I know many of you have been feeling it. I certainly have, especially when I go look for stories to debunk from media outlets that take some press release and massage it so it reads like “turbo doom clickbait.” There’s less of those these days and the data suggests a downward trend.
Our friend, Steve Milloy of junkscience.com posted a very interesting plot on X yesterday. Given the clues he left, I was able to replicate it with Grok. It goes from 1988 (when Dr. James Hansen first testified before Congress about the climate scare,) to the present post-Biden era where Trump is effectively replicating Sherman’s march to the sea in the climate world.
The data comes from Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) which tracks media coverage of “climate change” or “global warming” in newspapers, radio, and TV across dozens of sources worldwide, with data starting in 2004 for global monitoring (and 2000 for US-specific). Pre-2004 data comes from earlier studies by MeCCO founder Max Boykoff and colleagues, which analyzed English-language newspapers from 1988 onward. Absolute article counts are not publicly available without accessing their datasets, but trends show low coverage in the late 1980s, spikes around key events (e.g., IPCC reports in 1990, 1995, 2001; Kyoto Protocol in 1997), and overall increases with major peaks in 2007, 2009, 2015, 2019, and especially 2021 (the highest since tracking began).
The peak around 2006-2007 is likely due to Al Gore’s climate movie An Inconvenient Truth gaining traction. The peak in 2009 is clearly due to Climategate, which as you may recall, WUWT broke that story. The plunge afterwards was the loss of faith in “The Hockey Team” of climate scientists. Since then, climate as a topic in media coverage has clawed its way back uphill, peaking in 2021 with Biden’s green agenda and EV mandate.
Coverage dipped during the 2018-2020 COVID-19 pandemic but has fluctuated with events like COP summits.
Whether this short down trend will hold depends on us. We have to keep fighting climate alarmism, calling out nonsense, be it scientific or political, when we see it.
Now if only we’d reach peak stupidity and begin the long recover into sanity.
We here in DMV (D.C., Virginia, Maryland) have had the coldest December on record over the past 15 years.
There are plenty of alternative explanations for the short term dip. Over the past three years we’ve had multiple global storylines (AI, Ukraine, Gaza, the 2024 US election) all generating continuous coverage that climate reporting has to compete with.
“ In a September 2025 address to the UN General Assembly, Trump called climate change the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”.
NUFF SAID!
The media coverage of that added to the total.
“Over the past three years we’ve had multiple global storylines (AI, Ukraine, Gaza, the 2024 US election)”
Other than the election, my local mass media sources give no indication those things ever happened. Ukraine? Is that an English Premeire League soccer team? Are they any good?
Actually Ukraine has a reasonably creditable soccer team.
Not quite at the same level as say Germany or UK, but getting there.
They were doing very well in the 2019 lead-up, but got hit hard with Covid and had to withdraw from the 2020 world cup.
Got knock out of their group on goal difference in 2024.
Woo hoo!
“Climate Change” is still thrown in as a knee jerk reaction to any weather related incident but I’ve noticed headlines and story lines no longer highlight it. It has reached the “don’t believe your lying eyes” stage of credibility. ‘Renewables’ are now seen as expensive and unreliable eyesores driving up energy costs and impacting lifestyles.
Not highlighted anymore? Here’s just one news article published just yesterday:
Colorado’s snowpack remains well below normal, is climate change behind it?
It seems headlines and storylines still highlight the issue, and more importantly, the influence of climate change is not being oversimplified as the sole cause of weather events, but is being presented with the nuance it deserves:
In my view, 1976 and 1980 were worse, and early season is often dicey, especially in La Nina years. The amazing thing is, one big storm can make things “normal.”
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Are Coloradans whining that it’s not colder? The skiers probably but what about others? Their heating bills are reduced. Less snow means less traffic problems. I think Colorado’s winter came here to Wokeachusetts. It’s been much colder than “normal” this month and we’ve had 3 snowstorms already. And everyone here’s IS complaining about it.
