Global warming, now brought to you by your local TV weathercaster
Local weathercasters have become one of the primary conduits for news on global warming. One nonprofit helped push the change.
by James Rainey / Jun.20.2018 / 4:34 AM ET
Image: NOAA
A powerful winter storm moves toward New England on Jan. 4, 2018.NOAA
Steve LaPointe has been a television weatherman for nearly three decades, and for most of his career, he didn’t focus much on global warming. He was skeptical about the science behind it, particularly the notion that human behavior was heating the planet.
But the issue wouldn’t go away. So LaPointe began to do “a lot of homework,” he said, reading research papers and consulting fellow meteorologists, who connected him with a nonprofit, Climate Central, that spreads information on climate change.
LaPointe increasingly came to realize he was wrong — that the evidence that greenhouse gases are warming the Earth is “irrefutable.” Now, LaPointe routinely reports on the effects of climate change — from the escalated growth of poison ivy to a jump in the number of high-pollen days — alongside his usual seven-day nightly forecasts on CBS affiliate WRGB in Albany, New York.
Meteorologists push for climate change awareness
“It’s just scientific fact. And the more it gets talked about, the more it’s normalized,” LaPointe said. “It gets into people’s heads and it’s not this political albatross that it could be.”
LaPointe’s journey has been repeated by many of his peers across America. The friendly neighborhood meteorologist — found in a 2010 poll to be more skeptical than the general public about global warming — has rapidly evolved to not only accept climate change but to share the news with audiences in hundreds of U.S. television markets.
Key to the shift has been Climate Central, the nonprofit that helped school LaPointe. The Princeton, New Jersey-based organization sponsors classes and webinars for meteorologists and also shares real-time data and graphics with TV stations. The group has reached more than 500 local TV weathercasters — about a quarter of those working in the U.S. — since it started its “Climate Matters” education program in 2012, and it is expanding this week to a wider group of journalists.
So far, the efforts have paid off. The number of stories on global warming by television weather people has increased 15-fold over five years, according to data from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. If the trend continues this year, there will be more than a thousand stories that touch on climate delivered during local TV weathercasts, up from just 55 such climate stories in 2012.
The inroads with meteorologists are particularly significant because local TV news remains the top source of news for most Americans. And George Mason surveys have shown that when it comes to climate issues, the public trusts their familiar local TV personalities more than anyone, other than scientists and family members.
Most Americans don’t know a scientist, and their loved ones probably don’t know much about long-term climate dynamics, said Ed Maibach, the climate change center’s director. “So we immediately saw the potential with weather people,” he said, “and helping them to do the job of putting extreme weather in context.”
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It was just eight years ago that the George Mason climate group surveyed 571 weathercasters and found that only about half believed in global warming, while one-quarter said it was “a scam.” The dim view of climate science, coming from some of the people most likely to talk to the public about it, made the front page of The New York Times.
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Related Links:
Cheating For Dollars At Climate Central: ‘The 1970 cherry picking scam has become a centerpiece of the global warming fraud. The 1970s was one of the coldest decades in US history’ – By Tony Heller – ‘By starting in 1970, Climate Central is intentionally defrauding their readers. Had they started in 1950, there would be almost no warming shown Also important to remember that all recent temperatures are jacked up by 0.5F Bottom line is there has been little or no long term warming in the US’
Warmist scientists including UN IPCC Lead Author Kevin Trenberth to Obama: ‘We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress. One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation.’
Via Politico: ‘Twenty climate scientists called for RICO investigation in a letter to Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The scientists argue that the systemic efforts to prevent the public from understanding climate change resembles the investigation undertaken against tobacco. They draw inspiration from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse who said on the Senate floor that there might be a similar conspiracy here, and a civil trial could provide the tools of discovery needed to find out.’
Climate Activists Are Taking Over Your Local Weather Forecast – Propaganda now being fed into weather forecasting – “Local TV news wouldn’t exist any more if it weren’t for the weathercasts,” says Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. Remember them? Jagadish Shukla et al?
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Just who is behind the effort to turn your weather forecast into nightly climate propaganda?
Edward Maibach, The Center for Climate Change Communication & That Letter
SEPTEMBER 24, 2015By Paul Homewood
http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf
We have already seen that the lead signatory of the letter calling on Obama to launch a RICO investigation into climate sceptics, Jagadish Shukla, has been paying himself $500,000 a year out of government climate grants.
Let’s look more closely at another signatory, a certain Edward Maibach, like Shukla, a Professor at George Mason University, where he is also Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication.
Maibach, you may be surprised to learn, is no climate scientist, but has a BA in social psychology from University of California, and a PhD in communication research from Stanford University.
According to the Centre’s blurb:
Ed joined the George Mason University faculty in 2007 to create the Center for Climate Change Communication. Trained in public health and communication, he has extensive experience as an academic researcher and as a communication and social marketing practitioner in government, business, and the non-profit sector. His research focuses on the broad question of how public engagement in climate change can be expanded and enhanced.
Ed is currently a Principal Investigator on several climate change education grants funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and Town Creek Foundation. He also currently serves on the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee and advises a wide range of organizations on how to improve their climate change communication, education and outreach.
In 2010, Ed was awarded George Mason University’s highest honor: distinguished University Professor.
Several climate change education grants! A nice little earner I’m sure.
But if you wondered why taxpayer’s money is being spent on propaganda like this, I am afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Maibach heads up this team of faculty researchers, all bar one at Professor or Assistant Professor level. None appear to have climate science qualifications, but instead are experienced in communications and media work.
Not all are full-time workers in the Center, but all work at George Mason.
On top of this lot, there thirteen affiliate researchers from other universities, not to mention a bunch of doctoral students.
The Center describes its role:
Climate change is the result of human actions and choices. Limiting climate change – and protecting people and ecosystems to the degree possible from unavoidable changes in the climate – will require significant public engagement in the issue so that difficult decisions can be made by members of the public and policy makers. Our center was created to conduct unbiased social science research that will facilitate such public engagement.
This is one hell of a high powered effort to push out global warming propaganda, and heaven knows what it all costs. Amongst its providers of major funding are listed NASA, the National Science Foundation and private foundations such as Grantham Foundation and Rockefeller Family Fund.
It could hardly be a more incestuous relationship. NASA pumps funding into the Center in order to persuade the public of the terrors of global warming, which in turn will help to maintain their own funding, which can then be used to further ramp up the scare.
It is no wonder Mr Maibach is so keen to sign the letter, and silence sceptics.
Warmist Heidi Cullen & Climate Central’s ‘Heavy Funding’ From Feds – ‘There is evidently heavy funding as well from Federal organizations. So taxpayers are having to pay Climate Central to produce what is often grossly inaccurate and misleading propaganda, which in turn supports the Federal Government’s agenda.’