Home > Archives for Environment > Climate Change
Nov
04
2012

Media Should Describe Sandy as the Result of Our Climate Experiment

By 26 Comments
NASA Satellites See Sandy Expand as Storm Intensifies

Columbia Journalism Review's Curtis Brainard and I had a somewhat lengthy back-and-forth on Twitter about his view (10/30/12, 11/1/12) that some journalists and environmental activists are misleading the public by pointing to superstorm Sandy as an outcome of human-caused global warming. I argued on FAIR Blog (11/1/12) that saying that global warming caused Sandy is simply accurate–and later tried to make my point via tongue-in-cheek metaphor in a tweet. I don't think I convinced Brainard–"Wow. You're spinning words like tops," pretty much summed up his reaction. But I thought I'd try to explain what I was saying in a medium [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change Tagged With: , ,
Nov
01
2012

How'd You Like That Hurricane We Made?

By 57 Comments
Hurricane Sandy (NASA)

Writing about journalistic treatment of the superstorm and climate change, CJR's Curtis Brainard (10/30/12) criticizes the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert for the wrong reason. He takes issue with her statement (10/29/12): As with any particular "weather-related loss event," it's impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change. He's unhappy with the second part–retorting that you can't attribute a trend toward extreme weather to climate change. But [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Media Criticism, New Yorker Tagged With: , , ,
Oct
11
2012

Washington Post Greens Fracking

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Poster at anti-fracking protest in Columbus, Ohio. Photo by Bill Baker.

The Washington Post editorial page (10/5/12)  weighed in on the contentious environmental issue of fracking. No surprise–they're all for it. "Fracking's Green Side" is the headline in the print edition. (The Web version is different.) The editors write: Those who would ban fracking or regulate it into oblivion ignore the exceptional benefits that inexpensive natural gas can provide in the biggest environmental fight of our time–against climate change. Of course, many people who fight climate change don't think fracking is the answer. They point to the considerable local environmental hazards–water and air pollution, for starters–but they also question the argument [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Washington Post Tagged With: ,
Sep
14
2012

FAIR TV: Chicago Teachers vs. Corporate Media, NYT and Torture, WashPost and Big Oil

By 2 Comments
Filed Under: Climate Change, Education, Energy, Media Criticism, New York Times, Washington Post
Aug
31
2012

For Brokaw, It Doesn't Get Better Than Global Warming Denial

By 46 Comments
Tom Brokaw

NBC's Tom Brokaw from the Republican National Convention last night (8/30/12): The best line, I think, in the speech was the one in which he said: "President Obama wants to slow the growth of the oceans, I want to help you and your family." Yeah, wasn't that great when Romney pretended we weren't facing an ongoing global catastrophe, and made fun of people who thought we should do something about it? How can you top that?

Filed Under: Climate Change, Election, Mitt Romney, NBC Tagged With:
Aug
31
2012

Factchecking the Minnows and Letting the Whales Swim Away

By 25 Comments
Mitt Romney at the RNC

In an attempted factcheck of Mitt Romney's acceptance speech at the Republican convention, AP's Calvin Woodward (8/30/12) takes on Romney's big laugh line: President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet.  My promise is to help you and your family. Woodward looked into it and found that, indeed, Obama had said something like that. But aren't the important factual questions here whether ocean levels actually are rising, and if so whether it's possible to do anything about them? (The answers are "yes" and "yes," as it turns out.) The Washington Post [...]

Filed Under: AP, CBS, Climate Change, Factchecking, Mitt Romney, Taxes, Washington Post Tagged With: , , ,
Aug
23
2012

Missing From LAT Report on Romney's Energy Plan: Journalism

By 8 Comments

"Mitt Romney Sees Path to Energy Independence," an L.A. Times piece by Seema Mehta (8/22/12), doesn't mention climate change at all. It also doesn't mention tar sands, the Canadian oil deposits whose extraction would devastate the environment, even though that's what Romney's talking about when he says that approving the Keystone pipeline will be one of the keys to energy independence for "North America." Nor does it mention the ongoing ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, even though that's surely relevant to Romney touting offshore drilling as the other major piece of his energy plan. The story also leads [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Election, L.A. Times, Mitt Romney Tagged With:
Jul
09
2012

