Asked About Climate Risks, Trump is on to Cincinnati

Donald Trump sat down with the Washington Post editorial board and revealed in 2016's Republican Party, you can win the presidential nomination without knowing anything about anything.

Trump talked about how "double sanctions" work better than sanctions, that infrastructure is all about luxury airports, went on a 738-word rant about his hands, and rambled incoherently about Iraqi oil. The full transcript is worth reading to really soak in how much, in terms of chance of winning, it doesn't matter whether Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders - either will mop the floor with Trump, who sounds way over his head the minute he can't shout his way out of a jam.

For climate activists, the section on global warming is the must-read. There are science deniers who know how to sound like they can talk smart, like Ted Cruz's made-up speech about satellite data. And then there are people like Trump who don't know anything at all about climate science (other than they're supposed to be against it) but can't help themselves from blabbling anyway:

HIATT: Last one: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?

TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.

STROMBERG: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?

TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.

RYAN: Thank you for joining us.

In this answer, nuclear weapons seems to be Trump's version of we're on to Cincinnati. Don't like the question or any of the possible answers? Answer a different question!

Meanwhile, January and February shattered global heat records and climate scientists are now warning the climate crisis may be much worse and happening much faster than we thought. Thank you for joining us!

When Climate Ignorance Makes News Boring: The Washington Post, Mars & Chocolate

Which is a more interesting story:

• Industry threatened, for some reason, and hopefully they'll figure that whole thing out
• Industry threatened, identifies problem that menaces all of us, and decides to becomes leader in fighting it, political consequences be damned

Today's Washington Post article on Mars, Inc. facing a looming chocolate shortage never once mentions global warming, even though the climate threats to chocolate production are clear and Mars is a leader on confronting climate change and its threats to the chocolate industry.

DC Cherry Blossoms Continue Climate-Driven Early Bloom Trend

Once again, DC's cherry blossoms are forecast to bloom much earlier than the 20th-century average - sometime between March 26-30, horticulturalists say.

And once again, the Washington Post story on the early blooms doesn't mention that the early blooms are part of trend at all, never mind a global warming-fueled that may eventually push the cherry blossoms into February.

All connections to climate change must be made in sidebar stories - readers of the main news story on the blossoms are to be kept blissfully ignorant of whether or why they're arriving earlier and earlier.

A Bigger Problem Than the New York Times Environment Desk Closure

The New York Times is breaking up its environment desk, reports Katherine Bagley at InsideClimate News.

It's disappointing in the broader context of declining NYT newsroom staffing, a bad public signal that the environment isn't a top priority, and if they lay off staff that works on environment issues that's a big setback. But this desk was just formed in 2009 so it's not like they're tearing down some storied institution, and NYT news & editorial coverage of climate change has been strong.

It's the Washington Post that's the real obstacle to a national conversation that takes the climate crisis seriously. It too often takes a disdainful "why are we talking about that climate thing when we could be gutting the social safety net or starting new wars?" attitude that trickles down from its editorial page into its news coverage.

Heating of Pot No Reason for Alarm, Reports Frog Media

It's not true that if you slowly turn up the heat, a frog won't notice that his surroundings are getting hotter - the frog will jump out of the pot if he can. That's an allegory - but whether humans will recognize & respond to their warming climate is a very real & open question.

Mainstream media coverage of Friday night's extreme storms in the Mid-Atlantic region shows no sign of hoppiness:

• The Washington Post has no mention of climate impacts in its main story on the storm. Even its sidebar story detailing the record-shattering temperatures that fueled the derecho waits until its final sentence to say the rare storm "raises the question about the possible role of man-made climate warming" - but says any judgement must be left to after the frog has already boiled future case studies. Next to the storm coverage is an in-depth look at tar sands, one of the most carbon pollution-intensive fuels on the planet, but true to modern American journalism's View From Nowhere, the Post makes no connection between the two stories, not even on the editorial page.
• The New York Times, NPR and CNN make no mention of climate change in their stories on the storms. Last night, CBS Radio News blamed the storms on "Mother Nature," skipping past ignorance to outright denial.
• Meanwhile out West, the Associated Press reports nationwide droughts are canceling fireworks displays for many states. Climate scientists have been warning for years that global warming will result in deeper droughts and more intense wildfires, yet the AP makes no mention of climate impacts.

