NBC Nightly News (1/12/13) asked a serious question the other night—and then gave a not-so-serious answer.
When roses are blooming in January in New York City, maybe you should start thinking about climate change. (Photo: Jim Naureckas)
Anchor Lester Holt remarked at the top of the broadcast:
Strange winter. Why it is so cold where it should be warm, and so warm where it should be cold? What is going on with all this extreme weather?
To answer the question, he turned to correspondent Kristen Dahlgren, who went to the Weather Channel‘s Greg Postel, who gave this explanation:
A very strong dip in the jet stream has placed itself over the western part of the country and that’s allowed some very cold air from Canada to move southward.
That’s true as far as it goes—but it didn’t go any farther. Specifically, it never mentioned climate change—something that has been linked to disruptions in the jet stream’s traditional path. As the blog ClimateSight (12/19/12) explained:
The jet stream isn’t straight, though; it’s rather wavy in the north-south direction, with peaks and troughs…. Sometimes a large peak or trough will hang around for weeks on end, held in place by certain air pressure patterns. This phenomenon is known as “blocking,” and is often associated with extreme weather….
As climate change adds more energy to the atmosphere, it would be naive to expect all the wind currents to stay exactly the same. Predicting the changes is a complicated business, but a recent study by Jennifer Francis and Stephen Vavrus made headway on the polar jet stream. Using North American and North Atlantic atmospheric reanalyses (models forced with observations rather than a spin-up) from 1979–2010, they found that Arctic amplification—the faster rate at which the Arctic warms, compared to the rest of the world—makes the jet stream slower and wavier. As a result, blocking events become more likely.
Instead of giving this background, Dahlgren merely marveled: “Talk about upside-down weather.” Let’s talk, rather, about journalists who are failing to acknowledge global climate changes when they’re staring them in the face.
Talk about upside-down reality
Which the corpress has developed into a dark art form, from climate catastrophe to poverty to wars of empire.
And there’s nothing complicated about predicting its stream of consciencelessness, is there?
This post is absolute right in pointing out the utter laziness in doing any real journalism into this subject. For those who are interested in reading about climate change deception should read the book the Climate Change Cover Up by Jim Hoggan, the creator of Desmogblog. He documents the numerous examples of climate change deception and denial in our culture. Desmogblog documents this deception regularly. It is important for all us to understand the realities of climate change so we can challenge this rubbish when it occurs. This means talking back to the media when see examples of deception like this one.
“Let’s talk, rather, about journalists who are failing to acknowledged global climate changes when they’re staring them in the face.”
That’s an excellent idea for more reasons than one. A list of media climate change deniers would also tell us who’s deepest in the corporate pocket on all the major issues, such as George Will of Wapo and This Weak fame.
It would be better for them to stop spraying the skies in order to give the impression of a climate change which isn’t happening, then all puppets using the engineered messed-up weather to promote and cement Agenda 21 and Global 2000 would collapse, as we realise there’s is nothing wrong with climate outside of the intervention of global tyranny we are currently experiencing.
Who pays the bills? Advertisers and clients. The networks do not wish to offend the car companies, oil and coal companies and the industrial complex with the truth. It is bad for business. The ” New York Times” just dismissed their environmental department! Who will write on climate change now, some sports writer?
What is going on in this country is criminal….plain and simple.
The last 20 years has been a nightmare.
The ignorance about climate change is mind-boggling. A few year fluctuation of weather might have nothing to do with the long term process of climate raising.
Climate and weather conform to physical laws – while journalists are free of such rigorous constraint. If they wish, they can work to discover, understand and then report the issues. If they fail to do so, it may point to a far more interesting story: audiences do not want to know or perhaps journalists are influenced and manipulated by commercial interests – or there is some other reason we have not yet discovered.
Thank you for posting this.
By now I have zero faith in our federal government to grasp the enormous challenge toward mitigating the terrible consequences that await all life forms inhabiting our planet. The CEO of Exxon passes it off as ‘an engineering challenge’. We can either allow the illness of greed to destroy this magnificent place we inhabit or demand change. The GOP, in my view seem to prefer mankind fails, over putting the fossil fuel industry out to pasture as if pre-ordained in the Bible, corporations shall have dominion over clean air and water. “We the People” must lead on this. Lest the only creature remaining be the cockroach…maybe this is how the GOP survives.
operation zeus can stop a hurricane, while a certain large scale map can spare us further untold climate change grief. No-one interested, but in the interests of conveyance, just saying. Find out more at the website. Not touting, again, just saying.
Every time climate change is brought up….or inserted,nay jammed into any weather discussion,we should ask the question.And what would you do about it?Or more importantly what will you do about its chief criminal.That would be China.A country that in no uncertain terms will tell you(and Obama) to go pound sandThis past week Obama said he was open to one on one talks with Iran’s leader and the leading mullahs on the nuclear problem.The silence was deafening.He will get the same silence from China and India among others on climate chance.America?We are doing great.Meeting carbon emission standards on a downward spiral.Pat yourselves on the back.Does not matter if you believe in the principle or not.So really go take the whole argument to China,India,Russia ect.And get ready to see what pounding sand feels like.Hope no one here is advocating war to force your viewpoint :)