And not in the sense of “Paris Hilton hot”, or “Michael Jordan hot.” No, we’re talking real temperatures here folks, and worldwide we are well on our way to the hottest year ever. The statistics for September only confirm the trend:
Worldwide, it was the warmest September on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday [October 17th].
Averaging 1.13 degrees Fahrenheit (0.63 degree Celsius) above normal for the month, it was the warmest September since the beginning of reliable records in 1880, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
Old news you say? Well, not to the Fox News Network. They’ve spent years allowing “junk scientists” or industry hacks to appear on their shows to downplay the significance (and the reality) of global warming. But on Sunday even they will acknowledge the truth of global warming’s disastrous consequences for our planet, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Robert F.Kennedy Jr.
A Fox News Special “The Heat is On: The Case of Global Warming” airing this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. EST, documents the devastating impacts that global warming is already having on our planet. In one segment of the show, I accompany a Fox News crew to Glacier National Park in Montana where only 27 of the 150 glaciers that graced the park in 1850 remain–and these will be gone within our generation.
. . . I spent a summer in a tent in Africa with Roger Ailes in 1973 making a wildlife film. He is charming, affable, very smart, and very, very funny. Although we both believe that each other’s politics are misguided, we have remained friends for three decades. Last year, I asked Roger, as a personal favor, to attend Al Gore’s New York City update on global warming science. Although he left that presentation still agnostic, he was convinced that the debate deserved a public airing. I argued that since there is no such thing as Republican or Democratic children, global warming should not be a partisan but only a scientific issue. The Fox News team did a superb job exploring the science. This film should be seen be everyone.
Not sure I buy into the idea of Roger Ailes as charming and affable, though. This is the guy, after all, who runs Fox News, sexual harrassment center of the media universe. The same guy who once compared critics of his programming to robots, morons and bigots. But if we can get a show like this before Fox’s traditional audience of NASCAR fans, “people of faith” and Bush cultists, and actually inject a dose of reality based information into their well scrubbed Republican brains, I suppose a little butt kissing of the man who made it so isn’t entirely out of order.
Too bad it’s coming too late to stop this from happening:
The new analysis comes as government and independent scientists are reporting other dramatic signs of global warming, such as the record shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice cover and unprecedented high ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
Late last month, a team of University of Colorado and NASA scientists announced that the Arctic sea ice cap shrank this summer to 200 million square miles, 500,000 square miles less than its average area between 1979 and 2000. And a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined that sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were higher in August than at any time since 1890, which may have contributed to the intense hurricanes that struck the region this year.
“At this point, people shouldn’t be surprised this is happening,” said Goddard atmospheric scientist David Rind, noting that 2002, 2003 and 2004 were among the warmest years on record.
No, people shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I’ll bet a few Fox News fans just might be if you can get them to turn the tube away from ESPN’s Sunday Night Football or Desperate Housewives long enough to learn something important. In any event, be sure and email your wingnut friends and relatives and tell them to watch this program on Sunday. Maybe they’ll believe global warming isn’t just a treehugger conspiracy when it’s reported by a “fair and balanced” news source.
The death of a planet.
Great diary and alert, ((((Steven D))))
YES! It is Global HEATING! Now that we’re getting some traction with global ‘warming’, we need to ‘catapult the propaganda’ and change the frame to GLOBAL HEATING. Whenever you hear someone say global warming, reply to them using the term global HEATING. I am also changing the term ‘greenhouse’ gases to ‘HOThouse’ gases.
Those who hate ‘framing’ or think this is a trivial change, I ask your indulgence just this once. We must ratchet up the awareness to a level where people recognize the DANGER that we are in as a species.
HOT is hotter than warm, and a greenhouse is a place where flowers grow. What we are up against with global HEATING is not just a pleasant acceleration of the growth of pretty flowers. The unleashing of billions of tons of HOT-house gases into the atmosphere by humans will kill billions of humans in the not-too-distant future if we fail to control it.
to post occasionally to the front page here by Booman and Susan. I’m sure they’ll live to regret their decision but until they do I’ll be having a swell time ransacking the place and making a general nuisance of myself.
Congratulations!
Most EXCELLENT news, Steven!!
Congratulations and well-deserved for this catch!
I cannot tell you how happy and hopeful this story makes me – maybe we can finally begin to wake up enough Republicans to make the needed changes in time.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
I suspect what we’re seeing is another crack in the developing split between the business branch of the Republicans and the zealots & neocons.
This is great story, Steven!
Say, I just saw this at BBC, and it makes me sad…. we’re making bird stupid through climate change.
The Heat Is On is the title of a remarkably prescient book by Ross Gelbspan http://www.heatisonline.org/main.cfm, first published in 1997. I do hope that Fox has not added to its journaistic sins by ripping off a well-known title.
In checking Google for the link to Gelbspan, I was amused to see a number of anti-Gelbspan links from people who say everything is hunky-dory.
at 62 F in Fargo,ND also record highs in Duluth and Minneapolis, MN, according to local Fargo radio, KFGO.
The world is heating, Our ozone layer depleting. Oil supplies are shrinking; while The White House is leaking. Torture claims, our prez is denying, while life is evolving or dying trying. And some folks still believe in Iraq we are progressing; now that is damned mystifying and awfully depressing.