The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
The 10 Most Ridiculous Things Media Figures Said About Climate Change And The Environment In 2017

The 10 Most Ridiculous Things Media Figures Said About Climate Change And The Environment In 2017

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

 

1. Breitbart’s James Delingpole claimed 400 new scientific papers show global warming is a myth.

Numerous studies have found near-unanimous scientific agreement on human-caused climate change, with perhaps the most well-known study on the matter finding that 97 percent of scientific papers taking a position on the cause of global warming agree that humans are behind it. And this year, a review of the 3 percent of papers that deny climate change found that they were all flawed. Nonetheless, Breitbart writer Delingpole claimed that 400 scientific papers published this year demonstrated that climate change is a “myth,” basing his article on a post on the denialist blog No Tricks Zone.The fact-checking website Snopes roundly debunkedDelingpole’s article, giving it a “False” verdict after speaking with authors of some of the cited papers who said their work was grossly misinterpreted or misrepresented.

2. The Daily Mail claimed government researchers “duped” world leaders with “manipulated global warming data.”

Daily Mail reporter David Rose alleged that climate scientists “rushed” to publish an “exaggerated” paper in an attempt to convince leaders to support the Paris agreement and spend billions to fight climate change. Rose, who has written his fair share of climate misinformation for the Mail, based his story on an “exclusive interview” with and a blog post by retired U.S. government scientist John Bates. The error-ridden article quickly made its way around right-wing media in outlets such as The Daily Caller, National Review, and Breitbart, and was even promoted by GOP members of the House science committee, including its chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). The story’s claims also received “at least 752,300 shares, likes, comments, or other interactions on social media,” according to a Buzzfeed analysis. But the claims in the article were widelydiscredited by climate scientists, including Bates’ former colleagues and even Bates himself. The errors in the Mail’s article were so significant that the Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO), an independent media regulator in the U.K., issued a ruling that “the newspaper had failed to take care over the accuracy of the article … and had then failed to correct … significantly misleading statements.” The Daily Mail was required to publish IPSO’s reprimand.

3. Radio host Rush Limbaugh said he was “leery” of hurricane forecasts because they advance a “climate change agenda.”

As Hurricane Irma barrelled toward Florida, Limbaugh spun conspiracy theories and told his listeners that hurricane warnings are part of a scheme to benefit retailers, the media, and people like Al Gore who want to “advance this climate change agenda.” Notably, Limbaugh didn’t have any skepticism about the danger Irma posed when it came to his own well-being, as he fled from his Florida home to Los Angeles before Irma made landfall. It’s not the first time Limbaugh has spouted irresponsible conspiracy theories about hurricane forecasts. He was criticized last year for doing the same thing during Hurricane Matthew, earning himself a spot on the 2016 edition of this list.

4. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued that because political operatives were wrong in predicting Hillary Clinton would win the election, people should be skeptical of climate science.

After Trump’s election, The New York Times launched an ad campaign billing itself as the antidote to Trumpian “alternative facts.” Shortly after that campaign, though, the Times hired Stephens as a columnist — a serial misinformer who had called climate change a “sick-souled religion” during his time at The Wall Street Journal. In his inaugural column for the Times, Stephens encouraged skepticism of climate scientists and compared those who advocate climate action to Cold War-era authoritarians. Stephens’ column was short on actual facts and science; the one time he cited a scientific report, he got it wrong. The Times added a correction to the column, but numerous scientists pointed out that the correction wasn’t sufficient, and a number of scientists canceled their subscriptions over Stephens’ hiring, his problematic column, and the Times public editor’s dismissive defense of Stephens’ column. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt later cited Stephens’ column to defend the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement.

5. Conservative media commentator Stephen Moore claimed that Trump created tens of thousands of coal jobs in the first few months of his presidency.

Experts and journalists have repeatedly noted that President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to bring back coal jobs is an empty one, since the decades-long decline in coal mining jobs has been driven much more by economic forces, such as increased automation and competition from natural gas and renewables, than by government regulations. But that didn’t stop Moore, a frequent Fox and CNN commentator and former Trump economic advisor, from proclaiming in op-eds in The Washington Times and Breitbart that Trump had already made good on his promise after just a few months in office. Moore cited jobs reports from March and April to claim that Trump had added tens of thousands of mining jobs, thereby restoring the coal industry. But Moore grossly misrepresented the data he cited, which actually included jobs in a number of sectors like oil and gas. Had Moore bothered to look at the actual coal mining jobs category, he would have seen that it had only grown by approximately 200 jobs through April, barely moving since Election Day.

