Click here to view the embedded video.

MR. BROKAW: I think that the two candidates are going to have to have big ideas and they’re going to have to be explained not only coherently but practically speaking. And they’re going to have to be candid with the American public. I think that we’ll hear from President Obama as we did not in that first debate a lot more about the 47 percent remarks, about the auto bailout for General Motors. I think the challenger, Governor Romney, will be saying once again are you better off now than you were four years ago? Where is that plan? So, this is good for the country. And I– I look forward to it. Here are some things that we have not we have not talked about. Not talked about immigration so far. There has been no discussion of global warming. There has been no discussion across the country, including in the State of Virginia, public pensions that are unfunded. And that’s a burning fuse for this country and that’s going to play into the economy downstream as well as municipalities and county governments begin to look for help from the federal government because they can’t pay off whatever they’re going to do. We’re in for a tough time here folks. And I think the American public, as I talk to them, want detailed answers and they want candor and they say, hey, look, don’t try to smoke me this time.

Unfortunately, moderator David Gregory immediately steered the panel discussion back to the format of the next debate – a topic of great interest to Washington insiders, but not exactly a critical issue on Main Street.

Climate Silence

So far, the debates have ducked conservation. That’s even though poll after poll shows deep concern about climate change:

• Two-thirds (67%) of Americans, including 65% of independents, see solid evidence of global warming, up 10% in the last 3 years. That’s according to a new Pew Research Center poll.
• Government action to regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming is supported by 74% of Americans, according to an August poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• Among sportsmen, a conservative-leaning group, two in three (66%) believe we have a moral responsibility to confront global warming to protect our children’s future. Additionally, 69% agree the U.S. should reduce its carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and threaten fish and wildlife habitat.

Tuesday night’s town hall debate may open up new topics, thanks in part to the over 3,000 questions submitted by Google users. However, the early agenda for the final debate doesn’t look good for talk of global climate change. Moderator Bob Schieffer is defining “foreign policy” to focus heavily on terrorism and the Middle East. His released list of topics doesn’t even mention energy policy or climate change, even though the Pentagon calls global warming a national security threat.

Take Action

If President Obama and Mitt Romney think climate change is worth debating, they don’t have to sit back and wait to be asked. Take action right now and urge President Obama and Governor Romney to tell us their plans to confront climate change.

Hopefully this turkey of a story won't fly. Image from Flickr commons.

When a similar batch of emails was unloaded without permission in 2009, many in the media hastily reported some of the information as solid facts and did not bother to understand the information in its broader context.  As a result, the science was distorted, twisted and misrepresented, and a stream of sloppy reporting ensued and was repeated over and over all too often.  Some in the media joined the climate naysayers who tried to argue that the climate scientists had doctored scientific data to exaggerate the world’s climate crisis.  They tried to unravel the facts and upend the science.

Nine independent investigations later confirmed that the scientists in 2009 did not manipulate the data or exaggerate the science. But the hackers, with the unwitting aide of the press, accomplished their goal of derailing international climate talks and confusing the public on the facts of climate change.

Didn’t we learn a lesson from that dump? Will we really be duped a second time? The timing alone – once again right before international negotiations – is good reason alone to immediately question the sources and their motives.

Dumping unauthorized emails in the media without attribution should not only be questioned, but quickly dismissed outright as a desperate tactic.   We know by now that the polluters who stand to gain by continuing to pollute will go to any extreme.

How much expert scientific study do the climate skeptics need?  Two reports this month again stress the urgency of the climate crisis.  Global carbon dioxide emissions are rising faster than the worst case scenarios projected only four years ago, reported the U.S. Department of Energy and 2010 was the “record year for CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement manufacture.”   And a United Nations report found that climate change is causing more frequent and severe weather events, such as heat waves, wildfires and floods.    The U.S. National Academy of Sciences last year said that climate science is a “settled fact,”  “the Earth system is warming.”

Enough already.

Amid the ongoing climate crisis of extreme weather we’ve seen this year and dire warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, yet again polluters want to change the subject.  Let’s not let another spurious string of hacked emails from unknown, cowardly sources distract us from the real task of stopping climate change.

Flickr's Dr Stephen Dann

Will consumers get the jarring truth about why peanut butter prices are suddenly chunky? So far, it looks like the media is feeding them a smoothed-over version that omits the impact of the climate crisis.

