While some people can’t stand the heat, the news media revel in it.
On July 15, USA Today reported that according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2010 is the hottest year on record [1]. ABC and CBS morning shows have also focused on the “record heat.”
USA Today’s Oren Dorell devoted the first third of his story to the “hotter than ever” world, much of which was doomsday weather predictions from Jay Lawrimore of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
"Global temperatures ... have been rising for the last 100-plus years. Much of the increase is due to increases in greenhouse gases,” Lawrimore told USA Today.
This is inaccurate, as temperatures have cycled through warming and periods of cooling [2] over the past 100-plus years. Neither Lawrimore, nor Dorell mentioned past cooling cycles.
Lawrimore’s dire predictions included the standard global warming alarmist threats of greater downpours, severe droughts, disappearing Arctic ice, and frequent heat waves. He even warned that “heavy snow, like the record snows that crippled Baltimore and Washington last winter, is likely to increase because storms are moving north.”
That’s right. According to global warming alarmists, even harsher winters [3] are caused by global warming.
Dorell quoted two voices of dissent, but not until the eleventh paragraph. One of them, meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, co-founder of The Weather Channel, argued that oceans are entering a global cooling cycle and temperatures will drop, an idea consistent with other scientists [4].
D’Aleo also said that the only reliable data set is satellite, but USA Today didn’t mention ClimateGate and the potential problems with world temperature data.
As Christopher Horner pointed out in March, there are only four independent temperature data sets. The ClimateGate e-mails prompted accusations that Climate Research Unit (CRU) set was manipulated. A NASA official has said that their data set is “so woeful” that the CRU set is better.
The NCDC set is the third out of four, and has been “thoroughly debunked” by D’Aleo and Anthony Watts, according to Horner. D’Aleo and
In the past, USA Today has hyped global warming [6] and global warming “solutions.” [7] Even though the author eventually gave a voice to “skeptics,” too often the media ignore [8] or undercut [9] individuals who have other opinions about climate change.