One of the top Western U.S. broadcast meteorologists hit out recently at “clickbait” stories that demonised every major weather event. Don Daly, often referred to as ‘Wyoming’s weatherman’ said that politicians, media and environmental group’s constant mantra that every national weather event is somehow the result of human activity, “is intellectually dishonest”. Most climate news stories were “heavy in anecdotes and light in any data”, said Day, who syndicates to over 70 stations.
According to the report in the online publication Cowboy State Daily, climate clickbait stories follow a formula that includes claims of impending doom, reference to non-atmospheric scientists, cherry-picked or misleading data, and a suggestion that we all change our ways and ‘do what we say’. Day says that reporters will often interview people who offer personal anecdotes, and then try to frame their stories as another sign of man-made climate change. Ignored by most media are stories that do not fit the narrative such as the last tornado season, that was one of the least active.
The role of the media in driving a political narrative around climate is also of concern to the science writer and former economics professor Roger Pielke Jr., who noted last month that climate journalism has evolved from reporting news to narrative. “I’m calling out climate journalism because I am seeing its pathological effects on public views, especially among young people, on the research community and in policy discussions, including political advocacy. Climate is too important to be just another cul-de-sac of identity politics,” he said.
According to Pielke, it has become fundamental to the climate agenda to associate every extreme event, happening every day, with climate change. “There are studies to cherry-pick, quotable experts and a new cottage industry of rapid event attribution studies. Extreme weather is no longer about the weather,” he observed. This need to feed the climate beast leads to a knock-on effect of creating incentives for researchers to produce studies with links to climate – “no matter how tenuous or trivial”.
As regular readers will recall, we have frequently noted that the switch to demonising bad weather has occurred because global warming ran out of steam about 25 years ago. According to end April data, the UAH satellite record shows a current pause of nearly nine years in length. State weather services have needed little encouragement to run with the single weather narrative to help promote the collectivist Net Zero project.