Reading these stories, I can't help but think of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Past dominant societies have proved quite capable of blissfully ignoring all evidence of impending doom. So far, America's media is proving no different. Will 2012's record temperatures and extreme weather change that? Or be just another milepost on the road to disaster?

Did Washington Post Downplay Poll's Support for Silver Line?

Polls show DC area residents support train, bus, biking and pedestrian projects much more than they support building new or wider highways. However, the Washington Post editorial board strongly supports new highways and spun a poll this week to mean that our fellow Virginians don't support the Silver Line. As Slate's Matt Yglesias points out, the numbers don't necessarily back up that spin:

But the really weird thing is that it's by no means clear that this is what the poll has found. What it says is that 32 percent of the population says the Silver Line project is "not at all important" while 32 percent deems it either "extremely" or "very" important and a further 32 percent says it's "somewhat" important. The "not important to most Virginians" interpretation is supported by lumping the "somewhat" and "not at all" categories together as "negative" responses. But the straightforward reading of the poll is that the median Virginian thinks the Silver Line project is somewhat important. And it is somewhat important! So why not just say that?

In the face of Republican political games, The New Republic's Alec MacGillis says strong support of the Silver Line can be a winner for Tim Kaine in his U.S. Senate race against George Allen.

Scientists Who Cross The Line Are Outcasts, Deniers Who Do Get CNN Contracts

After scientist Peter Gleick said he'd duped the Heartland Institute into handing over internal documents, Washington Post editorial writer Stephen Stromberg wrote:

Peter Gleick violated a principle rule of the global-warming debate: Climate scientists must be better than their opponents.

Stromberg is exactly right. Climate scientists are largely ignored by the media and almost completely absent from TV news, with exactly zero climate scientists interviewed about the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed limits on climate pollution compared to dozens of climate deniers. But make a prank call that gets the Heartland Institute to hand over documents and you'll be completely ignored (or however more ignored you could be than you already are).

Meanwhile, climate deniers like Erick Erickson who call for conservationists to be beaten to "a bloody pulp," compare a Supreme Court justice to a child molester, and hint that maybe President Obama should kinda die get signed by CNN as a full-time talking heads.

And people like Stephen Stromberg don't even notice when the Heartland Institute equates climate scientist Michael Mann with a child molester because, well, that's just how science deniers are expected to act.

The media doesn't even bother to hide the double standard.

George Will Fails to Disclose Financial Ties to Polluter Front Groups

Why is George Will so aggressively anti-climate science? A new report makes his financial incentives more clear.

Media Matters reports that not only has Will been drawing a salary from his role on the board of the extremist-conservative Bradley Foundation, he's been writing about the front groups they fund without disclosing it in his Washington Post columns:

Media Matters reviewed Will's columns from mid-2008 to the present and found at least a dozen instances in which he has promoted conservative groups that have received money from the Bradley Foundation without disclosing his connection to the foundation. Those groups include the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society, and National Affairs quarterly.

SourceWatch has a full rundown of the Bradley Foundation's activities, funding everything from climate science denial to attacks on minorities as genetically unworthy of any public assistance. Just really the worst of the worst stuff. And as the Media Matters report details, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is completely indifferent to Will's lack of disclosure.

Washington Post Ignores Climate Impacts, Wonders Why People Are Ignorant on Climate Impacts

The Washington Post's Darryl Fears, who conspicuously left climate change out of his recent article on the impacts of sea level rise on the Virginia coast, today has a follow-up article on how some people don't think climate change is connected to sea level rise.

Gee, I wonder why people are so in the dark about climate science? It's quite the puzzler.

The Washington Post Steals My Armadillo Story

Two days after I posted about how global warming might bring armadillos to Virginia, the Washington Post's Post Local did the exact same story.