6. Radio host Hugh Hewitt recommended appointing Rush Limbaugh to a national commission to study climate change.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Hewitt proposed creating a “national commission led by men and women of impeccable credentials” to determine whether and how the U.S. should address climate change, arguing that the country needs a group of “[d]iverse, smart non-scientists who are going to listen to the scientists — all of them — and report back on what ought to be done.” But Hewitt’s proposal instantly lost all credibility when he suggested including Rush Limbaugh as one of the commission members. Limbaugh has repeatedly called climate change a hoax, promoted dangerous climate-related conspiracy theories, misrepresented research in an attempt to dispute that global warming is happening, and even criticized a TV show for portraying climate change as a reality.

7. Fox hosts attacked a journalist and called him “stupid” for asking a Trump official about the links between hurricanes and climate change.

2017 was a record year for hurricanes, as Harvey, Irma, and Maria wreaked havoc along their respective paths. A number of climate scientists have explained how climate change exacerbates some of the worst impacts of hurricanes. While CNN and MSNBC frequently aired segments discussing the link between climate change and hurricanes like Harvey and Irma, Fox News hosts almost exclusively covered the climate change-hurricane link by criticizing others who raised the issue. The September 11 episode of Fox’s The Five, for example, featured a lengthy discussion in which hosts criticized CNN’s Jim Acosta for asking Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert whether there’s a link between climate change and powerful hurricanes. The hosts said that Acosta was “anti-science” and looked “stupid” and “dumb,” and they called his question was “politically opportunistic.” Fox’s Jesse Watters said concern about climate change stems from liberal “guilt” and a desire to control people’s lives. Likewise, on the radio show Breitbart News Daily, host Alex Marlow pushed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to deny the link between climate change and hurricanes, which Pruitt did, stating, “For opportunistic media to use events like this to, without basis or support, just to simply engage in a cause-and-effect type of discussion, and not focus upon the needs of people, I think is misplaced.”

8. Rush Limbaugh argued that the historic BP oil spill caused no environmental damage.

Limbaugh cited an article in the right-wing Daily Caller headlined “Bacteria Are Eating Most Of The 2010 BP Oil Spill” and concluded, “The BP spill didn’t do any environmental [damage].” The Deepwater Horizon spill, which leaked oil for 87 days, was the largest accidental spill of oil into marine waters in world history. Researchers have documented a wide array of negative environmental impacts from the disaster. For example, a 2016 study found that the BP spill may have caused irreversible damage to one of the Gulf shore’s most important ecosystems. The spill is believed to have killed tens of thousands animals in 2010, and for years afterward, dolphins and other animals in the area continued to die at higher-than-normal rates.

9. Fox News’ Jesse Watters claimed, “No one is dying from climate change.”

During a discussion about Al Gore’s warnings on climate change, Watters, a co-host of Fox News’ The Five, declared, “People are dying from terrorism. No one is dying from climate change.” Rush Limbaugh also made the same assertion this year. But an independent report commissioned by 20 governments in 2012 concluded that climate change already kills more people than terrorism, with an estimated 400,000 deaths linked to climate change each year.

10. Radio host Alex Jones said it was “suspicious” that Hurricane Irma came along shortly before the release of a climate disaster movie.

Jones briefly speculated about the possibility that Hurricane Irma was “geoengineered” or created by humans before stating, “Meanwhile, though, right on time with these superstorms, we have the new film Geoengineering (sic) 2017, coming soon on October 20. Oh, just a little bit more than a month or so after Irma is set to hit. Isn’t that just perfect timing? Like all these race war films they’ve been putting out. This is starting to get suspicious. Here it is, Geostorm.” The action movie Geostorm featured satellites that controlled the global climate. Jones’ speculation about the film is just one of the countless conspiracy theories he has promoted over the years.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

Some TV Networks Continue To Lag In Covering Link Between Hurricanes And Climate Change

Some TV Networks Continue To Lag In Covering Link Between Hurricanes And Climate Change

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

After failing to note the impact of climate change on hurricanes in their coverage of Hurricane Harvey, ABC and NBC both discussed the link while covering Irma, Media Matters has found in a new analysis of coverage of the more recent storm. But NBC did a better job: It ran a segment that featured a scientist explaining the climate-hurricane connection, while ABC’s sole mention of climate change was cursory and failed to provide viewers with much information.

Media Matters also analyzed weekday prime-time cable news coverage of Irma and found that Fox News continued its pattern of dismissing climate change, while MSNBC provided extensive coverage of the link between climate change and hurricanes.

