FAIR’s most recent Action Alert shows how CBS “severe weather” expert David Bernard is a climate change denier. Does this seem like the right kind of expertise to give viewers about the most important science story of our time? If you’re writing a letter to CBS, please feel free to paste in the comments section below.
My email, posted to CBS, re David Bernard:
I’ve recently learned that Florida meteorologist (and sometime CBS Evening News “expert”) David Bernard is on record as being a climate-change denier.
To me, this is akin to entrusting a flat-Earther or creationist to pass on important scientific information to the public.
Please insist that, either Mr. Bernard be apprised of the details of the overwhelmingly acknowledged phenomenon of global warming, and/or be replaced, and/or begin every segment with some kind of disclaimer.
Thank you.
Daniel Baker
7/20/2012
Don’t be a denier slave!
It’s SCIENCE!
Dear CBS News;
I am deeply disturbed to learn that one of your leading weather experts Florida meteorologist David Bernard is a climate science denier. I greatly prefer that expert remarks be made by those who accept the majority scientific views on climate science that of the inducation of current global climate change via human induced causes. Please assure me that you will change the policy of including his remarks when reviewing weather phenomena as they relate to climate science.
I am very concerned about your coverage of our severe weather events and related issues of global climate change.
Recent years, certainly since Hurricane Katrina, have seen mega tornados, severe winter snows, severe flooding, and heat waves the likes of which we have not seen before. In Antarctica, just a few days ago, an ice island twice the size of Manhattan fell off the larger one. We are in the midst of a devastating drought, and wildfires have blackened large swaths of the west. C’mon now. This is serious.
I watch your News almost every night, and as I listen to David Bernard and I can’t believe that we are living in the same world, as he poo-poos this devastation and makes light of the very serious concerns many people, world wide have in response to our empirical evidence. We were not born yesterday. We can see the differences now,
Please, for the love of country and the love of us all, find someone who take these issues seriously. It lowers your prestige and your reputation to mock what we see with our own eyes, and experience as we suffer the myriad effects of global climate change.
With all due respect.
Sincerely,
Ellen Goldin
To: Steve Pelly,
I’ve admired and respected you and CBS until now. I haven’t missed a “60 Minutes” program for decades! However, what are you thinking
when you have an “expert” who reports and denies climate change?? !! Please read this website: https://fair.org/index.php?page=4582
You just lost a viewer for your news program. Let me know when you report fairly about climate change.
David Bernard should not be appearing to millions of viewers as though he were an expert. CBS viewers deserve to hear an explanation from someone who isn’t devoted to fringe science. Surely CBS can find a commentator on extreme weather events who has some scientific expertise and credibility.
To Whom it Concerns:
I am writing you to urge you to fire Florida TV meteorologist David Bernard, who makes frequent appearances to provide misinformation about weather and climate on CBS Evening News and other CBS News shows. Recent TV coverage of weather disasters by Bernard for CBS tends to downplay the effects of catastrophic climate change. Bernard, who has appeared on CBS News programs scores of times in recent years to talk about extreme weather events, according to the Nexis news database, has never once uttered the word “climate” — let alone “climate change” or “global warming.” Bernard is obviously a climate change denier and is completely out of touch with 100% of climate scientists. He should be fired because he’s a stupid liar! Doubtless, the only reason Bernard has been employed is because the corrupt and fascist oil, gas, coal and nuclear corporations want to LIE about climate change and they pay big money to CBS and other so-called “news” corporations to put on their false advertising and their weather liar, David Bernard.
William Davis
129 Wittenberg Rd.
Bearsville, NY
12409
To the CBS News Team:
Please replace your weather “expert” (quotes emphasized) David Bernard. Because of his denial of climate change, Mr. Bernard is not suitable to be counted among the respected journalists of CBS News. Furthermore, no matter his personal beliefs (even as ignorant as denying climate change), as a journalist he should keep them to himself. Mr. Bernard does not follow this absolute rule of the fourth estate.
I no longer attribute any credibility to anything Mr. Bernard says.
Therefore, I will no longer watch CBS News – and I have watched it since the days of Walter Cronkite – until Mr. Bernard is no longer on your payroll. Let him go to Fox News where he’ll be in better company with the other ignorami.
