It’s a sad testament to the quality of journalism, though, not only for the proofreading carelessness, but also for either the dishonesty, or the lack of diligence to know that the temp was not unprecedented, and therefore has nothing to do with global warming.
http://newsok.com/article/5537866
It’s a terrible mistake. Well spotted. But does a silly miss-speak by some journalist now constitute evidence that the scientific proposition they are discussing must be wrong?
Its the same high temperature as 100 years ago.
And you somehow think that points to warming ??
Yeah, that’s pretty stupid.
I’ll agree with her on one thing: We certainly do need our journalism to get better..
Media Matters is NOT a news organization. From Wickipedia (which copies MMfA own website):
(My bold.)
The organization is directly linked to Soros, Brock and Podesta and was founded to whitewash the Clintons deservedly bad reputation at the height of their scandals.
As others have said, Lisa is not a journalist, she is a propagandist.
I messed up the bold command. I intended to bold the word “watchdog” and “correcting conservative misinformation”.
Muddia Mutterers ?
Why have the current California wildfires not featured as a separate post here at WUWT? They are making headlines around the world. Why is WUWT silent?
Why would WUWT mention it? Has nothing to do with climate change.
1970 Los Angeles wildfires
http://framework.latimes.com/2010/09/24/chatsworth-malibu-fires/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Canyon_Fire#Size
Date = 1889
Obviously caused by my ICE auto.
DWR54
When I looked into some of the California wildfires recently, it seems more than one was caused by a dickhead with a match. All were encouraged by the lack of controlled burning and overgrown firebreaks.
So, as icisil pointed out, nothing to do with climate change.
And with the greatest of respect, if you imagined wildfires have anything to do with climate change, what else are you mis-attributing to climate change? Try asking on this blog, politely, and you will get tons of information from informed, highly educated people.
They might be right, they might be wrong, but at least you’ll have some informed opinion to base your beliefs on.
News bulletin: Snow fell today in Houston and New Orleans! A consensus of climate scientists predict this is the beginning of the next ice age.
What’s sauce for the goose in sauce for the gander.
Ah! But was it 97%?
Atlanta, too.
What’s funny is that she thinks The Guardian or any other blatantly biased source can still convince anybody of anything. Most of these rags have no credibility left to any reasonable person and only serve as fodder for the believers of the religion of the left. I guess they actually like to think their live’s work matters when it means nothing to reality. Pity.
Lisa Hymas …. when Googled, appears to have more to do with “Grist” than The Guardian.
Following this lead, it would appear that her Agenda is nothing much more than attacking Trump.
Just saying….
P.S. Senior Editor for Grist, no less!
The Weather Channel is eager to forecast when local record highs or lows are broken anywhere in the US.
But they stopped putting up the record high and low on their “Local on the 8’s” several years ago. I wonder why? It didn’t fit the meme that things are getting worse?
Perhaps to distract people from the fact that the record temps have have been more “extreme” before?
“The Weather Channel is eager to forecast when local record highs or lows are broken anywhere in the US.”
OOPS!
…”local record highs or lows might be or actually are broken…”
Sort of a typo. I meant to include the thought but hit “reply” before I reread it.
If the elite of journalists, the best of the finest, the most intelligent of all, can be distracted by what DJT has to say, then they should listen carefully, because it is more important than climate “disasters”.
So if global warming causes hurricanes, why did they occur in 2017 AFTER the greatest cooling period in recorded history? 2016 has the hot El Niño summer but no Cat 3 landfalls.
What we have here is an example of a lack of situational awareness from a minor apparatchik of the swamp. She doesn’t realize that the reason “Climate Change” has dropped so low on the agenda of the “media” is because the whole swamp is threatened right now. The prime objective of the “media” is to get Trump and everything else has become secondary because if they fail the consequences will be frightful for them. The best way I can try to explain it is as a concept known in the military as “economy of force” where by one must sacrifice advancement or defense in areas deemed less critical in order to concentrate all available assets towards achieving what has been deemed at the time to be the most critical objective. Generally achievement of that most critical objective will result in markedly improving the prospects in the less critical areas. In short the swamp is currently on the defense and has mustered all it’s forces to fight off the outsider in the WH and that includes it’s “media”. This fact is lost on this poor girl.
Now that we know the “intelligence agencies ” have record of every phone call and E mail , we just need to follow the Clinton model . Buy an expensive fake dossier , hand it to your pals in the FBI who can use it to gain access to anyone’s communication they target under false pretences . Let’s see the communication between Al Gore , the clean energy lobbiest AG ‘s , the IPCC . The freedom of information channels are such a time consuming process when the information can all be pulled .
The digital Guardian edition have now demoted their Environment section off the front page. It is now 2 clicks away instead of 1. More importantly, there’s no immediate link to it from the front page.