Watch Leonardo DiCaprio's "Before the Flood" in Full, For Free, Right Now

"Winter" in Boston

"Winter" 2015-2016 in Boston so far:

• December 2015: 10.6 degrees above average (warmest on record)
• January 2016: +3.5
• February 2016:  +3.0
• March (through 3/12): +4.8

It was the second-warmest meterological winter (December-February) on record in Boston. All of the three warmest have come since 2001.

Hey, it's hard to complain about a winter in Boston that was closer to Washington, DC temperatures. But what's a New England winter without pond hockey? And my wife got her first bug bite of the year yesterday, a reminder payback comes due in the spring and summer when pests run wild after warm winters.

December Warmth Breaking Records, But Media Largely Silent on Causes

An El Nino getting a boost from global warming is breaking winter warmth and lack of snowfall records across a huge swath of the country. As I write in a new post for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, the media is talking about the warmth but is mostly ignoring its causes.

Hottest Month Ever: Time to Stop Leaving Climate Action to the Politicians?

July was the hottest month in recorded human history, with 2015 on track to be the hottest year ever, which would break the record set just last year.

While climate activists and science deniers get most of the attention, the vast majority of Americans remain on the sideline. That's enabled by media coverage that either ignores the latest science or paints it as a horse-race political issue. But you have to wonder: How bad will things have to get before more Americans start moving from disengaged to concerned and from cautious to alarmed?

If you do want to get involved, find your local 350.org group here. Deniers of climate science need to feel constant pressure, and supporters of climate science need to know you support doing even more.

Cruz: We Mustn't Ask If Climate Polluters Made Texas Floods Worse

CNN reports the unprecedented floods in Texas - exactly the kind climate scientists have been saying we'll see more of in a warming world - are really harshing the science denial of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX):

The Republican presidential contender has held two press conferences over the past two days to address the flooding and the government's response. At each one, he was asked about the impact of climate change on natural disasters like the Texas flooding, and at each one, he dodged the question.

"In a time of tragedy, I think it's wrong to try to politicize a natural disaster -- and so there's plenty of time to talk about other issues," he said in response to a question on his views on climate change during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

Yes, the last thing we should be doing is using science to figure out if carbon pollution from fossil fuels made the never-before-seen flooding worse. Remind me again how it's "libertarian" to let polluters make deadly disasters worse without having to pay for it?

Ignoring Climate Change Fails to Make It Go Away, 2015 Edition

With a few outliers like Germany, nations aren't taking aggressive action on climate change. President Obama is taking a two steps forward, one step back approach. Congress is doing absolutely nothing.

So what are we left with?

"The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit," writes David Roberts in a must-read at Vox.

Most Awkward Climate #LeaveItThere Ever?

I'm used to stories about the impacts of climate change that leave out the cause altogether. But a recent CNN story on a huge blob of overheated water off America's Pacific Coast set a new standard for brushing past climate science while still giving it the cold shoulder.

First, Slate's Eric Holthaus explains the blob's connection to global warming:

Besides El Niño, a more worrying, longer-term trend is also taking shape. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is a decades-long periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that tends to favor bursts of accelerated global warming. As I wrote last October, the Pacific appears to be in the midst of a shift into a new warm phase that could last 20 years or so.

The PDO—or, “the blob” as it’s been referred to recently—is starting to freak out some scientists. There are emerging signs of a major shift in the Pacific Ocean’s food chain, including a dearth of plankton, tropical fish sightings near Alaska, and thousands of starving sea lion pups stranded on the California coast. As Earth’s largest ocean, what happens in the Pacific affects the weather virtually planet-wide, and that means an “imminent” jump in global warming may have already begun—spurred on by the PDO.

The PDO has skyrocketed to record-high monthly levels over the past four months. In fact, there have only been four other similarly warm four-month bursts of the PDO in the last 115 years (in 1940, 1941, 1993, and 1997). A quick look at the historical record (for both 15 years prior to and 15 years after the bursts) shows that global temperatures rose at twice the rate of the 20th century average immediately after these bursts.

Combined with the overall long-term warming trend from climate change, the emergence of the PDO warm phase means the current state of the world’s oceans has little precedent.

CNN's story never mentions global warming - in fact, just when it feels like they're about to, the story abruptly ends. "But other scientists are saying it's more than that," says Jennifer Gray - then it cuts to black. No explanation, CNN just leaves it there.

"The World is Looking to Us to Lead": President Obama's Weekly Address on Climate Change

Here's the transcript and here's a link to tell Congress you support President Obama's plan to act on climate.