It was 15F yesterday morning in Denver when I returned from Hawaii. My windshield was covered in snow and ice. Yes, I complained and my car whined a little also.
I assume you don’t drive an EV! 😉
The Denver Post reported that Denver hit 76F just days before Christmas, shattering the previous record for that day.
Totally jaw dropping for late December.
https://www.denverpost.com/2025/12/22/denver-weather-christmas-record-heat/
awesome! Perfect temperature. Everyone must have been overjoyed. 🙂
Except of course for the climate emergency nut jobs. 🙂
So “everyone was overjoyed,” except the ski industry you already admitted isn’t thrilled:
“Are Coloradans whining that it’s not colder? The skiers probably“
Interesting definition of everyone.
correction- almost everyone
skiing of course is an industry in CO but without it people will still get out in the public lands for camping, hiking, hunting, etc.- and I doubt we’ve seen the death of the ski industry
can’t make everyone happy all the time
Hiking and camping are diffuse activities. People can bring their own food, sleep in their cars, use public land, and leave the next day having spent very little locally.
The ski industry, on the other hand, is different. Entire mountain towns are built around winter revenue: hotels fill, real estate values rise, season passes and lift tickets sell, and on mountain restaurants, rentals, ski lessons, etc. generate a lot of concentrated spending. It really does function as a significant economic engine for these regions.
The same applies to ‘Wokeachusetts’ and the rest of New England.
https://www.skicentral.com/colorado-skireport.html
Last 72 hours.. snowing at most resorts
The climatistas are probably crying over that- ruins their preaching. 🙂
Snowed here in Wokeachusetts last night- the 3rd or 4th of the season. Turning out to be a more or less classic old fashioned New England winter. Not hearing much from the climatistas here. 🙂
Measured at Denver International Airport, no doubt ! 😉 LOL
Yes, the ski industry, an important source of economic revenue in Colorado, isn’t happy with it. Mountain snowpack also serves as a major water source for the region. The warming so far may seem benign or even pleasant, but it’s not over. We’ll have to see how global warming affects this area over time. It may not look so good a century from now, though I can’t say for sure.
That would not be global warming. That would be Colorado weather.
Climate trends for Colorado.
Climate trends for Colorado is Colorado, not global.
Thank you for agreeing.
graph would not attach..
Real un-adjusted data for the USA gives a COOLING trend since the 1930’s
Any fabrication that doesn’t show the 1930s/40s as warmer, has been FAKED.
NOAA has made MASSIVE adjustments to CREATE the warming scam.
Basically ALL warming in the USA is because of these adjustments.
Original data for Colorado has a cooling trend.
Here is the original data for ‘Holly’, before NOAA “does their thing”
Funny how it matches most other original data in the USA. 😉
Using NOAA “values” is using mal-adjusted data. It is NOT REAL.
This is what NOAA do to the maximum temperature values in Colorado.
Any warming trend come purely from MAL-ADJUSTMENTS
“Any warming trend come purely from MAL-ADJUSTMENTS”
Your conspiracy rhetoric undermines your credibility.
How do you explain bnice’s graphs?
Not a conspiracy.. the numbers prove it .
It is what they do. !
They create FAKE warming trends from cooling the past
Industries come and go. So what. The slight warming of recent years isn’t the deathknell of the ski industry, except in the short term in some areas. Lots of snow here in New England. It’s dam cold and they’re making even more snow now. I don’t ski- I prefer snow shoeing so I hope the snow gets much deeper. But, this ski resort problem isn’t going to influence national energy policies.
Taking comfort in “slight warming” only makes sense if warming eventually stops. There is no indication that it will at this point in time. If the trend continues, what seems slight now won’t remain slight, and the pressures on snow dependent industries will inevitably intensify.
And I’m not sure why this winter’s weather in the Northeast is being treated as decisive for you. NOAA climate data show, alongside long term warming since the late 1800s, that only five winters since 2000 in the region have been colder than the 20th century average.
“But, this ski resort problem isn’t going to influence national energy policies.”