This new analysis of Irma coverage builds on a recent Media Matters study that looked at broadcast and cable news coverage of Hurricane Harvey.

Climate scientists have explained how climate change exacerbates some of the worst impacts of hurricanes like Harvey and Irma: Rising sea levels lead to worse storm surges; warmer temperatures increase the amount of moisture in the atmosphere and lead to more rainfall; and warmer ocean waters make the storms more intense.

Broadcast networks: After dropping the ball with Harvey, NBC covers link between climate change and hurricanes in Irma coverage, and ABC gives climate a brief mention

Media Matters found that during Hurricane Harvey coverage from August 23 to September 7, ABC and NBC completely failed to discuss the link between climate change and hurricanes on any of their morning, nightly, or Sunday news shows. NBC did notably better during its coverage of Hurricane Irma, while ABC made only slight improvement, according to a new analysis of coverage from September 4 — two days before Irma reached Puerto Rico — to September 13.

On September 9, an NBC Nightly News segment featured an interview with Oscar Schofield, chair of the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, who explained, “The ocean is going to continue to warm, and the predictions from a lot of the climate scientists are that we’re going to get more and more of these extreme events.” On that same day’s episode of NBC’s Today, correspondent Kerry Sanders introduced a segment about sea level rise by saying, “Whether you accept or don’t what scientists say that global warming is raising our world’s oceans, there’s an undeniable fact here on Miami Beach: They’ve had to raise the sidewalks and roads … [because] much of Miami Beach goes under water.”

On the other hand, ABC’s sole mention of climate change during Irma coverage was brief and uninformative. After ABC meteorologist Ginger Zee answered viewer questions about Irma on the September 11 episode of Good Morning America, host George Stephanopoulos said, “I want to throw out one more question, because a lot of people look at these two back-to-back hurricanes — two powerful hurricanes back-to-back — and think there must be some connection to climate change.” Zee responded, “And I think it’s irresponsible not to talk about the warmth of the earth, and you have to get that,” but then she went on to another subject and said nothing about how climate change influences storms.

In Irma coverage on the other broadcast networks, CBS aired two segments discussing the impact of climate change on hurricanes on CBS This Morning, while PBS aired none (though it did discuss how climate change worsens storm surges in a September 4 segment on flooding in Bangladesh on PBS NewsHour). During their coverage of Hurricane Harvey, CBS and PBS each aired three segments highlighting climate change’s impact on hurricanes.

Prime-time cable: MSNBC provided extensive coverage of the link between climate change and hurricanes, while Fox attacked those who made such a link

Media Matters’ analysis of Hurricane Harvey coverage on the major cable networks’ prime-time weekday shows found that MSNBC and CNN each aired five segments noting climate change’s impact on hurricanes. A follow-up analysis of the prime-time cable news networks’ Hurricane Irma coverage found that MSNBC aired more segments discussing the climate-hurricane link and CNN aired fewer.

From September 4 to September 13, MSNBC aired 13 prime-time segments that discussed climate change’s impact on hurricanes, in some cases including multiple discussions of climate change in a one-hour block. For instance, on September 8, the 8 p.m. broadcast of MSNBC Live on featured three segments in which host Chris Hayes brought up climate change with guests, and the 10 p.m. broadcast featured two instances of host Ali Velshi raising the topic of climate change. MSNBC hosts also brought up the climate-hurricane link on the September 6 and September 11 episodes of All In with Chris Hayes; the September 7, September 8, and September 13 episodes of Hardball with Chris Matthews; the September 13 episode of The Beat with Ari Melber; and the September 8 and September 12 episodes of MTP Daily.

CNN’s prime-time weekday Irma coverage featured two segments about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes from September 4 to September 13. Erin Burnett discussed the Trump administration’s refusal to talk about climate change in the wake of the hurricanes on the September 13 episode of Erin Burnett OutFront. The same topic came up on the September 12 episode of CNN Tonight during Don Lemon’s interview with Bob Inglis of RepublicEN and climate denier Myron Ebell, who dismissed the link between climate change and hurricanes by citing an overblown statistic about the lack of major hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S. since 2005.