Sincerely,
Mimi Evans
Edgewater, NJ
Sad, but once again we see the effects of having people whose paychecks depend on them not seeing the other side of the argument.
Too bad CBS is now falling into the Fux Snooze Limburger/Beckerhead trap of actually believing the trash they put out.
Well, you’ve got newscasters who relate utter fantasy with solemn equanimity
So this makes a sort of deeply perverted sense, doesn’t it?
I just sent the following to CBS:
It is shocking that CBS employs David Bernard, a global-warming denier, as an “expert” on severe weather events. As you surely know, every scientific academy in the world accepts the reality of human-caused global warming and the resulting climate change we are now experiencing. It is your job to provide your viewers with scientific information about the very serious and rapid changes now occurring in our atmosphere–not to pander to right-wing cranks. For serious meteorology, you would do well to consult Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at Weather Underground. I suggest that you invite him to be your expert consultant or to recommend someone with equally sound credentials.
Robin Fox
Dear Sirs,
As a former proud employee of CBS News, I was really surprised about FAIR’s exposé of your weather expert – David Bernard. They have presented what seems pretty strong evidence regarding his resistance to the accepted scientific theory of climate change. Would you refute such evidence re: Mr Bernard? Or at least acknowledged on air – especially since we are in the midst of the worst drought and heat records in over fifty years – that Bernard is a “climate change denier”?
I have recently returned to watching The CBS Evening News, since I now believe that Scott Pelly & his producers have returned to the old great journalistic standards that made CBS what it used to be.
Truly yours & from a former colleague,
Frank Gonzalez
Dear CBS:
What would you call someone who insists the Earth is not warming, but cooling? Or who recommends that a media outlet “cool the global warming mumbo jumbo”? On CBS Evening News, you call him an expert–the network’s “severe weather consultant.” Florida TV meteorologist David Bernard makes frequent appearances to talk about weather and climate on CBS Evening News and other CBS News shows. I want to get my information about weather events from someone who understands and accepts climate science–including human-caused global warming. The vast majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is happening and that humans are the likely cause. Is CBS so beholden to right-wing big money that you have to slant the news to fit their ideology??? Are you following the advice GOP strategist, Frank Luntz, gave the Republican Party back in 2002: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. . . . Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”
A study in the journal Nature (12/3/04) found that out of 928 peer-reviewed articles on the subject of climate change from 1993 to 2003, not a single one took issue with the idea that human-caused warming was ongoing. So why are you promoting the ideology of a few climate change deniers??? Why not choose a climate consultant from the mainstream instead of an outlier?
According to a recent article in the New York Times “an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests. Global emissions of carbon dioxide jumped by the largest amount on record in 2010, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery. Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists. The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.”
Can we trust CBS News to give us the truth or are you becoming another Faux News?
Here’s what I sent:
From: Nancy Lion-Storm
Subject: Fire David Bernard
To: evening@cbsnews.com
Date: Friday, July 20, 2012, 2:27 PM
David Bernard, your so-called weather expert, is anti-science and truth. Or perhaps he is just misinformed. Please have him read
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
so that he will stop denying global warming. Better yet, fire David Bernard and hire someone who doesn’t deny scientific fact.
Nancy Lion-Storm
To Whom It May Concern;
It is difficult enough to overcome the fake news generated to deny science in many aspects of life. I have always held CBS as a sophisticated news organization, but I am now beginning to wonder about my long held impression.
It has come to my attention that your organization employs ‘Severe weather consultant’ David Bernard, who is a climate-change denier. I think this is not appropriate for an organization that wants to maintain their image as a true and credible news source to employ somewhat who holds such a position and has the opportunity to promote these unreasonable views on your news program.
I ask as a regular viewer of your news programs to reconsider the employment of David Bernard.
Perhaps if you fire him due to these severe and unreasonable positions he will find a new job as “a seeker of employment for climate change deniers” while no credible news organization will hire him. My point being that he will realize that taking such a position that arguably is not credible and his use of employment opportunities to promote such extreme positions, will encourage him and other climate deniers to cease taking advantage of such a platform.