LA Asks Inhofe for Emergency Snowball Shipment

As DC asks if global warming is happening because it snowed last winter, Los Angeles just doubled the old record for 90 degree days in March.

This Week in Heat Records Not Being Tied to Climate Change

The 2015 Los Angeles Marathon was run in record
heat, sending 30 runners to hospital

Winter warmth records fell across the West, but reporters didn't connect the dots to climate change. So how are we doing in March?

Heat records have fallen in the last week (or are forecast to be shattered today) from San Francisco to south Florida:

• San Francisco Bay region
• Los Angeles
• Salt Lake City
• Denver
• Montana
• South Dakota
• Minnesota
• Kansas City
• Iowa
• Florida

And how many of those articles mention global warming? Not one.

Look, I don't expect every local forecast to launch into an in-depth scientific explanation of the greenhouse effect. But at the end of a long piece on a heat wave, couldn't you drop in, "Scientists say these trends are exactly what we can expect more of in a warming world"?

UPDATE 3/17: Josephine Marcotty of Minneapolis Star Tribune gets it right. “There is a lot of scientific evidence saying that climate change is causing more extremes,” says William Glesener of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

Your Top Network Climate Expert: Rosie Perez

The good folks over at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting invited me to reseach how much the television networks are referencing climate change in coverage of the Northeast's unprecedented winter storms and the West's record-shattering winter warmth.

The results: Networks hardly ever mention the heat out West, rarely cover climate change, and the only one who seems to take the climate crisis seriously is The View's Rosie Perez.

Warmest Winter Records Shattered in West, But Reporters Won't Say Climate Change

Winter was great for biking in Salt Lake City

Watching network television news, you'd think the entire Earth had entered an Ice Age just because it's been cold in Manhattan. While February was unusually cold in the Northeast and Midwest, what's not being mentioned on TV is that records have been falling on the high end of the temperature scale for the entire winter across a broad swath of the West and Pacific Northwest:

• Weather.com reports that more than 20 cities out west, including San Francisco, Sacramento and Las Vegas had their warmest winters on record, adding, "In case you're wondering, few if any cities in the East will have their coldest winters on record despite a series of high-profile blizzards and record cold waves – mainly because December was relatively mild."
• KOMOnews.com reports Seattle had its warmest winter on record, "obliterating" the old record by 1.4 degrees. In neighboring Oregon, Portland broke its winter warmth record and Salem topped 50 degrees every day in February, the first time that's ever happened.
• And The Salt Lake Tribune reports Salt Lake City had both its warmest and least snowy winter on record, the latter being the bigger concern as the West heads towards fire season. "Things are much more dry and, frankly, more ready to burn … than in [recent] memory," Jason Curry, spokesman for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, told the Tribune.

What do all of these articles have in common? Not one mentions climate change. It's just the latest example of media deliberately not connecting obvious climate dots for their audience.

Sometimes you have to wonder: If our media were actively trying to stifle public knowledge of climate change impacts and suppress support for climate action, how would that be different from what we have now?

Jon Stewart: Climate Science Won't Endorse GOP Ideology, So They Hate It

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart put the Republican war on science into context (watch the clip below):

This is their genius: They purport to want to fix things, but conservatives aren't looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint.

Because in their minds, the opposite of bad isn't good. The opposite of bad is conservative. The opposite of wrong isn't right ... well, OK, but you get my point. It's right wing.

They judge solely on the level of conservative content. In everything. It's their only litmus test. [...]

Let's stop pretending that concessions to the right will, at any point, sate the beast.

Republicans don't critique climate science because of its methods - they hate it because its conclusions reveal the limits of their free-market ideology. If the invisible hand can't solve carbon pollution and government regulations are needed, what's next? Once you admit government can be a force for good, don't you need to admit you also need some taxes to pay for those good things?

But instead, reporters constantly look to satiate, pretending Republicans are "skeptics" - merely looking for the best science! - when even denier-in-chief Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) admits the fight is really about his hatred of the solutions.

Because "objective" journalism means you can never directly tell your audience that the emperor has no clothes - that would imply you're drawing conclusions when "objectivity" prizes the View From Nowhere. Instead, you must artificially create a he said, she said perspective, such as, "The emperor denied charges by environmentalists that he has no clothes. We'll have to leave it there."

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Why Aren't Chefs Up in Arms About Global Warming?

Climate change is a bigger threat to oysters and clams than first thought, according to a new study. We already knew global warming is hurting shrimp, beef, chocolate, coffee, beer - the list goes on.

Why don't you hear more celebrity chefs speaking out about global warming? More concerned about ratings for their Food Network project than protecting the next generation of foodies?