Fox News’ prime-time Irma coverage included four mentions of climate change, but they were not informative. The network’s hosts discussed the climate-hurricane link the same way they did during Harvey coverage: by criticizing those who raised the issue. The September 11 and September 13 episodes of Fox’s The Five both featured lengthy discussions in which hosts accused people who brought up climate change’s impact on Hurricane Irma of behaving inappropriately, saying that they were making claims based on “anecdotal evidence,” acting out of liberal “guilt,” and attempting to shame people. The five-minute group rant on the September 11 episode ended with co-host Dana Perino claiming that actress Jennifer Lawrence had blamed Donald Trump for the hurricanes — a mischaracterization of her actual statement. Fox ran another misleading segment about Lawrence’s comments on the September 8 episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight. According to The Daily Beast, Lawrence’s comments also came up on four other occasions during Fox’s weekend coverage of Irma.

Fox’s final prime-time mention of the link between climate change and Hurricane Irma came during the September 13 episode of The Story with Martha MacCullum, in which MacCullum said “things got political” during a celebrity telethon for hurricane relief when Stevie Wonder brought up climate change.

Methodology

Media Matters ran the search terms “Irma AND (climate OR warming OR emission! OR carbon OR CO2 OR greenhouse gas!)” in Nexis and searched for “climate change” and “global warming” in SnapStream to identify segments between September 4 and September 13 that mentioned both the hurricane and climate change.

On the broadcast networks, we examined the morning, evening, and Sunday news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as PBS NewsHour, the only PBS program archived in Nexis. For CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, we examined the networks’ prime-time shows that air on weekdays from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.

We counted instances of network hosts, anchors, correspondents, and recurring guest panelists mentioning climate change but excluded instances when other guests brought up climate change unprompted.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

So Far, ABC And NBC Are Failing To Note The Link Between Harvey And Climate Change

So Far, ABC And NBC Are Failing To Note The Link Between Harvey And Climate Change

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

Of the three major broadcast networks, CBS is the only one that discussed climate change’s role in exacerbating Hurricane Harvey’s impacts, while ABC and NBC have overlooked climate change in their coverage of Harvey so far.

Since it made landfall last Friday, Harvey, which has been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm, has brought massive devastation to southeast Texas. By Tuesday, Harvey had already become the most extreme rain event in U.S. history. The storm brought so much rainfall that the National Weather Service had to add new colors to its weather maps to represent Harvey’s deluge. An early estimate of the storm’s cost stands at $190 billion, which would make it the nation’s “costliest natural disaster.”

A number of climate scientists have commented on the ways climate change intensifies storms like Harvey. While climate change did not cause Harvey, according to scientists, it made such extreme weather events “more likely to occur.” And Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, said of Harvey: “The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm. It may have been a strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway—but [human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably.”

CBS was the only major network to discuss this connection, which came up during an interview with physicist Michio Kaku on the August 26 episode of CBS This Morning and an interview with environmental engineering professor Jim Blackburn that aired on both the August 30 episode of CBS Evening News and the August 31 episode of CBS This Morning. Additionally, the August 30 episode of PBS NewsHour featured a segment in which correspondent Miles O’Brien interviewed climate scientists and experts about the connection between climate change and extreme weather events. These experts explained that climate change both warms waters, which fuels hurricanes like Harvey, and increases moisture in the air, which leads to more rainfall. ABC and NBC, however, have ignored the relationship between climate change and hurricanes like Harvey.

Conversely, CNN and MSNBC have both aired multiple segments on Harvey’s climate connection, including interviews with meteorologists Jason Samenow and Paul Douglas, who explained the climate science behind Harvey on the August 30 episode of CNN’s New Day and the August 26 episode of MSNBC Live, respectively.

The major broadcast networks’ nightly news shows air for just half an hour each day compared to their 24-hour cable news counterparts, and thus far, they have focused their reports on updates related to Harvey and ongoing rescue operations. But the broadcast networks have a history of ignoring climate change’s impact on major storms. For instance, when a storm that brought record-breaking rainfall struck Louisiana last year, PBS was the only network that aired a segment detailing climate change’s connection to extreme rainfall.

Given the magnitude of Harvey’s destruction, some journalists have been making forceful calls for a discussion about climate change. Naomi Klein wrote an article in The Intercept headlined “Harvey Didn’t Come Out of the Blue. Now is the Time to Talk About Climate Change,” and Eric Holthaus wrote in Politico, “If we don’t talk about the climate context of Harvey, we won’t be able to prevent future disasters and get to work on that better future.” Let’s hope that when the immediate danger of Harvey passes, broadcast networks will start having that conversation.

Correction: This post originally stated that CBS had run just one segment on the connection between climate change and Hurricane Harvey. A subsequent search found two other such segments that CBS aired in which the impact of climate change is mentioned. The term “climate change” was not mentioned in the transcript, but it was included in Nexis’ “subject” category. Media Matters regrets the error.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

Why Does USA Today Keep Publishing Op-Eds That Dispute Climate Science?