I the meantime, there is no excuse for CBS to finance or promote someone like this.
Regards, Cynthia, Malvern, PA
Dear CBS news:
The following has been copied from a FAIR email:
Florida TV meteorologist David Bernard makes frequent appearances to talk about weather and climate on CBS Evening News and other CBS News shows. As FAIR and others have noted (Extra!, 8/11; Media Matters, 7/3/12), recent TV coverage of weather disasters tends to downplay the effects of catastrophic climate change.
It is of considerable importance that we obtain weather information from a meteorologist who understands climate science and the role green house gases play in global warming. David Bernard twitters clearly show that he denies that the atmosphere and the oceans are warming due to fossil fuel and other GHG emissions. NOAA has just reported that severe weather events have contributions due to climate warming and CBS news should have a meteorologist capable of informing the public about global warming effects.
Jack Lebowitz
Dear CBS News:
I want to get my information about weather events from someone who understands and accepts climate science–including human-caused global warming, NOT from the likes of David Bernard, who is obviously NOT a real scientist, nor meteorologist.
thank you,
Carole Chi.
Dear CBS —
For the good of your network as a credible news organization, and for Sumner Redstone as operating in empirical reality, take that buffoon David Bernard off the air.
For some reason Bernard thinks global warming is the invention of a left-wing conspiracy. This an opinion, and a wackball one, not a fact. Global warming IS demonstrable fact, and it’s manmade — or else the sharp rise in global temperature that has corresponded perfectly with the industrial revolution for the past nearly two centuries is sheer coincidence.
He keeps saying recent global temperatures have fallen. No, they briefly leveled off, and for two reasons: a strong El Nino/La Nina cycle and the global economic slowdown. Were it not for underlying global warming, recent global temps would have fallen sharply as a result.
The Pacific gyre is weakening, which means temperatures are rebounding. I am afraid that Mr. Bernard will soon be eating his words.
But please, retire him to some local newscast in the Bible Belt where he belongs. His position is far too influential — and the American public is far too easily led — for it to be filled by anti-science numbskull.
Thanks for your attention.
my email to cbs:
Global warming is a fact. if you don’t believe it, then please explain the melting glaciers, loss of permafrost and the decrease in arctic and antarctic ice. David Bernard is allegedly knowledgeable in meteorology, but espouses nonsense in his denial of global warming. He needs to be replaced with a competent meteorologist. Clowns belong in a circus, not CBS.
Jonathan
ATT: CBS News
I want to get your information about weather events from someone who understands and accepts climate science–including human-caused global warming.
David Bernard has appeared on CBS News programs scores of times in recent years to talk about extreme weather events, according to the Nexis news database, has never once uttered the word “climate”–let alone “climate change” or “global warming.”
This omission makes sense when you understand what Bernard thinks of the foremost scientific issue of our era.
Bernard’s Twitter feed (@DavidBernardTV) displays his strong feelings on climate change. He retweets messages from the likes of right-wing climate denier Marc Morano, plugs articles from various climate-change denying pundits and generally derides the notion of global warming:
Thank you.
Hello CBS News, just wanted to let you know that the “expert” Florida weatherman you have on occasionally is hurting your network more than helping it. If you were to keep current on the polls nationwide you would notice that more Americans believe that man caused climate change is occurring. Although I stopped using the term Global Warming quite some time ago, the fact that Climate Change is happening is as big as a wart on a witch’s nose. The warming will be the end result, but I’m sure you know that. Please spare me the labor of hitting the remote to change the channel whenever he appears on-screen. He is in somebodies pocket and he and those who pay him are so so wrong. Dump the clown. Thank you very much.
Regards,
Mr. Michael Holzman
Lacey, WA.
Site proudly states it challenging Censorship since 1986…
But this move to silence a reporter is much more matching “1984”.
CBS News,
I am complaining about your weather person brought on as a consultant at times…David Bernard, denier of climate change.
I strongly believe in global warming or climate change, whichever you wish to refer to it as, and it makes me angry and not wanting to continue watching CBS NEWS when you allow someone this biased as your weather consultant!