Local Officials Ignoring Climate Change Worsening Winter Storms

Are local officials taking climate-fueled extreme weather into account in future storm planning? It doesn't sound like it according to this report by Mike Lawrence in my local New Bedford Standard-Times:

Delays in plowing narrow residential streets across the city drew a storm of complaints from residents following the blizzard. Staffing enough permanent crews to handle a blizzard of that magnitude, though, wouldn’t be realistic, Labelle said.

“We’ve characterized this last time as a 100-year snowstorm — it would be irresponsible for any community to gear up for that level of storm event,” he said. “Even with contractor services, you’re never going to get city streets open the next day the way people want to see it.

We can argue about whether it's worth it to spend the extra money to clear streets faster. But with worsening winter storms rewriting our record books, the 2015 blizzard is exactly what we should be getting ready to face.

It's a similar story in neighboring communities, where austerity takes precedence over preparing for climate-fueled flooding.

In DC, Corrupt Values of Polluter Lobbyists Taken For Granted

E&E TV today interviews Peter Glaser, a lawyer for Troutman Sanders, who argues states should simply ignore federal limits on climate-disrupting carbon pollution. I understand that not every interview can be a deep dive into the morality of changing the climate, but do polluter lobbyists always have to get such a free pass for profiting from the damage they're doing to our children's future?

The host never even mentions who Glaser represents, but his website tells us he works for "electric utility, mining and other energy industry companies and associations." More specifically, OpenSecrets.org shows Southern Company, a huge coal-fired power company and currently ranked as America's 3rd-biggest polluter, has been Troutman Sanders' number one lobbying client for the last two years and has given them millions in business over the last 15 years.

I understand the show is focused on inside-the-Beltway maneuvers & mechanics, and "aren't you history's greatest monster?" could be a little out of place. But shouldn't Glaser have to say something about whether cashing in by selling a slogan of "just say no to cutting carbon pollution" might be just a tad morally irresponsible?

@coleenjose for @everydayclimatechange | Children played in a suffocating fog of mosquito repellent in the outskirts of Tacloban City, Philippines. Volunteers sprayed the repellent along rows of bunkhouses in a shelter site, a break from the monotony inside the camp where hundreds of people displaced by Typhoon Haiyan lived in temporary shelters. Thousands of Filipinos are still displaced because of Haiyan and typhoons in 2014. The Global Climate Risk Index of 2015 ranked the Philippines as the country most affected by weather-related disasters including intensifying storms, floods and heatwaves. #everydayclimatechange #everydayeverywhere #philippines #typhoonhaiyan #globalwarming #displacement #cop21 #reportage #coleenjose #aftermath

A photo posted by Everyday Climate Change (@everydayclimatechange) on Jan 30, 2015 at 5:36am PST

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.

Hot Water Again Halts Maine Shrimp Season & Again No One Will Say Global Warming

From moose to puffins to lobsters, global warming is devastating Maine's wildlife, seafood and economy. Why is it so hard for media to say so?

The latest bad news is hitting Maine's shrimp fishermen:

Federal regulators shut down the commercial fishing season for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine for a second straight year on Wednesday, citing concerns about the declining population and warmer ocean temperatures.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Northern Shrimp Section voted to cancel the upcoming season, a year after the section closed this year's season for the first time in more than 30 years. A technical committee that advises the section recommended extending the moratorium for another year.

The "depleted condition of the resource and poor prospects for the near future" warrant another closure, the committee reported, adding that "long term trends in environmental conditions" for the little pink shrimp are unfavorable. The amount of the shrimp's population that can be fished is at an all-time low, regulators said.

The Associated Press blames "warmer ocean temperatures" but never directly references global warming, never mind connecting the dots to carbon pollution. It did the same thing last year. The Portland Press Herald repeatedly ignored the climate connection in its news coverage, but did editorialize on it.

The connection to climate change is crystal clear. September ocean surface temperatures were 1.2 degrees F above the 20th century average, "the highest on record for September and also the highest on record for any month," according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

Associated Press reporter Patrick Whittle clearly understands the connection between carbon pollution and warmer Gulf of Maine water because he's reported on it before. But global warming is most often treated as its own, separate story and not mentioned in news coverage of climate impacts. Also, I notice that the URL for that story hints his title once called the Gulf of Maine a poster child for global warming. That's since been softened to "Warming Gulf of Maine imperils lobster, fish catch" and the climate connection isn't made explicit until the story's 6th paragraph.

So why didn't the latest coverage of the shrimp shutdown mention global warming? The press release from the 15-state Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission didn't make any mention of climate change, and the AP didn't make the bridge for its readers. A similar story played out last year when the Massachusetts Port Authority issued a report on sea level rise - Massport wouldn't say climate change and reporters wouldn't connect the dots.