How do I know they stole the story? The Post calls it a "new" report, but that's not true - it came out in June. I started a post on it in June but never finished it, and it sat in my drafts file until I needed some new content & published it this week.

Bloggers are happy to share ideas and content for free - all we ask for is attribution, the same courtesy that paid journalists extend to each other when one breaks a story. And come on, considering The Washington Post Company pulled down $547 million in operating income last year, while The Green Miles does this in his spare time for free (refusing paid ads), would a courtesy link be too much to ask? Apparently so.

I wouldn't publicly point it out, except the Post steals from local blogs all the time. Just last month, the Post-owned Fairfax Times stole a quote from ArlNow.com without attribution. Isn't it silly for an enormous media conglomerate to have a policy of stealing from the little guy, especially when doing the right thing is so easy?

And how's this for hypocrisy? The Post has expressed outrage when blogs excerpt the Post's work, even WITH full credit & links back. Gawker's Gabriel Snyder fired back an epic rebuttal.

It doesn't have to be this way. NBC4's NBCwashington.com has used my posts for story ideas several times (including the armadillo story) and always cites my original post with a quick link back. Everybody's happy!

I emailed the Post this morning asking why they didn't provide a link. From what I've heard from other bloggers who've had their work taken by the Post without attribution, I'm not expecting to hear back, but will update this post if I do.

Creative Commons-licensed photo via Flickr's PirateJohnny

The Washington Post's Selective Transit Austerity

$140 million for the Columbia Pike streetcar that would give people a cheap, less-polluting way to get to work and draw people to a sorely under-utilized area? A waste of money! Spend it on something else instead! Anything! Like, uh, how about education? Clearly, if you support the Columbia Pike streetcar, you must hate kids!

$110 million to upgrade just one road interchange for drivers (Route 29 & Gallows Road in Merrifield), while leaving it insufficient for pedestrians and bike commuters? Still waiting to hear from the Washington Post editorial board on how that could be better spent on schools. Should be any day now.

My point is not that Columbia Pike streetcar is more worthy of funds than the Route 29 interchange. My point is that maybe at a time of crazy low interest rates when a lot of people need work, we should be doing every project we can. By the time we need to start paying it back, the economy will have recovered - and if it hasn't, we're screwed anyway.

And if you have to resort to "but what if we spent it on free health care for puppies instead?" to make your argument, maybe you should re-think your case.

Should Coal-Fired Pollution Get a Tobacco-Style Warning Label?

Just the particle pollution from coal-fired power plants kills 13,000 Americans each year through heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer, birth defects & premature death, according to the American Lung Association. That number doesn't even consider threats from other pollutants like arsenic & mercury or the dangers of coal mining.

And carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants is a prime driver of global warming, which is fueling more climate-connected extreme weather events that have helped turn 2011 into the Year of the Natural Disaster.

All that leads Tom Toles to ask in today's Washington Post: Cigarettes come with warning labels - why not coal-fired power plants?

Washington Post Struggles to Keep Painting Greens as Struggling

If you go to WashingtonPost.com right now, you'll see this:

A year ago, environmental groups seemed at the peak of their influence. Now they are struggling.

Except that exactly one year ago, the Washington Post didn't say environmental groups were at the peak of their influence. It literally said they were struggling using the exact same reporter, using those exact words:

It seems that environmentalists are struggling in a fight they have spent years setting up.

You have to wonder if the Washington Post's reporting on environmental groups is driven by reality, or if it just rewrites the "greens are struggling" article once a year & adds a new headline. You also have to wonder how much its reporting is being influenced by its increasingly-conservative editorial side.

WaPo Can't Be Bothered to Read Things Like "Polls"

As Lowell details at Blue Virginia, there are many many many things wrong with today's Washington Post article on Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). But I'll focus on just one:

By all rights, Tom Perriello should have almost no chance to win reelection to Congress. He's a stimulus-backing, health-care-reform-loving, cap-and-trade-supporting liberal Democrat who represents a conservative central Virginia district where antipathy to the president and all things Washington runs high.

