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Fox News covers heat wave without talking about climate

Jul 28, 2022

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While politics have long divided views on climate change, a majority of Americans agree that extreme weather, flooding, wildfires and heatwaves, are occurring more frequently. The recent heatwave has garnered plenty of news attention, but depending on what your sources are, root causes of these events can vary widely — and in some cases — be ignored completely. Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman is saddened to see right-wing media downplay any connection between the weather and climate change:

The United States and Europe have been experiencing historic heat waves, record highs, extended heat waves, extended periods in the triple-digit, one ten in some places. And it has been really an exercise in–what is it– frustration, sadness, desperation…to see right-wing media like Fox News cover the heat waves cover every aspect of it. This is the sun that gets hot and pavements melting and its records and air conditioning and electric grids without talking about climate change.

Now I know that some of you might say, “But David, weather and climate are two different things.” And of course, you would be completely correct — weather and climate are two different things. But multiple weather events start to give us a pattern. That pattern is what we call climate. If it’s really hot one day in Texas in the summer, we can’t really say anything about the change to climate as a result of that. If for decades, you see the same part of Texas set more and more record highs for a sustained period of time, and also sometimes in the winter, more and more record lows because remember, it’s not global warming, it’s climate change, which includes unseasonable warm unseasonable cold, stronger precipitation, events with precipitation, stronger storms, all of these different things…over time, all of these weather events start to determine what is the pattern. And when you have multiple decades of all of these extremes and superlatives being reached, you say, well, there might be a pattern here that we call climate, which is changing.

If a place gets hotter overall, not just on one day, well, then that might be something to look at. And Fox News has gone out of its way all week to cover all month, sorry, to cover this heatwave without actually talking about climate.

The United States and Europe have been experiencing historic heat waves record highs, extended heat waves, extended periods in the triple digit, one pen in some places. And it has been really an exercise in what is it frustration, sadness, desperation, to see right wing media like Fox News cover the heat waves cover every aspect of it.

This is the sun that gets hot and pavements melting and its records and air conditioning and electric grids without talking about climate change without talking about climate change. Now I know that some of you might say But David, weather and climate are two different things. And of course, you would be completely correct weather and climate are two different things. But multiple weather events start to give us a pattern. That pattern is what we call climate. If it’s really hot one day in Texas in the summer, we can’t really say anything about the change to climate as a result of that. If for decades, you see the same part of Texas set more and more record highs for a sustained period of time. And also sometimes in the winter, more and more record lows because remember, it’s not global warming, it’s climate change, which includes unseasonable warm unseasonable cold, stronger precipitation, events with precipitation, stronger storms, all of these different things. Over time, all of these weather events start to determine what is the pattern. And when you have multiple decades of all of these extremes and superlatives being reached, you say, well, there might be a pattern here that we call climate, which is changing. If a place gets hotter overall, not just on one day, well, then that might be something to look at. And Fox News has gone out of its way all week to cover all month sorry to cover this heatwave without actually talking about climate. Now, there’s a second layer to this that’s important to talk about. I believe that there are two camps of sort of climate science deniers in the American right? You have those that genuinely don’t believe it. Like they just they think the earth is flat. And they think they think John F Kennedy is still alive. And they think Paul McCartney was actually killed and replaced with a similar looking left handed bass guitarist and The Beatles, right, they believe, and they just they don’t believe that we have climate change. Okay, you then have another group in the in the American right wing, that does believe it. But they don’t want to accept it publicly. Because they wrongly believe that if you just accept that there’s climate change that you have to do everything that the most extreme people on the left want to do. Okay, that’s just not the case. And one of the problems when those right wingers don’t acknowledge the problem is, I think we would be far better off if we could get everybody to the table and say, Okay, we’re not going to do the stupid thing anymore of denying that this is taking place, we all acknowledge it’s taking place and that humans have a role to play in that change to the climate. But we want to talk about what should be done. There are people on the right who think if you acknowledge climate change is real. There’s no more SUVs, there’s no more road trips, there’s no more airplanes. There’s no more plastic products and things made from fossil fuels. And obviously, that is not the case. But changes need to be made, the more people that are willing to make a change, the smaller those changes have to be, the sooner we can make those changes, the subtler the changes can be because we are further from the cliff, although we’re getting we’re getting pretty close. So my desire would be for the right wingers who know that the science is the science, but are worried Oh, um, they’re going to take my SUV and my cheese burger. If I acknowledge it, we need you actually, we need you to participate in the conversation so that we can figure out the best way to deal with this problem with as little disruption as possible to the things that are important to us. Now,

does that mean that we maybe should be getting away from gas guzzlers and towards electric vehicles? Yeah, but electric vehicles are cool, it’s fine. It’s not really like a big deal. And it’s gonna take decades to phase out gas powered vehicles, even if it was a decision that was made. No one’s taking your stupid truck today. Okay, so the coverage has been absurd. They don’t talk about climate change. They talk about everything about the heatwave, other than climate change, and sometimes they’ll laugh they go, Oh, liberals, liberals are shocked that it’s hot in the summer. Now. That’s, that’s whether we’re talking about climate here. But I encourage you come over to the side that accepts science but acknowledges we can accept the science and then figure out what are the solutions? There’s not one solution, just because you say there’s climate change. It doesn’t mean whatever. Some left wing eco eco terrorist wants to have happen. happens. In fact it doesn’t. But we need more people to buy in. And the elected officials will follow our lead if they see. Everybody says we’ve got to do something. Let’s now figure out what we’re in a much better position than when nearly half the country is hesitant to even accept that this is going on. That’s my sense. Let me know if you disagree.

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