Why Does USA Today Keep Publishing Op-Eds That Dispute Climate Science?

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

USA Today has once again invited a climate denier onto its opinion pages to cast doubt on mainstream science, and the paper failed to disclose the author’s numerous industry ties.

On August 14, USA Today‘s editorial board wrote a well-reasoned editorial highlighting the scientific consensus around climate science, titled “Case for climate change grows ever stronger.” The board noted that the findings of a draft federal climate report provided “ever more troubling evidence” that “humanity is responsible for a dangerously warming planet.”

But on the same day, the newspaper also published an op-ed by Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute that disparaged the draft report, dismissing it as the work of “the career (and holdover) federal employee ‘resistance’” and part of the “big business” of climate change:

Another week of the Trump presidency, another bout of fevered reporting on claims promoted by the career (and holdover) federal employee “resistance.” But particularly when it comes to climate change, it seems the ordinary way of doing things is simply too much to ask.

“Climate” has become very big business since Congress first requested quadrennial “National Assessments on Climate Change” in 1990. A big part of that business is government. Another is the news media. Both of which thrive on the end-of-days narrative.

The two met this week to ride the latest national assessment, a draft of which prompted excited reportage and a particularly embarrassing correction by The New York Times.

Readers would have taken Horner’s attack with more than a grain of salt had USA Today disclosed his deep ties to oil and coal companies. He claimed that climate change has become “big business,” but Horner’s own work has been funded by big fossil fuel corporations for years. Horner has gotten payments from Alpha Natural Resources, one of the largest coal companies in the U.S., and has numerous ties to the coal industry. And Horner’s employer, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has received more than $2 million from ExxonMobil over almost two decades, as well as funding from Marathon Petroleum, Texaco, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Koch Industries, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, among others.

In his USA Today op-ed, Horner provided no evidence to support his claim that writing reports on climate change is “big business.” According to a ProPublica article, the draft federal climate report was authored by “a mix of government and academic researchers,” and lead author Katharine Hayhoe noted that the academic contributors were not paid for their work. Horner also didn’t give any compelling evidence or argument to dispute the findings of the draft report.

So then why did USA Today publish Horner’s op-ed? The paper’s editorial board has a long-standing practice of publishing “opposing view” counterpoints to its editorials. As Media Matters has documented on multiple occasions, this “opposing view” format leads the newspaper to publish climate denial and misinformation, and go out of its way to find authors willing to dispute the well-established science of human-caused climate change.

A 2016 Media Matters study examining four major newspapers’ opinion pages found that USA Today published six opinion pieces featuring climate denial or misinformation from January 1, 2015, through August 31, 2016 — five of which were “opposing view” responses to editorials. Only The Wall Street Journal, which is notoriousfor pushing climate denial on its opinion pages, published more. All six of these misleading climate opinion pieces were written by individuals with fossil fuel ties, but USA Today did not disclose any of those ties to readers.

The “opposing view” format is all the more dangerous now that Environmental Protection Agency administrator and climate denier Scott Pruitt is calling for a “red team” of climate deniers to debate mainstream “blue team” scientists. The Trump administration is even reportedly considering having a “red team” vet the draft climate report that Horner criticized. This sort of approach should not be getting an endorsement from the most widely read newspaper in the United States.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

EPA Chief Pushing Plan To Discredit Climate Science

EPA Chief Pushing Plan To Discredit Climate Science

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is calling for a “red team/blue team” review of climate science that would attempt to cast doubt on well-established science and lend an outsize voice to fringe scientists. The idea spread from a climate-denying scientist to conservative outlets like The Daily Caller and The Wall Street Journal to Pruitt, and now more right-wing outlets are promoting it.

How the “red team/blue team” idea spread

John Christy, a fringe scientist and climate denier, proposed the creation of a “red team” in commentssubmitted to the EPA in 2014. His proposal was promoted by the denialist Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of organizations that “question global warming alarmism.” In his comments, Christy wrote:

The EPA should constitute a “Red Team” of analysts, independent from the climate modeling industry, to judge the current state of knowledge, i.e. the current state of how much we know about the “why” of climate variations. Such an examination would provide transparency to the process and give confidence to the public that the agency values open examination of its methodology.

In 2015, Christy again promoted the idea of the federal government funding a new “red team” that would review the climate science currently being produced by what he calls the “blue team.” The Daily Caller reported on Christy’s proposal in December 2015:

Christy told the [Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness] he believes the attempt to study climate change objectively is thwarted by the federal funding process.