I agree that the potential decline of the ski industry alone won’t drive national energy policy. But it is one of many accumulating impacts in places like Colorado (alongside wildfire risk, snowpack reliability for water supply, and agricultural timing) that together shape long term risk.
There has NOT been “slight warming ” in the USA.
The 1930s/40s was warmer in all unadjusted data.
Unadjusted NOAA data show the USA is becoming “less hot”
Maximum temperatures in the USA are declining over most states.
Lol. Your chart lists NOAA as the source, yet you also say above:
“Using NOAA “values” is using mal-adjusted data. It is NOT REAL.”
So NOAA is fake unless it agrees with you? Convenient.
bnice uses UNADJUSTED data from NOAA to illustrate his point.
“Taking comfort in “slight warming” only makes sense if warming eventually stops. There is no indication that it will at this point in time.”
However, there is no indication that it will continue indefinitely.
Too many cycles, too much variability that occurs on much longer time scales that a paltry 30 years.
Colorado’s ski resort problem has more to do with real estate, speculation and overpriced properties, not snow pack. I have recently read many of the resorts are in dire financial condition.
A Century from now? Oh, the humanity!
Folks get near-sighted when it comes to global climate change, if that really is a tangible metric. What weather Colorado experiences doesn’t speak for anything but the current teleconnections of the MJO and ENSO.
But, of course, “global climate” itself is NOT a “tangible metric”, much less g c “change”!
US snow cover is trending UPWARDS.
Yeah, I never learned Statistics, so your graph looks like natural random fluctuations to me.
Of course a learned man such as yourself will know exactly which particular formulation to marry to which particular assumptions coupled with your personal choice of methodology to extract whichever truth you need to deduce from limited range random noise…
I’ll go make coffee..
Winter maximum snow extent can increase in the early stages of warming because warmer air holds more moisture while temperatures remain cold enough for snow.
But as warming continues and key temperature thresholds are crossed, more precipitation falls as rain, and snowpack losses can accelerate rapidly.
It is actually COOLING in Colorado, when original untampered data is used.
UAH’s lower troposphere grid over Colorado shows at least +0.15C/decade since 1978, which seems to conflict with the picture you posted.
Sorry, this post is not accurate. This is exactly why you shouldn’t rely on eyeballing graphs.
That said, the so called “original, untampered” dataset is actually more problematic than the adjusted version, because it contains uncorrected errors that distort the record.
So they “correct” them to give the result they want….
… and deliberately and totally distort the record.
So funny !!
But we are not in the early stages of warming – according to the alarmists, we’ve been in it since 1979.
Apart from a slight step up at the 2016 EL Nino, there is no “climate change” signal in the USCRN temperature data.
You really seem to love your cherries, don’t you, bnice2000?
No cherries there.. Just data.
Did you know there was an El Nino event in 2016 !
Or do you DENY that El Ninos cause warming.
Meanwhile California gets buried.
Climate or weather? Depends on the reporters.
There has been no snow here for … well, forever. Southern California Coastal Plain. Don’t depend on sweeping generalizations. Weather, and climate, are local, and California ia large, with many different climates.
Is this warmth at high altitude? Average over all of Colorado? Is it Global? Or local?
Yes, most of the world is warming.
I have always wanted an apartment in the Troposphere.
I understand the view is magnificent.
The surface is warming faster.
“The surface is warming faster.”
But the view from above is not ruined with WTGs and SVs.
Your comment does not relate to what I posted.
The surface warmed faster from 1899 to 1940 than it has in the last 42 years…
.. that is despite all the massive urban warming in surface sites over that latter period and the 8.5 times CO2 emissions
CO2 has had ZERO effect… like it has zero warming signature in the UAH data.
‘most of the world is warming”
No, the global temperature has cooled by about 0.5C since early 2024. See the UAH chart on this page’s sidebar.
Your warm temperatures in Colorado are caused by a high pressure system hovering over you and the States south of you.
When the high pressure moves away the warm temperatures will go with it.