Smart people know and have known for some time now, climate change is being caused by humans, at a much more faster pace than ever before. The deniers are only going to help end the planet as we know it if they continually deny and ridicule global warming.
David Bernard is one of these idiots and CBS needs to stop using him!
I have watched CBS for many years ONLY because of the name of Edward R. Murrow and the legacy he left of dignity and honor and integrity. I would hope CBS pick up his banner again and show honesty in your reporting by replacing Bernard with someone who will truly understands climate science.
Thank you,
Misty Hay
Santa Rosa, CA 95407
Hello CBS News,
Please inform weather prophet, David Bernard, to stop denying that he is a climate change denier when he denies that changes are occurring in the climate.
That he denies that he is making denials while he is making denials is objectively undeniable.
Next, can you find someone familiar with the recent developments in the science of weather to deliver information about the statistical trends in the weather?
Weather prophets have a long respected history going back to Noah, the great prophesier the Great Flood, but unless David Bernard is receiving weather communications from the sky via satellite transmission, rather than the messages etched in stone by lightening, or whispered to him by the Almighty, I prefer to have someone with a stronger association with the mainstream understanding of the American Meteorological Society do the weather broadcast.
This was mine:
According to a tweet of his, your “severe weather consultant” David Bernard considers it “slander” to call such as him a “climate denier.” Perhaps he would prefer my term for his ilk: nanny-nanny naysayers.
The fact is, he is a “climate change denier.” That is not slander, it is a simple fact, and having someone such as that presented as an “expert” should be embarrassing to any organization claiming to be a reputable news source.
I realize he is being presented as an expert on “severe weather” rather than global warming (aka climate change). But I would refer you to the most recent State of the Climate report from NOAA, which included a discussion of how climatologists are now not only confident that climate change has affected weather patters but that they are increasingly able to estimate the probability of certain weather patterns occurring as the result of global warming. (For example, in a La Nina year, a Texas heat wave is now 20 times more likely than it was 50 years ago.) In light of such as that, it is inconceivable that someone could legitimately be regarded as an expert on “severe weather” while denying climate change.
I have no particular desire to see Mr. Bernard fired, but I would like to see him reassigned to some position more in keeping with his skills; perhaps covering the latest cute animal born at the zoo. In any event, he should no longer be held up as an “expert” on anything.
Dear CBS Evening News,
Please replace David Bernard (whose name is so ironically fitting if US media continues its silence on global warming) immediately and replace him with someone with science knowledge and credibility.
His children and grandchildren will curse him (and CBS evening news) when they suffer the effects of the denialism and do-nothingism of our media and political leaders at a time when time was quickly running out.
Meanwhile, I will be informing all my contacts (and there are many) to boycott CBS Evening News and their sponsors.
Joellen Gilchrist
Detroit, MI
Dear CBS News,
I am writing to ask that you address the issue of David Bernard’s many tweets denying the validity – actually mocking – the science of climate change. Mocking a vast body of scientific research is not the kind of behavior that a scientific “Expert” should engage in – especially without offering peer-reviewed scientifically valid research to refute it. Addressing research with innuendo is not science.
Simply: It does not make sense or stand the smell test to have an “Expert” on Severe Weather that rejects science. You should fire him or explain his public positions on climate change.
Merriam Webster defines expert as “one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject.”
An “Expert” on severe weather who rejects the research of 98% of scientists publishing peer-reviewed papers in respected journals – and that IS the percentage whose research supports human-caused climate change according to a National Academy of Sciences study ( http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html ) – cannot be considered to have “knowledge representing mastery” of the particular subject of weather and climate. It is like having a health “Expert” who says that smoking is not bad for you.
By the way, many of the same scientists who supported the tobacco industry and delayed smoking regulations for years, are now some of the central “scientists” putting out papers (the vast majority of which are subject to no peer review) rejecting anthropogenic climate change. I suggest you look into Fred Singer and his Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SEPP ). The Heartland Institute is no place to get your science information funded as it is to the tune of $67,000,000 by Exxon, The Koch Foundation, and the Scaife Foundation – all organizations with a significant interest in the petroleum industry. Human-induced climate change, on the other hand, is endorsed by such mainstream scientific organizations as the American Geophysical Union ( http://www.agu.org/sci_pol/positions/climate_change2008.shtml ) , the American Meteorological Society ( http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html ), the National Research Council ( http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10139 ) and the national science academies of 13 major nations ( “>http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf> ).
