CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter was refreshingly direct about climate change on his November 2 show:
I don’t think there are two equal sides to climate change. The scientific consensus is that it’s real. The debate is over what to do about it. And the press has to be careful about creating this notion of sides.
That’s right, down with false balance!
Stelter said this, unfortunately, as an introduction to a debate about whether there’s any such thing as global warming.
He introduced it as “a story you will see nowhere else this morning.” That story is that one of the founders of the Weather Channel, retired TV weather forecaster John Coleman, thinks “climate change is a hoax.” And saying so got him invited on Fox News.
So how does this all add up to something that deserves a segment on CNN? It’s not clear; the CNN host only says that
Coleman’s platform as a co-founder of a channel dedicated to weather is unique and so is the channel’s declaration that it believes climate change is happening. So, this morning both players are here, Coleman and the CEO of the Weather Channel, David Kenny.
This would be precisely the type of climate debate that Stelter just said the media shouldn’t have. Coleman, for his part, represented the climate change-denying side exactly as you’d expect: He accused CNN of bias, and claimed that the US government only gives research dollars to scientists who support climate change and hence the Democrats.
He added:
If you get down to the hard, cold facts, there’s no question about it. Climate change is not happening. There is no significant manmade global warming now. There hasn’t been any in the past, and there’s no reason to expect any in the future. There’s a whole lot of baloney and, yes, it has become a big political point of the Democratic Party and part of their platform, and I regret it’s become political instead of scientific, but the science is on my side.
Or, the short version: “Hello, everybody. There is no global warming.”
Meanwhile, back in reality…. (cc photo: Brendan Cox / Oxfam)
The current CEO of the Weather Channel arrives next to affirm the channel’s statement that it disagrees with Coleman. And, since the discussion mostly skipped over challenging any of Coleman’s rhetoric, one could actually argue that there wasn’t much of a debate at all.
What else happened the day of this segment? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents the work of thousands of scientists, released a new report. “UN Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming,” read the New York Times headline (11/2/14); “Effects of Climate Change ‘Irreversible,’ UN Panel Warns in Report,” was how the Washington Post (11/2/14) played it.
It does not appear to have received any coverage on the Sunday chat shows—making this CNN segment, featuring the views of a former TV personality with a journalism degree and a media executive with an MBA, one of the few mentions of climate change in TV news that day.
It could be worse, I suppose—CNN could have had Ann Coulter on again to talk about climate change unopposed (FAIR Action Alert, 5/29/14).
Pretty impressive that the majority of scientists have been slowly amassing research in order to make Al Gore’s movie a succcess. So devious you almost can’t imagine it!
@Lewis. In fact Al Gore’s movie was shown to have 26 factual errors; nine by a court of law. The more time passes, the more discredited his movie becomes.
Al Gore said the Arctic could be ice-free by now, in fact Arctic ice is making a comeback.
You really must only stick to the left-wing propaganda sites to get your highly filtered information.
Article above says meanwhile back in the real world, and shows a picture of animals dying in a drought.
What we’ve never had drought before? How does 18 years of non-warming make for a drought all of a sudden?
It’s as if earth was perfect and has never had these things before until human emissions came along. In other words AGW is a religion.
Isn’t The Weather Channel owned by NBC/Universal/Comcast/GE or some other huge media conglomerate? I am wondering how the people at TWC get away with telling the truth. It’s hard to believe that corporate America is going soft.
It’s as if earth was perfect and has never had these things before until human emissions came along. In other words AGW is a religion-.cbfool
And evidently the Anti-Climate Change Deniers have moron trolls that couldn’t logic their way out of a paper bag; Per your Logic then, All people die anyway and have been dying in the past before man invented weapons, therefore there can be no murder. It would be hilarious to come back in a couple of decades and watch your family and friends dying of the effects of the climate change that you think is impossible.
Like all moron trolls, you think that we can not affect our own environment to the point of killing us off, yet even the far distant past, that is exactly what many species did: look up the algae blooms that gave us the Oxygen in the first place.
But I suspect as my Dear Father would say “Since your a moron as it is, if someone told you your butt is on fire, you would stand and burn to death just to prove them wrong.”
The basic question is, “How much toxic material can any natural body withstand without dire consequences?” Climate change deniers say literally that, “The sky is the limit. Pollute away!” One wonders if they ever heard of smog or that smoking causes cancer.
Incidentally, if the best example that cbfool below can give about Al Gore’s movie is to present a possible “could be” as a hard-core prediction, he is pretty hard up for facts.
And by the way, thanks for defining us “liberals” as being more fact friendly that money-chasing right wingers who opposed the truth about smog and lung cancer till they looked as rotten as they really are.
For Tom Saltsman, Al Gore, and Climate-Mongers,
Toxic Material. True CO2 in the right setting is toxic, but in nature it is essential, just like water. You wouldn’t like to be underwater one second more than you can hold your breath, but is still essential.
Facts: CO2 is 1/3 of 1% of our atmosphere, this hasn’t changed. That’s a really small, almost insignificant percentage. Plant life would thrive between 12% – 14%, so any increase in CO2 (manmade or otherwise) isn’t going to “tip the scales.” There was an ice age a few (13,000+/- years ago) and if not for global warming we would still be in it. BOB (Big Orange Ball in the sky, aka the SUN) isn’t in a steady state, but has incremental changes that we can’t begin to measure in time that is significant. To say the amount of CO2 produced by man is having an impact on the environment is like saying the Fart of a Flea could change the course of Hurricane Katrina.