The Jet Stream is your friend, it is keeping all that cold Canadian and Arctic air north of you, for now.
I love these kinds of winters. Mild winters are good for living creatures.
“No, the global temperature has cooled by about 0.5C since early 2024. See the UAH chart on this page’s sidebar.”
Why is that relevant to the long term warming trend?
Climate is not a 1 to 30 trendline.
Climate is the average of the 30 years.
Presenting that trendline is not presenting climate.
That the temperature dropped 0.5 C in one year reduces the 30 year average and using the proper math, means the climate is warming since the 2025 average is higher than the 1995 average.
Long term, say 3000 years, Earth is most certainly COOLING.
There has been a short-term warming since the late 1970s, mainly due to changes in albedo and solar input.
There is no evidence that CO2 has anything to do with it.
1978 was the COLDEST period since 1900.
End of the “New Ice Age” scare pushed by so many “climate” scientists and newspapers.
Most real data also shows 1930, 40s was warmer.
Here is Briffa’s tree ring data for example.
You can see why the climate scammers likes to start around 1978/79
Briffa did good work! 🙂
Then Mann corrupted his data, using it in anti-scientific, almost fraudulent, ways.
Gaining ground, but nearly as widespread as it should be.
We need MORE media articles, but they need to expose the misconceptions of the original “heat trapping” claims about rising CO2, and they need to lay out the lunacy of wind + solar + batteries for grid-scale electricity in simple terms.
There. 🙂
“trapping” is another one of those words the Climate Liars have hijacked, redefined and repurposed.
“Heat” is another.
I got AI to admit the specific, scientific definition of heat is the flow of thermal energy across a temperature gradient requiring kinetic interactions of molecules in the flow.
How does one “trap” energy or “trap” energy flow?
Control the language, control the ideas.
“How does one “trap” energy or “trap” energy flow?”
Exactly. I keep posting about why it has been unsound all along to suppose that incremental CO2 in the atmosphere must be expected to drive an accumulation of energy down here. Nope. There is no good scientific reason to have ever thought so, in the proper context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1knv0YdUyIgyR9Mwk3jGJwccIGHv38J33/view?usp=sharing
Genuine question: how does heat differ from internal energy?
The downward trend is obviously true from the data, but the AP still manages to blame climate change for everything bad that happens in a large percentage of their articles.
Editing the template is easier than writing new material.
Why bother thinking when you can just publish stuff provided by Climate Central?
And is it not the goal to be first to market to ensure a high number of clicks (resulting in ad revenues)?
Many reporters are paid to promote Climate Alarmist propaganda.
There has been a whole industry developed around this subject.
It is Climate Alarmism on steroids.
The surge around 2019 is probably the creation of the “Covering Climate Now” propaganda cabal. It’d be interesting to see the same analysis without The Groaniad.
What media publisher wouldn’t welcome free “click-bait” ooga-booga stories to fill the daily content bucket?
When I worked in newspapers back in the early 1960s, we always had a stash of “fillers” – pre-written stories that would be shoveled in when not enough ads & copy was available to fill a page.
Climate stories have become the new “fillers”, imo.
Actually, my perception is you have it reversed. Real news is not the fillers.
Typo: Real news is NOW the fillers.
“Whether this short down trend will hold depends on us. We have to keep fighting climate alarmism, calling out nonsense, be it scientific or political, when we see it.”
I think the “97%” of people that actually are alive and aware of the Doom and Gloom prophesies have noted that they haven’t happened.
Also, all the MSM media saying and supporting that Biden was “sharp as a tack” saw for themselves during that debate that the the MSM was outright lying to them.
What else did they lie about? Maybe the “Existential Threat of Climate Change”?
Lots of money behind the various MSM groups. They are in the process of (desperately) trying to regain credibility. They fired a few big names. But the message from the top hasn’t changed.
To paraphrase that beer commercial, “Stay skeptical, my friends.”
In political and other reporting. Watch for subtle things like weather events being hyped, a “Maryland Dad” being deported, etc.
