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.
“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.
@ur momisugly 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”.