Christy, a well-known climate change skeptic, suggests Congress can fix the problem by directly funding independent “red team” programs.

And in March of this year, Christy promoted the idea during a hearing held in the House Science Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), a noted climate denier. Judith Curry, another scientist who’s been skeptical of the mainstream consensus on climate change, also testified in favor of the idea. The Washington Post reported on Christy and Curry’s testimony and the “red team” idea:

A main mission of red teams would be to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change, including the work of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports are widely considered the authority on climate science.

On April 20, the idea got more exposure when it was endorsed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist who has a history of climate denial and served as undersecretary at the Energy Department under President Barack Obama for two years before resigning. Koonin called on the Trump administration “to convene a ‘Red Team/Blue Team’ process for climate science, one of the most important and contentious issues of our age.” He continued:

The national-security community pioneered the “Red Team” methodology to test assumptions and analyses, identify risks, and reduce—or at least understand—uncertainties. The process is now considered a best practice in high-consequence situations such as intelligence assessments, spacecraft design and major industrial operations.

As justification for such an exercise, Koonin claimed that the “public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science.”

Shortly after his op-ed was published, Koonin told Axios, “I can tell you that’s found some resonance within the administration. I’m just going to say people seem to be interested.”

One of those people is Pruitt. In a radio interview on Breitbart News Daily on June 5, Pruitt expressed interest in the “red team/blue team” idea. From a Breitbart article about the interview:

“What the American people deserve is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” [Pruitt] said. “There was a great article that was in the Wall Street Journal about a month or so ago called ‘Red Team, Blue Team’ by Steve Koonin, a scientist, I believe, at NYU. He talked about the importance of having a Red Team of scientists and a Blue Team of scientists, and those scientists get into a room and ask, ‘What do we know? What don’t we know? What risk does it pose to health in the United States and the world, with respect to this issue of [carbon dioxide]?’”

In the days after that interview, right-wing outlets picked up on the idea again. The Daily Caller reported that it “could upset the supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming.” Breitbart said the proposal “has naturally caused massive upset among the ivory towers of climate science academe” where researchers “aren’t at all used to having their dodgy theories exposed to serious scrutiny.” The right-wing website Daily Signal, the conservative blog Power Line, and the climate-denial blog Watts Up With That also highlighted Pruitt’s interview and the red team proposal.

Why the “red team/blue team” idea is wrongheaded

In advocating for a “red team” review of climate science, Pruitt, Koonin, and right-wing media are glossing over the fact that climate science already has a method for testing assumptions and analyses: the peer-review system. Climate science papers submitted to respected journals are reviewed by other scientists in the field to assess their soundness and validity.

As Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Washington Post in June, creating a red team to review climate science would constitute an act of false equivalence and lend, as the Post wrote, “more prominence to alternative ideas than they have earned in the refereed journal process.” Earlier, in March, he told the Post, “The notion that we would need to create an entirely different new approach, in particular for the specific question around global warming is unfounded and ridiculous and simply intended to promote the notion of a lack of consensus about the core findings, which in fact is a false notion.”

The Post also quoted Marshall Shepherd, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia, who called Koonin’s proposal a “gimmick,” saying, “This just feels to me a like another way to skirt the tried and true scientific process that has worked for years in our field and many others.”

Climate science has already been litigated ad nauseum in mainstream forums. Numerous studies have found that the vast majority of climate scientists agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming. And recent studies examining the robustness of that consensus have reaffirmed it; about 97 percent of publishing climate scientists concur.

Via Skeptical Science

Creating a “red team” could lead to scenarios like the one at a House science committee hearing in March, when climate scientist Michael Mann was outnumbered by fringe scientists and forced to be the sole representative of the scientific consensus on climate change. “We find ourselves at this hearing today, with three individuals who represent that tiny minority that reject this consensus or downplay its significance, and only one—myself—who is in the mainstream,” Mann said in his opening testimony.

The impact of major newspapers’ opinion pages

Though fringe, right-wing media have played a substantial role in spreading the “red team/blue team” proposal and other denialist ideas, mainstream newspapers also bear some responsibility. When Pruitt referenced Koonin’s op-ed, it was the second time in less than a week that he had lifted an argument from the opinion pages of a major newspaper to cast doubt on established climate science. On June 2, standing at the podium of the White House press briefing room, Pruitt cited an error-riddled, denialistNew York Times column by Bret Stephens in order to downplay “exaggerated” concerns about climate change.