“Stay skeptical, my friends.”
More good news. I think there are three things that the average guy needs to be bombarded with.
Number one CO2. CO2 is not a poison rather it is the stuff of life, without it life as we know it goes away. CO2 isn’t an effective agent to cause catastrophic runaway global warming because it’s effectiveness is logarithmic.
Number two wind and solar energy production. Since CO2 isn’t the monster it has been made out to be there is no reason to stop using fossil fuels. But for the sake of argument let’s say we did have to reduce or eliminate power production using fossil fuels. Wind and solar are not a substitute, they can’t support the grid, they can’t support a modern society, they endanger the grid, they need 24/7 backup and storage, they are unacceptably expensive, they are short lived, they have massive footprints, they kill wildlife, they require unsustainable amounts of rare resources, they are a problem to recycle, they use huge amounts of fossil fuels to create, build, maintain and dispose of and other stuff I don’t know about.
Number three current climate science. Everyone needs to be made aware of how crappy the studies used to show CO2 causes catastrophic runaway global is. Most people automatically trust that what Universities and scientific outfits say is the truth. I used to but not anymore. It is a shame that these institutions and individuals need to be given a black eye but lying and cheating isn’t okay, not by anyone especially those in positions of great responsibility.
Yes, w & s are just parasitic power sources for a grid, and only supplemental power sources at best for households or “off-grid” sites.
Trying to make intermittent, weather-dependent w&s as core grid power sources is lunacy of the first order.
When the mid-winter blackouts occur, and they will, and those blackouts extend into multi-day events (and some could), then the body count starts to rise. Given this transpires, we will see lots of pitchforks and torches.
People will also begin to acknowledge that cold kills more than warm.
“Runaway greenhouse effect” did not pan out so it became “runaway global warming” and that did not pan out so it became Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change and now every day the weather is not perfectly average becomes “proof” of CACC.
I find it quite amusing that some people believe humans over the course of a few decades can understand in minute detail what has occurred over billions of years. It is the extreme of hubris to thing that humans can control the weather and therefore the climate when we have no control of the sun or the eccentric elliptical orbit around a moving Barycenter.
Humanity has a trans-gender identity. We believe we are gods, therefore we are gods. /s
And NO hurricane landfalls in the USA this year has folks doubting the climate hysteria of years past. I hope the trend holds – and the way DJT told off the UN about the climate scam was wonderful. In 2026 may the climate scam die a quiet death. YES!
Even Greta has abandon the climate charade for her new cause of aiding Muslim terrorists. Everything goes out of style eventually.
Oh, not quite. She got in trouble recently in Venice. Seems she dyed the canal water green as a symbolic act of environmentalism.
I just wish that horrible little gremlin would find a boyfriend and leave us in peace.
No, let it die a very public death, so that all who may be prepared to give CC a pass know that it is rubbish.
If only the average Joe understood that it’s all a grain of actual science sitting atop a mountain of speculation, writing scary articles would garner no audience.
Average Joe does not read scary article (or any articles).
“Print Sales Volume: In 2022, ~789 million print books were sold in the U.S., but this is divided among millions of titles.”
“The average American reads about 12 books a year, but the typical (median) person reads around 4 books, with many reading zero, as heavy readers skew the average upwards;”
“The average book length in the U.S. varies by genre, but adult fiction often falls in the 250 to 400-page range”
I should have said that writing climate doom scripts for teleprompter readers who call themselves journalists is losing traction with the screen addicted public.
Good news is no news.
No news is bad news.
Bad news is good news.
The optimum means to sway public opinion is through anger and fear, plus a little greed.
Perfect description, Pop.
May the recent trend continue. Amen.
May the recent trend continue. Amen.
I’ve no idea why this posted twice.
Maybe the thought was worthy?
Marvelous. Would someone please let the editors of Science News know? I’ve been reading it for decades, but recently 2/3 of the magazine can be replaced by a single page with “EEEEEEEK CLIMATE CHANGE” in 80 point type. I still subscribe because the other third is actually interesting most of the time, but the climate rolls are threatening to strain my eye muscles.
