Climate Teachers: if your pupils watch TV in the USA, this is what you are up against

Networks Do 92 Climate Change Stories; Fail to Mention ‘Lull’ in Warming All 92 Times

  Extracts from article by Julia A. Seymour

• Recent years’ slowdown in global warming completely ignored by networks 92 climate change stories in 2013.
• Stories citing experts or the latest studies promoting alarmism get covered more than 8 times as often as critical experts and studies.
• Although many scientists say no, ABC, CBS and NBC continue to link weather events like tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves and more to climate change nearly one-fourth of the time. "

 ...

"Just since Jan. 1, 2013, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programs have aired 92 stories about “climate change” or “global warming.” Not a single one of those stories mentioned the “warming plateau” reported even by The New York Times on June 10. The Times wrote, “The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.” Even though the Times piece wasn't published until June 10, a warming slowdown had been reported by foreign media outlets in November 2012, and by The Economist online in March, Reuters in April and BBC online in May of 2013."

  ...

8 Times the Alarmism

"New reports, studies or scientists that warned of the threat of climate change from concern over penguin populations, to predictions of sea level rise continued to be promoted by the networks in 2013. There were stories or news briefs warning that flying would become more turbulent because of climate change, connecting allergies to global warming, and others worrying about glacial melt and sea level rise.

There were 25 networks reports that mentioned a new report or analysis or that cited a scientist who promoted the climate alarmist viewpoint. That was 8 times as many as the other side; there were only three stories that cited a report or included such a scientist challenging alarmism.

The networks consulted scientists from NASA and NOAA as well as activists like Michael Oppenheimer from Princeton, who has gotten climate predictions wrong in the past. “Nightly News” interviewed Kenneth Kunkel from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center on May 25 who continued the hype, saying “If we continue to increase atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we will warm the globe and that will bring certain risks into play or increase the risks of certain types of extremes.”

...

 In spite of science, networks continue to link weather to climate

"Weather events that did a lot of damage and claimed lives, like the recent Oklahoma tornado and last year’s “Superstorm Sandy” were cited as incontrovertible proof of climate change. Scientists who argued otherwise were left out of the broadcasts. Even snowfall, wildfires and droughts were mentioned in some reports as examples of what one reporter called “globalweirding.”

On Jan. 8, NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams mentioned a new report on the cost of extreme weather saying “natural disasters caused a total of $160 billion damage around the world in 2012 ... These new numbers coincide with a new official look at just how hot our past year was.” Anne Thompson followed up his introduction by linking the “year of extreme weather” to “nature and man made climate change.”

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi has vehemently opposed such connections and told Forbes.com columnist Larry Bell, “The fact is that those alarmist claims [about weather getting more extreme because of man made climate change] simply aren’t true.”

  Source

Note added 29 June 2013:  Here are some more links to recently published articles on this topic:

 PBS NewsHour global warming coverage: IPCC/NOAA Scientists – 18; Skeptic Scientists – 0

Why the MSM Is Stupid About AGW

 

Parents Driven to Distraction and Death by Climate Scares

It is well known that climate agitators have been using children as a means by which to influence their parents.  Some are quite happy to deploy Schneiderian Scenarios (scary, simplified, dramatic) to help that along.  But it is not just children who are being scared by tall tales of a climate crisis caused by people. Some parents are succumbing to them as well, and it seems all too likely that this means more stress for their own children.   In one case reported on below, suicide and child murder was the result, and in another, both of these are being contemplated.

Some parents are seized with pessimistic thoughts. 

Example 1.  Here is an extract from a letter to an agony aunt by a mother clearly being driven to distraction by here fears about population and climate in the year 2013:

“I love my family dearly, and my children bring me great joy.  So what’s the problem then? I worry that I’ve brought them into a world whose future holds overpopulation (for which I myself feel a bit responsible) and global warming. My children have such bright futures ahead, which may be completely devastated by these global crises.”

Example 2. Here is a father also driven to distraction by his imaginings in 2013:

“When Ian Kim imagines the world his 7-year-old daughter will be living in 20 years from now, he says, it keeps him up at night. Images of ever more frequent super storms like Sandy, along with rising seas, or drought and heat waves wreaking havoc with crops haunt his waking hours.”

Example 3.  Anotherletter to an agony aunt in 2013, one that comes across as more temperate until she gets to the bit about going up in flames:

“My issue is that now that we have a baby, all the other moms drive their kids all over the place, shopping and taking cute little day trips. I would prefer to drive only in emergencies, but our entertainment options near home are severely limited. Is it better to leave a smaller carbon footprint and make a moral statement my son might be proud of one day, or to have additional experiences with him/relationships with kids and moms across town that I will treasure until we all go up in flames?”

Example 4.  Unicef has, like so many other organisations, enthusiastically jumped on the climate alarm bandwagon and has no doubt boosted its funding as a result.  Here are the words of an actor doing a promotion for them in 2013:

“As a dad to a 14 year old daughter, I worry about what climate change means for her future and her children’s future. Extreme flooding, colder, longer winters and harsher summers; it’s causing chaos in the developed world and it’s threatening children’s very survival in poorer countries.”

For Some Parents It is Even More Serious

Example 5.  It is only anecdotal, and it comes via another woman who is herself seriously disturbed by climate scares, but it is sadly by no means far-fetched as the next example shows: “Should we stockpile cyanide? You think I'm exaggerating, but a close friend of mine, who has four children, said she plans to kill herself and them when it comes to it.”  [The ‘it’ refers to some kind of climate catastrophe she has in mind] 

Example 6.  April, 2010: “BUENOS AIRES – A 7-month-old baby survived alone for three days with a bullet wound in its chest beside the bodies of its parents and brother, who died in an apparent suicide pact brought on by the couple’s terror of global warming, the Argentine press said Saturday.”  As reported in Latin American Herald Tribune and the Daily Telegraph

Meanwhile ...

Meanwhile 1, the UK Met Office, a leading light for climate alarmists everywhere, has held an unscheduled get-together to see how they can best cope with the fact that the climate system is behaving just as it might if the extra CO2 was having a negligible impact on it.  Given how misleading their computer models have been for them, they need to brainstorm to help them cope with ‘weather as normal’.

Meanwhile 2,  the eco-organisations and others who have all helped disseminate the fears which have so disturbed parents and children, continue to harm the environment and force needless suffering and even starvation on to the world.

 These two 'meanwhiles' illustrate two realities.  The first reality is that the climate system is behaving much as it might if human impacts on it have been of minor consequence.  The second reality is that those who screech and preach and politicise as if the opposite was the case, are themselves the major cause of concern and of suffering linked to climate change.

As Willis Eschenbach noted yesterday at WUWT:

"I say that history will not look kindly on those people and organizations who are currently impoverishing the poor and damaging the environment in a futile fight against CO2, even if the perpetrators are wealthy and melanin-deficient and just running over with oodles of good intentions …"

And in the big meantime before that happier day, we are faced with trying to stop that 'futile fight' and all the harm it is bringing to people and to the environment across the world.

Added 31 July 2013:  Another example of the harm inflicted by climate alarmism on vulnerable people, a commenter driven to despair by sites such as Climate Progress:  http://www.np.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/1ipxal/i_dont_see_the_point_of_building_a_future_for/