First, the bad news. As CNN Money reports, peanut butter prices have skyrocketed in a matter of days:

Kraft will raise prices for its Planters brand peanut butter by 40% starting Monday, while ConAgra has instituted increases of more than 20% for its Peter Pan brand that went into effect this month.

J.M. Smucker , which makes Jif, will introduce price hikes of around 30% starting Tuesday.

Consumers, meanwhile, are already seeing these increases reflected at grocery stores.

The increased price of a low-cost, healthy staple is another blow to food budgets already spread thin. And that last bit of the story is a kick in the Fluffernutter, isn’t it? Grocery stores paid the old, lower price for the jars on their shelves – but they’ll charge you the new, higher price.

So why the need to raise prices?

While spokespeople for several grocery chains declined to provide specific pricing figures, the peanut industry is clearly under pressure this year after one of the worst harvests in recent memory.

Prices for a ton of runner peanuts, commonly used to make peanut butter, hit nearly $1,200 this month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s up from just $450 per ton a year ago. Overall, the USDA projects that American peanut production will hit 3.6 billion pounds this year, down 13% from last year.

Analysts attribute this drop to the intense heat and drought that hit the southern U.S. this year, as well as to high prices for other crops that led farmers to focus their efforts elsewhere.

But no mention of global warming fueling those extreme weather events? There’s a major gap in the coverage between new media & old media. While bloggers like Grist’s Jess Zimmerman, ThinkProgress’ Stephen Lacey, and Huffington Post’s Tara Kelly connect the dots between extreme weather and the climate crisis, reporters for traditional media outlets won’t go there, either due to a lack of knowledge of the latest climate science or to a fear of blowback from politically-motivated science deniers. A Google News search shows zero traditional media outlets tying the higher peanut butter prices to climate change-related extreme weather – even as the science on climate change loading the dice for extreme weather is clearer than ever.

That’s part of a broader trend. Even with 2011 as the 11th-hottest year on record and America is wracked by historic heat & drought, floods, and fall storms, most journalists remain silent about the climate connection.

I spent Columbus Day in New Hampshire, where heat broke records on three straight days in nearby Portland, Maine, including the October 9th record being shattered by an incredible six degrees. But the forecast predicting the record heat on Manchester’s WMUR-TV didn’t reference global warming. Instead, the hosts strained to avoid any mention of it. “Weird!” one blurted out. “Strange!” shrugged the other.

A full 23 years after James Hansen told Congress (PDF) that man-made carbon pollution was already warming our planet, the public still isn’t being given the facts about our climate reality.

It’s nuts.

Galileo's tomb in Tuscany (Flickr's Rob Glover)

In 1600, the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for his then heretical belief that the Earth rotated about the Sun.  And it took nearly 360 years before Galileo was finally pardoned by the Pope for his scientific studies demonstrating the same. While we no longer literally burn scientists at the stake, they still face persecution for upsetting the apple cart.

Take the case of Dr. Michael Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, who authored a key paper demonstrating the earth warming at a rapid rate over the last century. Some of his e-mail correspondence was stolen, and rather than the thieves being found and prosecuted, the deniers of climate change including the self-appointed Chief climate change denier Senator James Inhofe, went after Mann. They never provided a shred of scientific data disproving Mann’s conclusion.

Last month, yet another of so many investigations that I’ve lost count, completely cleared Mann of any wrong doing. In fact, the repeated exonerations of Mann lend even greater validity to his climate change research, which has withstood far greater scrutiny than the fact that the oil and gas industry has contributed more to Senator Inhofe’s campaign chest than any other industry.

Or take the case of Dr. Charles Monnett, who published a paper on his observations of drowned polar bears. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), formerly the Minerals Management Service (MMS) which permits oil and gas wells, investigated Monnett for some completely unrelated, alleged, and obscure violation of ‘procurement’ processes.

Nonetheless, misguided investigators grilled him for hours about his polar bear observations, confiscated his field research notebooks, and even inquired about his relationship with Al Gore. Feeding off the seriously off-track investigation, the climate deniers claimed that climate change must not be real because of the investigation. BOEMRE put Monnett on administrative leave and suspended scientific research on polar bears that he’d had some involvement in. Then, last month the investigation stalled, BOEMRE hasn’t formally charged him with anything, he’s back at work, and the suspension of the polar bear research was reversed.

