Storm of the century[/caption]Editor — While many people around the world are focusing on the great storm beginning to hit the Northeastern part of the United States, the really big news is that the major news networks have not done enough to highlight the root causes. In a world where every fact must have an opposite, it seems, as opinion often rules the news, what is that major news?
Vanessa Kritzer, who is Online Campaigns Manager for the League of Conservation Voters, spells out her frustration in a recent press release, underlining the importance of looking at the root causes of our weather conditions. It is that focus that might make the real difference, she explains as she declares:
From record-breaking heat waves and massive wildfires to historic droughts and Superstorm Sandy, we’ve seen with our own eyes the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events this past year.
Yet in reporting on these disastrous events, the nightly news programs at the major broadcast networks have largely ignored what is fueling this extreme weather – climate change.
As the effects of climate change cause hardship for families across America, we need better coverage if we want people to connect the dots and demand real action to curb global warming and pollution.
In fact, that's why the organization is circulating a petition for viewers to demand that mainstream media take responsibility and let people know what is happening in the environment at the heart of these disastrous weather events. They are asking that other networks emulate PBS Newshour in its coverage of climate change.
CNN.com today is relating the sequence of details of the present storm, accenting the specific conditions, and letting people know that the same region hit by Hurricane Sandy is getting hit again. But why is that true and what is the evidence this may continue?
SFGate writes it frankly by observing what many scientists are saying about the future. "Within the lifetimes of today's children, scientists say, the climate could reach a state unknown in civilization." This phrase alone tells us that there are dangers ahead that will only increase. It also is a reminder of the need to act regarding CO2 emissions. This information comes from the leading scientists, not the off-the-block ones tied to political interests, as is observed in scientific publications and those journals who are focusing on the science as opposed to the miscellaneous political debates.
We should be reminded that in 2006 it was widely noted that then President George W. Bush was denying human-induced climate change. The infusion of politics in the science that many maintain is critical to understand so that people can act responsibility meant delays in that action.
The chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Sir John Lawton, the chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 2005 called climate change deniers in the US "loonies", observing how global warming "is to blame for the increasingly strong hurricanes being spawned in the Atlantic."
In other words, by calling the science opinion, and therefore debatable, has made the situation worse. That's the biggest headline today: how the world failed to act and that the Northeastern part of the United States, and other places, will surely feel the impact of that failure, according to the scientists, who years ago warned of the crisis.
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