As a Media Mattersstudy conducted last year demonstrated, climate denial remains a significant problem in the major newspapers. The world has just endured the three hottest years on record, and newspapers are still allowing their opinion pages to be used to deny climate change. That trend is all the more alarming now that the Trump administration is quickly adopting those denialist arguments.

 

How Feckless U.S. Media Enabled Climate Catastrophe

How Feckless U.S. Media Enabled Climate Catastrophe

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

News outlets are reporting that President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Trump’s reported decision, as well as months of media speculation about whether or not he would remain in the deal, put into stark relief the failure of major TV networks to discuss the climate implications of a Trump presidency during the election campaign.

According to Axios and The New York Times, Trump has decided to exit the Paris agreement, in which all but two of the world’s countries submitted pledges to curb their greenhouse gas emissions in order to combat climate change. Following the news reports, Trump tweeted that he would issue his announcement on the matter “over the next few days.”

Regardless of when Trump makes his announcement, this alarming development serves as a reminder that major news networks failed to discuss how a Trump presidency would affect climate change and the Paris agreement prior to the election.

Media Matters’ latest annual study examining the broadcast networks’ coverage of climate change found that in 2016, evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC as well as Fox News Sunday did not air a single segment informing viewers of what to expect on climate change and climate-related policies or issues — including the Paris agreement — under a Trump or Hillary Clinton administration. This failure was made all the more inexplicable by the fact that Trump had pledged to cancel or renegotiate the agreement during his campaign and that polls conducted prior to the election showed that large majorities of Americans supported the Paris accord.

PBS NewsHour was an exception to this trend, airing two segments before the election that provided much-needed discussion about what a Clinton or Trump presidency would mean for the Paris agreement and climate policy broadly. A September 7, 2016, segment featured a discussion with The New York Times’ Coral Davenport and The Washington Post’s Chris Mooney about Trump’s pledge to cancel the Paris accord. And a September 22 segment explored “what the early days of a Trump presidency might look like” and featured Judy Woodruff interviewing Evan Osnos of The New Yorker about whether Trump would renounce the Paris climate agreement.

The major networks did eventually devote a significant amount of coverage to the climate impacts of a Trump presidency in 2016, airing 25 segments on the topic after the election. And TV networks have been covering the Paris agreement this week, just as they covered Trump’s rollback of former President Barack Obama’s main climate policies in March; in both cases, it’s too little much too late.

 

Will Bret Stephens’ Climate Denial Threaten The Integrity Of The NYT Opinion Section?

Will Bret Stephens’ Climate Denial Threaten The Integrity Of The NYT Opinion Section?

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

 

A Media Matters study conducted last year found that over a year-and-a-half period, The New York Times was the only one of four top U.S. newspapers that did not publish climate science denial and misinformation about climate change in its opinion pages. But the paper’s recent hire of Wall Street Journal columnist and climate denier Bret Stephens may tarnish the Times’ otherwise stellar record when it comes to covering climate change.

On April 12, the Timesannounced that it was hiring Stephens as its newest columnist. The paper’s editorial page editor defended the decision, saying characterizations of Stephens as a climate denialist were “unfair” because “millions of people” agree with him (an argument that has rightly been criticized for presenting a false equivalency on the reality of climate change). In a statement to The Huffington Post regarding his hiring, Stephens described himself as “climate agnostic,” adding that it “seems to be the case” that “man-made carbon emissions” are “probably largely” causing the earth to warm (an understatement given that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists say human activity is the primary cause of global warming).

But Stephens’ attempt to cast himself as occupying some sort of middle ground on climate change belies his lengthy record of outright climate denial in The Wall Street Journal, where he often made extreme comments about climate change, calling it a “sick-souled religion,” comparing those who accept and are concerned about global warming to “closet Stalinists,” and declaring in 2010 that “global warming is dead.” Stephens has also promoted the myth that climate scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s and cited fiction writer Michael Crichton to discount the scientific consensus on global warming. And as recently as 2015, Stephens dismissed climate change as an “imaginary enemy.”

Stephens’ hiring is especially worrying considering that a Media Matters study examining the opinion pages of four national newspapers — the Times, the Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today — found that the Times was the only one that avoided publishing climate science denial in its opinion pages. Notably, for the newspaper with the next-lowest amount of climate science denial, The Washington Post, all three instances of denial came from a single columnist: George Will.

In addition to tarring the Times’ opinion pages, the paper’s hiring of Stephens could also mar the The New York Times’ stellar climate coverage. The Times has provided readers with explainers on the position of 2016 presidential candidates and current administration and elected officials on climate change, employed visual storytelling to detail on-the-ground climate impacts, chronicled local responses to climate change, and conducted an in-depth investigation of the troubled Kemper project in Mississippi to build a first-of-its-kind “clean coal” power plant.