Climate deniers should do the research, provide the evidence, and publish in peer-reviewed scientific publications. The problem is, climate deniers don’t have the evidence. So instead, they persecute the scientists, just like Galileo was persecuted for his unpopular, but correct science.

Isn’t it time for a change? The press should stop giving ink and air time to deniers using junk science. Real climate science demonstrates the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions now; the Earth can’t wait even a few more years, let alone the nearly 360 years it took to vindicate Galileo.

Photo by Mila Zinkova via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s happening again – Big Oil is using deceptive tactics to confuse the public about climate science. And this time, the attack threatens polar bears. We need your help to see through their smokescreen and to stand up for the truth.

Let’s go step by step to understand the attack, why it’s happening, and how we can fight back together.

The Strategy

A federal agency is looking into compliance with procurement process regulations, so global warming must not be happening and we can stop protecting polar bears. No, really – that’s what climate science-denying polluter front groups are claiming.

It’s become a familiar pattern, most recently repeated in the illegally hacked climate scientist email story:

• Take a complicated story most people don’t fully understand yet and make wild, completely unsubstantiated claims about what it means.
• Target individual scientists with personal attacks, leaving other advocates of scientific truth fearful of speaking out and being the next victim.
• Urge journalists to report to the controversy, leaving the public confused.

By the time the truth comes out, it’s too late – just enough doubt has been sowed to keep the profits rolling in.

The Attack

In the latest version, polluter groups are attacking the work of Dr. Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist whose heartbreaking observations (pdf) documented polar bears’ vulnerability to the global warming-fueled retreat of summer Arctic sea ice.

His research was apparently the first documentation of polar bears drowning at sea on long swims. The study is part of a mountain of evidence that led to polar bears being listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (though the National Wildlife Federation argues they should be considered endangered).

“When it comes to science demonstrating the threat to polar bears posed by global warming, this study is only the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr. Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “The latest major study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey further documents that on long swims to receding Arctic sea ice, some bear cubs are disappearing, and their mothers burn much-needed calories. So far, 2011 is no exception – the Arctic’s summer sea ice is at record-low levels.”

Big Oil’s strategy reveals much more about its own shameful lack of integrity as it does about Dr. Monnett’s work. That’s because the federal agency itself says its probe has “nothing to do with scientific integrity,” instead focusing on contract questions:

Some new details have emerged in the mysterious case of Charles Monnett, the government wildlife biologist under investigation by the Department of Interior’s Inspector General. When Monnett, who works for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) in Alaska, was placed on adminstrative leave last month pending an investigation into unspecified “integrity issues,” there was speculation that the probe was linked to the biologist’s 2006 paper on polar bear deaths in the Arctic. But a spokeswoman for BOEMRE insisted last week that the investigation has “nothing to do with scientific integrity, his 2006 journal article, or issues related to permitting, as has been alleged.”

On Tuesday, Monnett’s legal representatives at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released a memorandum that the IG’s office issued to the biologist last Friday indicating that its investigation centers on the procurement process for a research project on “Populations and Sources of Recruitment in Polar Bears.” The University of Alberta in Canada is the lead organization on the ongoing study, but BOEMRE provided a substantial portion of the funding. The agency ordered to the university to “cease and desist” all work on the study five days before Monnett was suspended in mid-July. [NWF Update: Suspension has since been lifted.]

The IG’s memo to Monnett requests an August 9 meeting to discuss “compliance with Federal Acquisition Regulations, disclosure of personal relationships, and preparation of the scope of work.”

Here’s just one example of how Big Oil’s allies have been executing their smokescreen strategy. The New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation) ran an op-ed on Tuesday claiming BOEMRE’s probe–again, BOEMRE itself now says it has nothing to do with the polar bear study– saying that while “the specifics of the investigation are as yet unclear,” we can safely leap to the conclusion that climate science itself is in question. Sound familiar?

The article was written by Matt Patterson of a polluter front group called “Capital Research Center.” The CRC has received $265,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998 according to ExxonSecrets.org, along with millions more from organizations built with polluter profits like the Sciafe Foundations. Like many polluter front groups, the CRC had extensive ties to the tobacco industry before moving on to climate science denial.

What, you expected Exxon Mobil to attack climate and polar bear science directly? That’s not how it works. Polluters pay front groups to do it for them, so instead of coming from a big, bad oil company, the attacks appear to be coming from a dispassionate third party.

