ABC reporter and global warming enthusiast Bill Blakemore on Sunday
condescendingly dismissed climate change skeptics as "denialists." In a
piece on ABCNews.com [1], he called for yet more advocacy on the part of journalists.
After noting that confidence in the science of climate change has
varied from year to year, Blakemore huffed that these beliefs "don't
seem to be responding all that much, [Professor Jon Krosnick] says, to whatever the global warming denialist campaigns may have been doing."
Blakemore then lectured meteorologists for not being biased enough:
A number of America’s TV meteorologists and other broadcast weatherpersons have been accused by peer-reviewed climate scientists either of being greatly uninformed about the science of the basics of manmade global warming, or, at the very least, of shying away from any mention of it during broadcasts for fear of losing ratings by driving their audience away with worrisome news.
Instead, complain these scientists, U.S. TV weather journalists, feeling the need to provide some explanation for the unusual weather, often escape into a simplistic nearest-cause answer, blaming the extreme weather on “the jet stream,” while avoiding the science that connects the jet stream’s behavior to manmade global warming … as well as ignoring other larger global patterns that also project such extremes.
Of course, as a recent MRC analysis [2] found out, this isn't true. ABC weatherman Sam Champion in 2008 wondered, "Could global warming one day force us into space to live?"
During another Champion segment in 2007, Good Morning America wondered if "billions [3]" will die from global warming.
Is that "shying away" from global warming disaster talk?
Blakemore himself has a history [4] of climate change alarmism:
"Life around the globe now appears to be under non-stop stress from the heat. NASA scientists say no natural climate cycles can explain it. The heat must be caused in large measure at least by greenhouse gas emissions.... NASA scientists now calculate, Robin, that the planet has at most ten years during which serious greenhouse gas emission cuts have to get well underway, or else by the time today's kids are reaching middle age, turning about 40, they say the Earth will start to experience temperatures higher than it has known in half a million years."
- ABC's Bill Blakemore, Good Morning America, Dec. 15, 2006.
"Many scientists say that it [the Western wildfires] fits exactly into the pattern predicted for global warming....[San Bernadino Fire Chief Mat Fratus] told me he also worries about how all the carbon from the fires only contributes to global warming. That fact about forest fires is something that Al Gore also points out in his new book, and that book is now near the top of the bestseller list. It seems that people are really starting to pay attention to global warming."
- ABC's Bill Blakemore, Good Morning America, June 20, 2006.
A previous Blakemore article from April 1st [5] featured these leading headlines:
Global Warming Denialism ‘Just Foolishness,’ Scientist Peter Raven Says
U.S. prestige falling as world has ‘pretty well given up’ on any American leadership facing climate change.
-- Scott Whitlock is the senior news analyst for the Media Research Center. Click here [6] to follow him on Twitter.