Unfortunately, it is easy to make something LOOK like science. The vast majority of climate change skeptics lack scientific rigor. Throw in a graph or two and people wanting to believe you will believe you. To quote Steve Molloy, a prominent climate change skeptic, “If you can read a graph, then you have all the tools necessary to decide the climate controversy for yourself. You only need the PhD and track record of publications if you want to rip-off taxpayers in the name of alarmism.” It is too bad that Mr. Bernard seems to fall into this category. There is no problem with having a scientific debate, as long as it is based on science.
Please make use of your journalistic resources and do your research into David Bernard’s tweets and into the scientific underpinning of his very public pronouncements on what is arguably the most important issue of our time. To employ Mr. Bernard as your scientific expert on weather demeans your credibility as a news organization – putatively dedicated to discovering and promulgating the truth.
Please let me know what action you are taking on this matter.
Kind regards,
James Lloyd
The science is in.
There is no “disagreement” about anthropogenic global warming.
It is absolutely irresponsible for CBS to air this man’s comments on the matter.
With all respect, please address this immediately.
Dear CBS,
I’m appalled that Florida CBS meteorologist (and occasional CBS Evening News weather “expert”) David Bernard is on record as being a climate-change denier. Having someone with views diametrically opposed to the overwhelming number ( 97% ) of climate scientists who strongly believe in human-precipitated global warming, does you no good. The deniers are either hacks for oil companies or else deeply misguided and often ignorant people who themselves are not in a knowledgeable position to judge the science. Really, many are cranks that could be wearing tin-foil hats to jam transmissions from aliens. I will not watch your station, and will urge everyone I know to do the same, until you replace Mr. Barnard with someone more suited to truly be called a “severe weather expert”.
At some point we have to stop begging the servants of the ruling elite (the politicians, pundits, and reporters) to tell the truth and/or act on climate change. We need to start thinking about direct aciton. Our lives and the future of our planet depend on it. All other socio-political issues become unimportant if we are struggling just to survice on a sick planet.
I just read in FAIR about your so-called “severe weather consultant” who is about as much in the majority of climate science on global warming as the tobacco company doctors and scientists were on nicotine addiction for the second half of the last century. He is the meteorologist version of holocaust denial. Why do you employ this fraud?
Just go to his Twitter feed @DavidBernardTV to see how proud your expert is of his willful ignorance.
One does not have to denies climate change. The weather is always changing – that why it is called weather. We can not change it! stop it! Just accept it for what it is and live with it. The 30’s had hotter weather and there was no air conditioning. . Just accept it!
I think it was James Hanson (NASA) who said that 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is the upper safe limit. But it is over 400 ppm and rising.
We should not be surprised by weird weather now. Storms are more severe, drought is unprecedented, fires are raging across the west, sea levels will rise forcing migration from areas near water level. The migration is already beginning. Many low coastal areas will become uninhabitable forcing many of the world’s poorest to migrate to higher ground.
Glacier melt can deprive billions of people of fresh water. Resource wars will become much more likely. Water shortages will be particularly acute between India and Pakistan, so there will be high danger of nuclear war.
Insects will proliferate in northern climates bringing more disease.
Climate change may not happen gradually because there are likely considerable non-linearities. Arctic ice melt will cause a change in the albedo, permafrost melt will release large amounts of methane, fresh water runoff from
melting Greenland ice can cause a slowing or stopping of the gulf stream. Arctic ice melt is much faster than computer models predicted.
So with that as background…CBS has joined the climate deniers by hosting David Bernard as ‘severe weather consultant’.
Yet another reason that corporate ‘news’ is untrustworthy, irresponsible, and pandering to willfully ignorant Republicans.
http://www.seconnecticut.com/environment.htm
Get rid of the guy.
Climate change is a scam and what’s wrong with someone having an opinion that doesn’t agree with yours? Let’s end this climate change witch hunt.