The Motive

Why is attacking the science connecting polar bears and global warming so critical for these polluter front groups? Oil companies have been pushing relentlessly to drill in the Arctic, not only in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge but in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas – which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has designated under the Endangered Species Act as critical polar bear habitat. Given the rock-solid scientific evidence, Big Oil knows it can’t win a fair debate, so it needs to resort to smokescreens and personal attacks to have any shot at drilling.

“The BP Gulf oil disaster reminds us that offshore drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, such as critical habitat for polar bears and other Arctic species, is simply not worth the risk,” says Dr. Doug Inkley.

via Norbert Rossing

Fight Back for Polar Bears

Legislation in Congress right now would gut the Endangered Species Act, and cripple the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect wildlife, clean air and water. Please take a moment to ask your members of Congress to stop this attack threatening polar bears.

Once you do, please pass this post along to your friends using the share, tweet and like buttons at the bottom of this post, or just email the link to your friends. The more people know about Big Oil’s deceptive tactics, the stronger our case will be for protecting polar bears.

Rupert Murdoch (courtesy World Economic Forum)

Will the media finally start asking if Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. was connected to the illegal hacking of climate scientist emails?

I’m more optimistic today after word the investigation into voicemail hackings is expanding to include email attacks:

Scotland Yard will expand its investigation of The News of the World and its parent company, police officials said Saturday, adding a new inquiry into possible instances of computer intrusion to the current accusations of phone hacking and payments to police officers.

The new investigation was opened after an examination of “a number of allegations regarding breach of privacy” received since the Metropolitan Police, also known as Scotland Yard, reopened inquiries in January into possible crimes by newspaper employees, a statement said.

It’s been frustrating that for all the rightful attention paid to The News of the World phone hacking scandal, virtually no journalist has been willing to ask if News Corp.’s lawbreaking extended into email hacking.

Given how quickly the stolen emails were handed to climate science deniers who were then immediately featured on Fox News, it’s a fair question to ask.

When the hacked emails were subject to independent investigation, climate scientists were vindicated. But given the clear as well as alleged connections between Scotland Yard and News Corp., there’s been no similar independent investigation of who stole the emails in the first place. And as much as journalists were eager to report to the controversy on the emails, they’ve shown little interest in doing the hard work of tracking down the thieves.

So far, there’s been no public evidence that News Corp. was involved. But how long do we have to wait before someone directs some sunlight into that corner of Rupert Murdoch’s infected empire?

Former Vice President Al Gore (via Flickr's AmericanProgressAction)

Al Gore’s Rolling Stone essay spent four times as much space comparing the news media to pro wrestling referees as it did urging President Obama to act on the climate crisis. So what did media coverage of Gore’s piece exclusively focus on?

The media proved Al exactly right, presenting only his criticism of the president framed as a Gore vs. Obama edition of WWE Smackdown. The coverage might as well have been narrated by “Mean” Gene Okerlund.

In breaking the news of Gore’s essay, Dina Cappiello of the Associated Press completely ignored Gore’s media criticisms, focusing only on Gore’s call for President Obama to do more to educate Americans about the threats of the climate crisis and the need for clean energy action.

Politico’s Darren Sameulsohn & Reid Epstein disregarded Gore’s media criticisms as well.

The New York Times’ John Broder makes only a passing mention of Gore’s media criticisms later in his article (which is bizarrely accompanied by a shadowy picture of a sweaty Mr. Gore).

James Fallows, author of the must-read Breaking the News, writes:

Yes, the news value here is Gore-v-Obama; yes, that’s part of the story. But the theme I tried to lay out in that essay is that the media’s all-consuming interest in the “how” and “who’s ahead” of politics, and “oh God this is boring” disdain for the “what” and “why” of public issues, has all sorts of ugly consequences. It makes the public think that politics is not for them unless they love the insider game; it makes the “what” and “why” of public issues indeed boring and unapproachable; and as a consequence of the latter, it makes the public stupider than it needs to be about the what and why.

The reaction to Gore’s essay illustrates the pattern: from his point of view, it’s one more (earnest) attempt to say “Hey, listen up about this problem!” As conveyed by the press, it’s one more skirmish on the “liberals don’t like Obama” front, and one more illustration of the eyes-glazing-over trivia and details about melting icebergs and scientific disputes.

Remember Jon Stewart’s argument, that the real bias of the mainstream media is not “liberal” but in favor of conflict and sensationalism.

