CNN, NBC, and ABC all highlighted Vice President Albert Gore's global warming press briefing yesterday, but around the U.S. (via the Internet) major newspapers took a pass, perhaps a reflection of moderate to cool temperatures in most of the country, including Washington, D.C. where temperatures have been running slightly below average since the end of May.
The Washington Post was the only paper to give the briefing significant play, with an extensive story on page 3. Associated Press covered it, but not UPI/Reuters or WSJ/Dow Jones. The AP story credited unnamed "climate experts" as saying this was a "1 in a 1000-year event," which sounds remarkably like Al Gore's statement two weeks ago in Florida that there was only a "1 in a thousand chance" that the Florida drought was not related to global warming.
Nothing turned up on the Internet at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, or Miami Herald, which instead ran a story on an influx of cold 60-degree sea water along the Florida coast. The Boston Globe ran the AP story on page 14, but cut it short, ending with (and thereby emphasizing) a paragraph about how satellite-based temperature readings show a slight downward trend.
Interestingly, while the TV coverage made much of the heat wave in Dallas, a separate AP story today notes that temperatures there (101-103 degrees F this week) were only the warmest "since 1980."
Hot summers are not unusual, particularly in the South and Southwest. I called the State Office of Climatology at Arizona State University (602-965-6265) and asked for their record years for extended hot weather, measured at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. Here's what I was told:
- Most consecutive days of 99 degrees or higher: 98 days in 1973, 68 days in 1966. (Note that these years are during the 1940-1975 period when average surface temperatures globally appeared to be going down.)
- Most consecutive days of 100 degrees or higher: 76 days in 1993.
- Most days (non-consecutive) of 100 degrees or higher: 143 days in 1989
What these "records" also indicate is that since 1973 or 1993 or 1989 there have been FEWER hot days, but that's not news.
Phoenix is low desert, so summer weather there makes Dallas temps look like a cold front. Today the forecast is for a low of 88 degrees and a high of 118 degrees, and it won't vary much for the next five days. This is typical Phoenix weather--and Phoenix is a growing city.
I called the newsroom at KTVK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Phoenix (602-207-3333), to ask how many heat-related fatalities they'd had this summer. The answer: None. The reason, I was told, is that everyone has air conditioning or evaporative coolers.
What follows is the Media Research Center's analysis of last night's news broadcasts. MRC didn't pick up anything on CNN last night, but CNN headline news today is prefacing coverage of the Dallas heat wave with this: "Federal officials say this is the warmest 6 months ever recorded on Earth"--a statement that is embarrassingly idiotic.
MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER ANALYSIS OF 7/14 NEWSCASTS (Gore coverage only):
...The heat wave led FNC's Fox Report, but FNC refrained from...sermonizing about how the heat is the result of man-made pollution leading to global warming. But not ABC and NBC, which both ran stories portraying Al Gore's claim as a uniform scientific consensus...
ABC and NBC Tuesday night highlighted...Al Gore's warnings about global warming, as if he is an expert worthy of heeding. ABC at least acknowledged disagreement about whether global warming explains the current heat wave and drought in the South, but didn't bother with devoting even one second to any view contrary to the politically-charged line espoused by VP Al Gore.
World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings announced: "Some of the government's top weather analysts have concluded that this past June was the hottest in recorded history and the first five months of the year were also the hottest. Vice President Gore said today he thinks global warming is a likely culprit, but is it the only explanation? Here's ABC's Ned Potter."
Potter failed to match Jennings' promise of a look at other possible explanations. Potter began by explaining how normally clouds reflect sunlight back to space, but without clouds things dry out so there's less moisture to make clouds so less heat is reflected away from the Earth. Potter then contended:
"Many scientists, and some politicians as well, say something larger is happening. They say we are seeing early signs of global warming -- the trapping of heat in the atmosphere caused, in part, by pollution from cars and industry. Even last night's flooding in Tennessee fits the pattern, though it would seem the opposite of Texas drought. At least two people died in eight inches of rain. Scientists say extra heat in the atmosphere makes thunderstorms stronger. And unless patterns change scientists say we will see more extremes, more flood, more drought, more heat."
Tom Karl of the National Climatic Center predicted higher temperatures more often before Potter concluded his diatribe:
"Naturally the debate over these predictions is as hot as the actual temperatures, but many Americans say something about the weather is amiss and the question is: how seriously?"
"Many Americans." Now there's a bit of solid scientific evidence. This is only a news show so why bother with letting viewers know anything about the debate.
Robert Hager handled the In Depth segment on the July 14 NBC Nightly News, opening: "Worldwide it's been the hottest first half of a year ever recorded, hottest in the 120 years they've kept track."
After a soundbite from Tom Karl, Hager continued to advocate the liberal argument:
"The government says it's all an indication that global warming is real and not only brings heat but also brings more heavy rain because of the evaporation of water into the atmosphere which comes back down in storms. The government says today that nine Midwestern states have been the wettest in 70 years, seven Northeastern states wettest in 26 years. Vice President Gore with a warning."
Al Gore: "The future holds significantly higher temperatures still unless we do something about it."
Hager: "Gore wants cutbacks in pollution suspected of promoting global heating. Policy aside, scientists who have ways of studying temperatures even before records were kept, had a startling observation today. From tree rings they can estimate conditions centuries ago."
Tom Karl: "The 1990s are warmer than any decade that we've seen since 1400."
Hager concluded: "Warmest than since just after the Middle Ages, with hotter to come."
Really? The George Marshall Institute (www.marshall.org) recently released an analysis putting the current temperatures in better perspective. Some excerpts:
"A spate of recent newspaper articles about the dangers of global warming followed a report indicating that 1997 was the warmest year since 1400. But why stop at 1400? Because that is just about the farthest back in the recorded past for which this statement is true. Go back just a few hundred years more to the period 1000-1200 AD and you find that the climate was considerably warmer than now. This era is known as the Medieval Warm Period.
"A 1996 Science article showed that the temperature in around 1000 AD was about 1 degree C warmer than it is today. And a 1994 report in the journal Climate Change shows that this warm period was global in extent....
"No one knows what caused that warm period in the middle ages. But one thing we do know is that carbon dioxide from cars and fuel burning was not altering global climate in 1000-1200 AD...."
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