So according to the Washington Post, whatever the GOP says must be true. There's just one problem: Rep. Perriello's constituents disagree with the Republican talking points. The Washington Post could have found this out for itself with a simple Google search. From September:

Politico has just published the results of a new poll indicating that - in spite of the teabaggers - citizens of Rep. Tom Perriello's district (the 5th) support cap and trade legislation by a 17-point (42%-25%) margin.

But these days, the Washington Post doesn't seem to have any interest in challenging Republican talking points on clean energy & climate legislation -- or on anything else for that matter.

In a related story, check out The New Republic's must-read article, Post Apocalypse: Inside the messy collapse of a great newspaper.

Fun With Unnecessary Attribution

At WashingtonPost.com right now:


You needed the official to tell you the volcano was erupting? Really? Otherwise you wouldn't have known what was going on? "What appears to be red-hot molten rock is spewing out of the top of this mountain. We think it's a volcanic eruption, but that's just speculation right now -- we're still waiting for an official to return our voicemail."

Obviously I'm nitpicking in this instance. But If An Official Didn't Say It, It Didn't Happen syndrome remains rampant in the media. Just look at the WashingtonPost.com's refusal to place a gun at the scene of the recent U Street snowball fight -- even though one of its own editorial staffers had witnessed the incident.

Major Shifts in Climate Politics, Science Fly Under Radar

Today's Washington Post takes a look at some polluter-funded front groups that have recently sprung up to fight clean energy & climate legislation. In a classic example of reporting to the controversy, the article tries to paint the debate as getting more and more heated ... but cites evidence that clean energy and climate action are actually getting more and more accepted.

Here's how one section starts:

The new [polluter front] groups join an increasingly fractious debate over climate legislation that has roiled corporate and environmental groups alike.

Yowza! Sounds like the gloves are off, right? Lay it on me! Tell me how this is just the latest battle in that classic war, uncaring businesses versus treehugging environmentalists!

Earlier this month, Duke Energy, Alcoa and Alstom all pulled out of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group whose ads have asserted that the House climate bill would make energy unaffordable. "We thought [the bill] had evolved in ways to be affordable for our customers," said Duke spokesman Tom Williams.

This week, a group of large corporations -- including New Mexico utility PNM Resources, California utility PG&E, power generator Exelon and Nike -- denounced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's opposition to climate legislation.

Huh. That's odd. So big businesses are actually joining forces with the environmentalists to stand up against denial and inaction?

Wow. That sounds like a pretty interesting story. But the Washington Post really likes having simple stereotypes -- makes articles so much easier to write! -- so they managed to shoehorn that square peg into the round hole anyway and claim it's all about biz vs. enviros. I'm sure Edward R. Murrow would be proud.

Also, buried on page A4 is something about how climate change is accelerating faster than anyone previously predicted and our continuing inaction is screwing our children, grandchildren, and anyone who manages to survive beyond that. But since it was further down in the paper than four stories about ACORN, two ladies underwear ads, and ran on the page just below "Marmaduke," I'm sure it wasn't important and no one should bother reading it.

Cross-posted from Blue Virginia

Wash. Post Maintains Code of Silence on Bogus Will Column

Talking Points Memo has been trying to get to the bottom of how George Will's Saturday column made it to print with so much misinformation about climate change. So far, the Washington Post seems to be going into cover-up mode:

[H]ere's what happened when we tried to talk about all this yesterday morning with Will and [editorial page editor Fred] Hiatt:

Will's assistant told us that Will might get back to us later in the day to talk about the column. And Hiatt said he was too busy to talk about it just then, but that he'd try to respond to emailed questions. So we emailed him yesterday's post, with several questions about the editing process, then followed up with another email late yesterday afternoon.

But still nothing from either of them, over twenty-four hours after the first contact was made. Nor has the online version of Will's column been updated, even to reflect the fact that the ACRC has utterly disavowed the claim Will attributes to it.

If the target of a news story stonewalled a Post reporter to this extent, how much would Post editors be flipping out? You can't help but wonder.

Cross-posted from ArticleXI.com