Look, it’s fair to criticize President Obama for not doing more. He hasn’t done nearly enough to reach his own goal of cutting carbon pollution 17 percent by 2020. There is in fact no known plan or any process to evaluate our energy choices and where we are heading.

But how can President Obama lead when the American public is so misinformed about the threats America is facing and the opportunities for action? As I wrote in my book, Last Chance: Preserving Life on Earth, one of my great frustrations is that the conservationists aren’t asking the media for any special treatment here – we’re just asking journalists to report what climate scientists are telling us about the potential impacts we face and the ways to solve them.

How much is global warming fueled by man-made carbon pollution to blame for 2011′s extreme weather events? Should we be building a massive new Keystone XL pipeline through America’s heartland to carry tar sands, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet? Television, radio and print journalists cover these questions rarely, if at all.

Instead, the news media has helped turn our public square into a pro wrestling ring, with the heroes and villains refereed as equals by journalists.

Cats shouldn't watch too much TV, either (via Flickr's kim & amy)

Earlier this week, I talked about how few reporters are connecting Western wildfires to global warming despite overwhelming scientific evidence. But do other fields of research treat connections so gingerly?

Global warming is loading the dice for extreme weather events. Here’s how Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, puts it:

Given that global warming is “unequivocal”, and is “very likely” due to human activities to quote the 2007 IPCC report, the null hypothesis should now be reversed, thereby placing the burden of proof on showing that there is no human influence.

So we frequently hear that “while this event is consistent with what we expect from climate change, no single event can be attributed to human induced global warming”. Such murky statements should be abolished. On the contrary, the odds have changed to make certain kinds of events more likely.

But Dr. Trenberth has been quoted on the connection between climate change and wildfires just once in the last week, by the New York Times‘ John Broder. Instead, reporters continue craving those murky statements. “Can we attribute it to one thing? I don’t think so,” quoted a Greenwire report. “It would be irresponsible to say that,” quoted USA Today‘s story.

So how reporters treat similar connections in other areas? Does murkiness rule? A new study tying extended television watching with a range of serious heath problems gives us a chance to find out.

Would CNN’s report start with a warning that it would be irresponsible to connect any one death to television watching? Completely the opposite:

The connection between TV and disease isn’t a mystery. TV watching eats up leisure time that could be spent walking, exercising, or even just moving around, and it has also been linked to unhealthy diets, including consuming too much sugar, soda, processed food, and snacks — foods, perhaps not coincidentally, that are often found in television commercials.

What’s more, some studies suggest that prolonged sitting, over and above its impact on eating habits and exercise, may cause metabolism changes that contribute to unhealthy cholesterol levels and obesity.

“This is really the couch-potato syndrome,” Hu says. “These are extremely sedentary people who spend several hours on a couch watching TV. They’re very passive and their energy expenditure is very low, even compared to other sedentary behaviors like sitting and reading, or sitting while driving.”

Those threats are one of the big reasons the National Wildlife Federation launched the Be Out There movement to reconnect kids with nature.

Now here’s the key for the climate conversation. Of course you won’t be reading any obituaries saying, “John Doe died at the age of 78 after a long battle with TV watching.” But just because it’s not literally the cause of death doesn’t mean there isn’t a massive connection:

Extrapolating their findings to the entire U.S. population, the researchers estimate that for every two hours Americans spend watching TV each day, there are 176 new cases of diabetes, 38 additional deaths from heart disease, and 104 additional deaths due to any cause per 100,000 people per year.

Individual physicians may not see a dramatic rise in illness and death as a result of excessive TV watching, but the cumulative effect could have a major impact on public health in the long term, Kopecky says.

Of course global warming didn’t reach a hand down from the sky to light the wildfire. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a direct, provable connection.

And it certainly doesn’t mean Congress should keep sitting on the couch doing nothing about the climate crisis. No, wait – House Republican leaders are proactively trying to make things worse by attacking the Clean Air Act while refusing to roll back Big Oil subsidies. That’s despite a new Yale/George Mason University poll showing 85% of Republicans want clean energy and half want their members of Congress to make climate action a priority.

Considering what the latest climate science tells us about how fast our planet is warming, Washington’s climate inaction the equivalent of responding to a diabetes diagnosis by buying a new flat-screen TV and stocking up on Mountain Dew.

Learn more about the connection between global warming and changes to our weather patterns at NWF.org/ExtremeWeather.

