Global warming skeptics have been getting the cold shoulder lately, and it’s not because of the frigid winter weather. As the media have covered this winter’s weird weather patterns, they have been quick to highlight experts who finger global warming as the culprit, but slow to recognize opposition to a liberal agenda on climate change.
▪ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) plans to institute a new global warming committee met resistance within her own caucus, particularly from Michigan Rep. John Dingell (D), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Dingell’s committee already has jurisdiction over legislation that would regulate the energy industry, a major target of climate change regulation. Yet a Nexis search found no weekend coverage on the dispute on ABC, CBS, or NBC over the weekend.
▪ Taxpayer-funded NPR did cover news of Pelosi’s new committee, but skewed the story heavily in favor of the position held by liberal leadership of the Democratic majority. On its January 19 “Morning Edition” program, “reporter Elizabeth Shogren assembled an entire story on new Democratic proposals to halt global warming, but there were no Republicans, no energy industry representatives, and no warming skeptics,” noted NewsBusters.org blogger Tim Graham. In fact, listeners “only heard new socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders saying ‘one has got to be a moron’ not to be concerned” about global warming, added Graham, media analysis director for the Media Research Center, the parent organization of the Business & Media Institute.
▪ A search of the broadcast networks January 19-22 showed no mentions of an ongoing online debate between meteorologists James Spann and Heidi Cullen. Cullen argued last December on her WeatherChannel.com blog that weather casters who have doubts about human influence on global warming should be punished by being decertified by the American Meteorological Society. Spann, a veteran meteorologist with ABC’s central Alabama affiliate, answered Cullen’s charges recently on his blog at JamesSpann.com. “NBC Nightly News,” however, found time on Saturday for its continuing “Meltdown” series on melting ice in Antarctica.
