By Daniel Rigney
Matt Drudge, the influential aggregative journalist who knows more about climate than climate scientists themselves do, rarely misses an opportunity to publicize unseasonably cold weather events around the world on his popular tabloid website, thedrudgereport.com.
Drudge's greatest triumph to date in this regard was to report a few years ago that a winter blizzard had arrived in New York City just as carbon-industry critic Al Gore was in town to give a speech on global warming. Get it? Now do you see how ridiculous and fraudulent Gore and his chicken littles have been about weather?
In Drudge's mind, if New York or New Delhi has a much colder day than usual in winter, or an unseasonably cool day in summer, this means that what climate scientists believe about long-term warming trends in most regions of the world must be wrong.
Blizzards and unseasonable cold waves warm Drudge’s heart and the hearts of many of his readers, because such events call into doubt theories of human-influenced climate change that predict more erratic weather over time and an overall warming of the Earth’s temperatures (varying by region, etc.) in the coming decades or centuries. Most climate scientists seem to agree that these gradually rising temperatures over time are due in significant part to human activity, and particularly to a rapid global rise in the combustion of fossil fuels.
Drudge sometimes forgets to publicize unseasonably warm days in winter or unseasonably hot days in summer. Acknowledging that the world is warming and that human activity could have something to do with it might lead to complicated thinking about climate, and no one wants that.
For
background on Drudge’s record as an enabler of climate change denial,
why not start with Jesse Zwick’s “It’s Always Snowing on the Drudge
Report” in the New Republic (Dec. 9, 2009)? And to see where Drudge hides some of his hottest weather headlines, check out the “Weather Action” button in the lower-right corner of his own page. It will jump you to the website of the National Weather Service, which reports inconvenient facts. Your tax dollars at work. Sincere thanks to NWS. No blindfold.
originally posted in Danagram [open.salon.com/blog/danagram]
Matt Drudge, the influential aggregative journalist who knows more about climate than climate scientists themselves do, rarely misses an opportunity to publicize unseasonably cold weather events around the world on his popular tabloid website, thedrudgereport.com.
Drudge's greatest triumph to date in this regard was to report a few years ago that a winter blizzard had arrived in New York City just as carbon-industry critic Al Gore was in town to give a speech on global warming. Get it? Now do you see how ridiculous and fraudulent Gore and his chicken littles have been about weather?
In Drudge's mind, if New York or New Delhi has a much colder day than usual in winter, or an unseasonably cool day in summer, this means that what climate scientists believe about long-term warming trends in most regions of the world must be wrong.
Blizzards and unseasonable cold waves warm Drudge’s heart and the hearts of many of his readers, because such events call into doubt theories of human-influenced climate change that predict more erratic weather over time and an overall warming of the Earth’s temperatures (varying by region, etc.) in the coming decades or centuries. Most climate scientists seem to agree that these gradually rising temperatures over time are due in significant part to human activity, and particularly to a rapid global rise in the combustion of fossil fuels.
Drudge sometimes forgets to publicize unseasonably warm days in winter or unseasonably hot days in summer. Acknowledging that the world is warming and that human activity could have something to do with it might lead to complicated thinking about climate, and no one wants that.
I
was worried that Drudge might overlook another opportunity to report
record-breaking weather that broke the wrong way. I sent a message
(three, actually) to thedrudgereport.com, through its response box, letting Matt know,
if he did not know already, that the mercury hit 105 degrees yesterday
in Houston, seven degrees hotter than the record high for that date set
in 1977 according to the Chronicle weather page this morning.
Heat records were being broken
north, south and west in the United States last week. As it happens, we
were at Bush International Airport at about the time the National
Weather Service was taking the city’s record-breaking temperature. Less
than a week before we had hit 100 on the earliest date for that reading
in Houston history. It's been a hot, dry spring here in Carbon City, and
lately we seem to be be getting hotter earlier.
I
bring up yesterday’s weather not because it has any significant
long-term bearing on the climate change issue, but only to point out
that by Drudge’s own logic, and the logic of many other
conservatarian climate experts like him, this proves once and for all
how wrong climate change deniers are on this issue. By
Drudge’s own logic, Gore and his colleagues of the scientific
persuasion should be running a victory lap in the sun just about now. And Drudge should be doing some fresh thinking. Don't count on that.
So
Matt, you're wearing the asshat today according to your own implicit
logic, revealed in the way you select and headline your weather
stories. What does a hot, steamy day in Houston have to do to get its
picture into your political tabloid?
Of course, in reality one day in Houston or one night in Bangkok doesn’t prove anything about long-term climate trends. I don’t care how hot or cold or wet or dry it is at any given place at any given time. The ragged
sawtooth of daily statistics is not what we want to track here, but
rather the longer, smoother trendlines that run through millions of data
points to reveal unfolding patterns over vast areas, including the
poles, over long stretches of time. Herein lies a difference between
weather and climate, and between tabloid weather and climate science.
But it is nonetheless noteworthy, if only in the short-run where we live out our lives, that Houston – along with many other locales in the U.S. from Arizona to Florida and up from Texas through the Great Plains -- has never been so hot so early in the season -- and it's still spring.
originally posted in Danagram [open.salon.com/blog/danagram]
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