Just this week, the New York Times magazine devoted an issue to climate change that covered topics such as geoengineering, climate change-induced migration in regions around the world, the threat rising sea levels pose for coastal properties, and an increase in “the potential for viruses like Zika” due to climate change.

And at a time where broadcast network coverage of climate change is seeing a drastic decline, the Times has been expanding its climate team. While announcing that Hannah Fairfield was joining the paper as the new climate editor in January, Times editors wrote, “No topic is more vital than climate change. … With Hannah’s appointment, we aim to build on what has already been dominant coverage of climate change and to establish The Times as a guide to readers on this most important issue.”

Let’s just hope that Bret Stephens’ “agnosticism” doesn’t misguide those very same readers.

 

Weather Channel Meteorologist Calls Out Breitbart On Climate Change

Weather Channel Meteorologist Calls Out Breitbart On Climate Change

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters. 

The Weather Channel criticized Breitbart.com for falsely claiming that global warming temperatures have “plunged,” describing a Breitbart article as “a prime example of cherrying picking” data and pointing out that Breitbart denied the findings of “thousands of researchers and scientific societies.”

In a video accompanying a December 6 article, Weather Channel meteorologist Kait Parker explained to Breitbart, “Science doesn’t care about your opinion. Cherry-picking and twisting the facts will not change the future, nor the fact — not opinion — that the earth is warming. ”

The Weather Channel video and article roundly debunked the false and misleading claims in the November 30 Breitbart article by James Delingpole. In response to Delingpole’s claim that “[g]lobal land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year,” Parker pointed out that Delingpole had cherry-picked one set of data, adding in the video that “land temperatures aren’t an appropriate measure” and that the temperature decline disappears when you also account for sea surface temperatures. Delingpole also cited the science editor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, David Whitehouse, to claim that “without the El Niño (and the so-called ‘Pacific Blob’) 2014-2016 would not have been record warm years,” yet Parker noted in the video that even if you “take out the El Nino spike in temperatures, 2015 and 2016 still come in as the warmest years on record,” as Carbon Brief has shown. Finally, Parker debunked Delingpole’s claim that a likely drop in global temperatures in 2017 is evidence against global warming, writing: “There is nothing unusual about a drop in global surface temperatures when going from El Niño to La Nina. These ups and downs occur on top of the long-term warming trend that remains when the El Niño and La Niña signals are removed.”

Parker also lamented the U.S. House Science Committee’s endorsement of the Breitbart article on Twitter and concluded her video with a helpful suggestion for Breitbart and a rallying cry for fellow scientists: “So next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first, and to all my fellow scientists out there: Let’s make the facts louder than the opinions.”

Here is the video and full transcript of Parker’s comments (which are well worth watching):

KAIT PARKER: So last week, Breitbart.com published an article claiming that global warming was nothing but a scare and global temperatures were actually falling. Problem is, they used a completely unrelated video about La Nina, with my face in it, to attempt to back their point. What’s worse is that the U.S.Committee on Space, Science, & Technology actually tweeted it out. Here’s the thing: Science doesn’t care about your opinion. Cherry-picking and twisting the facts will not change the future, nor the fact — not opinion — that the earth is warming. So let’s break it down.

Their first claim is that “Global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year — the biggest and steepest fall on record.” Now, that was based on one satellite estimate of global land temperatures, not a consensus. And second of all, land temperatures aren’t an appropriate measure. The earth is 70 percent water, and water is where we store most of our heat energy, so when you look at sea surface temperatures, and you combine that with land temperatures, you actually get a record high for November of 2016.

Their second claim: “It can be argued that without the El Nino … 2014-2016 would not have been record warm years.” Now, if you’re taking a look at the Arctic sea ice melting here in this video from NASA — when you actually normalize the data, aka take out the El Nino spike in temperatures, 2015 and 2016 still come in as the warmest years on record.

So that brings me to claim number three: “Many think that 2017 will be cooler than previous years.” Now, it is typical, yes, for temperatures to drop in a post-El Nino environment, but certainly not to record lows. If that claim was correct, we would have had global record lows all over the last century, and we haven’t seen that since 1911. The last time we fell below the 20th century average was in 1976, and guess what? That was directly following the 1974-1975 strong El Nino. So next time you’re thinking about publishing a cherry-picked article, try consulting a scientist first, and to all my fellow scientists out there: Let’s make the facts louder than the opinions.