What that means is it's not just about the science. Media outlets are requiring a multi-phase scientific and political approval process:

• The scientific evidence must be iron-clad
• Scientists must be willing to face threats from Tea Partiers
• Regulators must be willing to put their jobs on the line in the face of politically-motivated attacks 

Then MAYBE reporters will connect the dots. And that's if media owners will let journalists report on global warming at all. Hubbard Broadcasting directly funds climate science denial. In Maine, two news anchors at WVII and WFVX in Bangor quit on-air, saying climate science-denying station management kept inserting politics into news coverage.

The next time you see a poll on how many Americans accept climate science, imagine what the numbers would look like if the media actually connected the dots to climate change in every story like this.

What Ebola and Global Warming Have In Common

An Ohio man was told by a friend that he was in the same bridal shop at the same time as a woman later diagnosed with the Ebola virus. If only our elected officials could be as level-headed as Peter Pattakos:

Pattakos, 36, a Cleveland attorney who lives in Bath Township, called the health department, which told him to call back if he exhibits any Ebola symptoms. He called a doctor, who told him not to worry.

"I didn't exchange any bodily fluids with anyone, so I'm not worried about it," he said. "I'm much more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer in this country than to be killed by Ebola, even if you were in the same bridal shop." [...]

Concerns over the deadly disease, which is spread through infected bodily fluids, have led to business, government and school closings throughout Cleveland and Akron. Pattakos thinks people are overreacting, and he blames wall-to-wall media coverage. He hopes Vinson recovers soon.

"I wish people would freak out this much about climate change," he said. "It's one of those problems that's real easy for the media to cover, rather than some of those other problems that people should be more concerned with."

Unfortunately, the Ebola and climate change comparison is apt: In both cases, we're ignoring the experts. Doctors tell us not to freak out over Ebola, and we panic anyway. Scientists tell us we SHOULD freak out about climate change, and we don't.

Reuters Covers Sea Level Rise Flooding Miami, But Won't Say Climate Change

Miami families chalk 6' sea level rise at
HighWaterLine.org event (Jayme Gershen)

Reuters has a compelling story on how sea level rise is impacting Miami Beach, but even more interesting is what the story leaves out: Climate change. And there's evidence to suggest Reuters' omission is no accident.

First, the Reuters coverage of the Miami Beach "King Tide" that's expected to peak October 9 at about a foot above normal:

The event, caused by the alignment of the sun, moon and Earth, provides a taste of the potential impact of a longer-term two-foot sea level rise predicted for south Florida by 2060, according to the United States Geological Survey. The low-lying greater Miami area, with a population of 5.7 million, is one of the world's most at-risk urban communities, scientists told a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in April.

The King Tide is expected to rise to almost four feet. With seven miles of coastline, Miami Beach is already seeing more frequent salt-water street flooding at high tide, according to Miami Beach City Manager Jimmy Morales.

To combat such widespread flooding, the city has set aside $300 million to 400 million to install up to 50 pumps in the coming years in what some say is a vain effort to protect an estimated $23 billion of real estate.

Bigger sea walls are not an option as Miami Beach's flooding is caused largely by water rising underfoot through porous limestone bedrock. Officials concede pumping water back into the ocean is only a short-term solution.

It's a really interesting article, but it leaves you with an unanswered question: Why is sea level rising? It's a critical part of the story. Leaving out the cause makes sea level rise seem like something that's beyond our control, but it most certainly is not. The intensity of future global warming and the height of future sea level rise will be determined by how much and how fast we cut industrial carbon pollution right now.

You might think it's a coincidence that Reuters left out any mention of global warming - maybe they just assumed everyone knows and accepts mainstream climate science! But there's evidence the action is deliberate. As Media Matters has reported, a former reporter accuses Reuters Deputy Editor-in-Chief Paul Ingrassia of denying the clear scientific connection between industrial carbon pollution and global warming intensity. The reporter accused Ingrassia of letting his personal politics taint Reuters' climate coverage and repeated Media Matters investigations have shown Reuters climate coverage continues to decline in frequency and quality.

Reuters' silence on the connection between sea level rise and carbon pollution comes with real consequences, especially in Florida. Gov. Rick Scott wouldn't even let climate scientists finish making their case for climate action before cutting them off. Sen. Marco Rubio lets his pro-polluter politics cloud his judgment on climate change.

In this case, Reuters isn't just failing to connect the dots for its readers - it's letting science deniers off the hook for their reckless decision to put politics ahead of people.

Via ClimateCrocks.com