Fire truck at Arizona's Wallow Fire, June 2011 (US Forest Service, Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests)

One of the least-controversial impacts of the climate crisis is more frequent, severe and damaging wildfires in America’s West. Why won’t reporters say so?

As my National Wildlife Federation colleague Aislinn Maestas detailed last week, it’s been a scary spring for wildfires in Arizona, Texas, and her home state of New Mexico. Global warming caused by man-made carbon pollution is fueling perfect conditions, with longer fire seasons, drier conditions and more lightning strikes.

But a search of Google News over the last week shows very few reporters are connecting the dots for their readers. I did a search for stories that mentioned both wildfires and climate or global warming. I found very few stories in mainstream news outlets that mentioned climate and wildfires together at all, and the ones that did were just as likely to wrongly downplay the connection as correctly draw the scientifically-documented tie. (Note that Google News is a crude tool, not covering every print outlet and including very little of what’s said on TV and radio. If you know a story I missed, please add it in comments.)

First, the reporters that made the right scientific connection between wildfires and global warming:

• ABC News directly connects global warming and extreme weather
• Public Radio International doesn’t just connect carbon pollution and changes in weather patterns – it asks if enough is being done to prepare communities for future disasters
• NPR’s Science Friday had as a guest Joel Achenbach, who recently predicted that the 2100s will be the Century of Disasters
• Reuters asks if the insurance industry can survive the new era

That’s it. Four stories that accurately connected wildfires and global warming based on the best science available. That’s all I could find.

Now for the stories that mentioned climate and wildfires but failed to correctly connect the dots:

• PBS downplays the link by quoting AccuWeather, which until recently employed climate science denier Joe  Bastardi
• USA Today baldly states its disinterest in delving into any link, saying, ”Never mind the debate over global warming, its possible causes and effects.”
• A New York Times/Greenwire article ignores the evidence supporting a link, instead going into extensive detail on what we don’t know (Joe Romm analyzes this article in more depth at Climate Progress)
• The Arizona Republic makes only a passing reference to the climate link while making the wildfires sound strictly like a forest management issue

CNN.com didn’t connect climate and wildfires in America that I could see. However, it does have story noting that thanks to global warming Siberia, once frozen, is now on fire.

What’s so strange about reporters’ reticence is that the connection between global warming and wildfires isn’t controversial in the climate science community. While scientists are always eager to learn more and shine light in every possible corner, the basics are straightforward and established: More heat + more droughts = more wildfires. Don’t believe me? Ask NASA. Or the Environmental Protection Agency.

How established? Dr. Amanda Staudt, the National Wildlife Federation’s climate scientist, made this video on the climate-wildfire connection a full three years ago:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So why doesn’t the line get drawn? Polluter-funded front groups and their allies in the media stand ready to attack anyone who reports scientific fact on climate change. For both reporters and the government officials they’re quoting, it takes courage to stand up to that.

Most ironic about the New York Times/Greenwire article: Just last week, the Times’ Leslie Kaufman wrote this about a recent climate poll:

Scientists at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration [NOAA] drew a relatively high approval rating, with 76 percent of respondents saying they strongly or somewhat trusted them.

Of course, the agency states unequivocally that the earth is warming and that human activity is a leading cause. So if 76 percent of the American public trusts NOAA scientists strongly or somewhat, why don’t more people accept their conclusions?

NOAA wrote about Climate Enhanced Wildfires … in 1998. But here we are 13 years later and the New York Times is still reporting to the controversy on the climate-wildfires link. Is it any wonder some Americans are still uncertain?

To learn more about the connection between global warming and extreme weather, visit NWF.org/ExtremeWeather.

Global Temperature Record (Courtesy NASA.gov)

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the “veracity of climate change data” and ordering the network’s journalists to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.”

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was “on track to be the warmest [decade] on record.” [...]

Sammon’s orders for Fox journalists to cast doubt on climate science came amid the network’s relentless promotion of the fabricated “Climategate” scandal, which revolved around misrepresentations of emails sent to and from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

As National Wildlife Federation President & CEO Larry Schweiger wrote in his book Last Chance, “Walter Cronkite’s journalistic values are gone, and Glenn Beck’s are in.”

What does independent, unbiased climate science tell us? The more studies scientists do, the more certain they are that current manmade global warming is unprecedented in magnitude, speed & cause.

Learn more about global warming’s impact on people, wildlife & America’s natural resources at NWF.org/Climate.