My dad subscribed to Science News for years and I had my own subscription for probably a couple of decades. It made for a pleasant evening to read reasonably good science reporting. Somewhere after the turn of the century, the reporting turned into advocacy and the standards of writing took a turn for the worst. One sign of the decline when SN stopped using the correct “Palomar Mountain” and devolved to “Mt Palomar” for the location of the Palomar Observatory.
That also means peak money for pay to play news also peaked.
The scientific and serious rebuttals are necessary and seem to have convinced many that global warming, Carbon Dioxide, and doomsday were over blown.
Further, the writers of the clickbait pieces can be humiliated and likely respond to sarcasm, and satire. Josh’s cartoons have been leading the way.
There remains a large group of scam contributors that are paid in some manner to promote the global warming and green agendas. I think other protestations are slowly draining support from this swamp. Faster would be better.
I want to believe that COP30 protests about AC had an effect.
I want to believe that some people noted 100,000 Amazon Rainforest trees were sacrifice for the good of the climate.
I want to believe I will wake up and the last 50 years is nothing but a bad dream.
Where is my Never Never Land Card. I lost it and grew up. A shame.
The small downward trend in the last few years is hardly inspiring. I think that “sky is falling” climate-related stories will still be coming aplenty, if for no other reason than it’s easy, mindless filler for papers and magazines and websites. Plus, it still serves their political purposes.
The small downward trend over the past 3+ years, given the data is complete and accurate, is a 30% reduction. That does not indicate the trend will continue, I have no crystal ball, but it is not exactly small.
30% reduction in the anomaly, not in the temperature.
The recent decline is welcome, but I think the graph may be misleading.
Going back a few years, the graphs of Covid cases were extremely misleading, for possibly a similar reason. For example, the graphs appeared to show that, in each successive wave, more people were getting infected. I would expect the opposite as increased immunity spread through the population.
After reading many of Willis’s excellent pieces I had toyed with the idea of learning the R language. This was a perfect opportunity. After a week or so of getting to grips with R, I was able to plot the Covid data. The program automatically downloaded the latest Covid data for the UK. It then calculated the proportion of infections (the number of cases divided by the number of tests) and drew the graph. It perfectly showed what I had suspected: pretty well all the increased cases were caused by a massive increase in testing. It showed that each successive wave was less severe than the previous ones, which is what I expected. But of course Covid alarmists loved to show graphs that falsely seemed to show that infections were getting worse.
The graph above shows the absolute number of climate change media articles from 1988. I would guess that the total numbers of all media articles (particularly online) have massively increased since 1988. It is then likely that the graph is mostly showing the increase of all media articles. Double the number of all media articles and we will have roughly double the number of climate articles.
So, a graph showing the number of climate articles as a proportion of *all* articles would be much more accurate i.e. simply divide the number of climate articles by the number of all articles.
This could have an interesting result. The overall increasing trend of climate articles would be smaller (assuming that there was a real proportional increase). And the recent decline would be a lot steeper.
Story Tip: the cwright post above this.
That is a remarkable insight.
Consider that prior to the early 90s, there really was no Internet.
It was well past the 2000s when digital media gained a toehold.
The number of new media sites has exploded in more recent years, even excluding social media.
As you astutely point out, the absolute number does not give a trend measurement of publication content. It is a statistical trick too often used.
A second curve showing the number of articles published (of all types) for comparison is needed and a little arithmetic will show if the alarmist pieces are increasing, decreasing, or constant (within a variable range).
You should have annotated your post with “Story Tip” as it is quite worthy.
I am thinking of the claims that cats kill more birds that WTGs.
When one accounts for the number of cats and WTGs, one finds the cats are not nearly as proficient at predator as WTGs.
Never seen a cat kill a major bird of prey…
.. usually the other way round. !
The warmth will be sadly missed. Cold is a bugger.