The Future of the Planet? Get Over It

By 22 Comments

You would think–or maybe hope–that journalists who have to appear alongside climate change deniers would find it a bit awkward. It used to be that media were faulted for creating false "balance" in coverage of climate change–quoting reality-based scientists in roughly equal measure with non-scientists who either don't think there's a problem or don't think human activity has anything to do with it. That doesn't seem to be as much of a problem anymore (though it made a comeback after "Climategate"). But ABC has a built-in climate problem: The network's Sunday morning show regularly includes right-wing climate denier George Will, [...]

Filed Under: ABC, Climate Change Tagged With: , ,
Jul
02
2012

Do You Change the Weather When You Change the Climate? Yes

By 63 Comments
Illinois Drought

FAIR has noted the tendency of corporate media to play down the connection of extreme weather to climate change. (See Neil deMause's piece in Extra!, 8/11.) This summer, as the country is beset by another devastating wave of drought and fires, the approach seems to be to acknowledge climate change–in the 10th paragraph–but end up by concluding that it's impossible to say whether there's any connection between climate change and any particular weather phenomenon. As in this L.A. Times piece (7/2/12): Since 2000, it has not been uncommon for wildfire seasons to end with a tally of 7 million to [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, L.A. Times Tagged With: ,
May
25
2012

It's Not About Climate Change–It's About Keeping Advertisers Happy

By 57 Comments

Scientific American has a dilemma (Extra!, 2/11): It takes advertising from oil companies whose profits depend on denying the most important scientific fact of our era, the reality of human-caused climate change. The magazine would lose its whole brand identity if it pretended global warming wasn't happening, but there are things short of that that will make its fossil-fuel-selling advertisers a little happier. Such as running blog posts like "It's Not About Tar Sands–It's About Us" by Melissa C. Lott and Scott McNally (5/23/12). Lott and McNally–both of whom have worked for the energy industry when they aren't science blogging–dispute [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, magazines Tagged With: , , ,
May
15
2012

Time Ignores Climate Change to Paint a 'Golden Age' of Fracking

By 23 Comments

You have to wonder: Do journalists covering energy issues imagine they and their loved ones are going to be living on another planet in the not-too-distant future? That seems like the only reason you would write a piece about the world discovering ways to extract and burn vast new quantities of hydrocarbons without mentioning one word about climate change. That's what Bryan Walsh gave us in the May 21 issue of Time magazine–an article about fracking that doesn't mention the technology's powerful contribution to global warming. The headline over this article: "The Golden Age." Walsh does refer to fracking's ecological [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Time Tagged With:
May
11
2012

Oily Propaganda on ABC World News

By 31 Comments

If you watch TV news you're bound to see a lot of commercials for oil companies. As Miranda Spencer reported in Extra! (2/12), there are far more commercials about energy companies and natural gas than there are actual news reports about controversial industry practices like hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." But then there are the news segments that might as well be commercials. Last night's ABC World News broadcast (5/10/12) featured a report on the oil boom in the Midwest that looked more like an ad than anything else. "A rising number of Americans are finding a windfall right where they [...]

Filed Under: ABC, Climate Change Tagged With: , , ,
Feb
22
2012

Media's Weird Ethics: Pretending to Be Someone Else Is Worse Than Facilitating Global Catastrophe

By 56 Comments

There's a popular verb in headlines about climate researcher Peter Gleick's admission that he used trickery to get damning documents out of the climate change-denialist group the Heartland Institute: "Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers" (New York Times, 2/21/12); "Scientist Peter Gleick Admits He Lied to Get Climate Documents" (L.A. Times, 2/21/12); "Climate Researcher Says He Lied to Obtain Heartland Documents" (WashingtonPost.com, 2/21/12). What you wouldn't gather from all these pants-on-fire condemnations is that there is a long and honorable tradition, from Nellie Bly feigning madness to expose mistreatment of the mentally ill to the Chicago Sun-Times' Mirage [...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, New York Times, Time, Washington Post Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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