The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Weaponizing Ignorance…How Fox News Keeps Manipulating the American Public Towards Anti-Science Ends
Dear Diary. Ever since the 1990s I’ve had a very dark view of so-called news coming out of just one organization. Fox News has been touted as GOP T.V. (Grand Old Party) and has supported conservative candidates since its inception during the mid 1990s. Before the 2000 election between Al Gore and George Bush Jr. they began to spout disinformation on climate science, which raised my eyebrows often. Of course, they are responsible for George Bush’s squeaked out victory in 2000, which was a big negative turning point during our climate fight. Imagine if Al Gore had become president. If that had happened the current leader of Climate Reality would have had the power to fix our infrastructure when it would have been much easier to stabilize the pathway along our global warming trend, given a much larger carbon budget at the turn of the century than we have to work with now. Oh well…I keep crying over a lot of proverbial spilled milk.
Fast forward to 2022 and Fox, among other major items, is blatantly lying that we don’t have a climate crisis and blaming Joe Biden for high gas prices because of his domestic green energy stances. Killing the Keystone Pipeline project has very little to do with the embargo on Russian oil because of the war on Ukraine. I’m thinking that oil companies are driving up prices just to spite Biden, aiding to shorten his stint in the White House in order to reverse all of his climate initiatives by getting Trump or some other Republican behind the Oval Office.
In any case, Fox is pushing many narratives that promote ignorance, fear, and even hate. I rarely have time to look at the channel, but when I do, I can’t count the times I am shaking my head and gnashing my teeth at the likes of Tucker Carlson coddling Putin, or Shawn Hannity and Laura Ingraham lying about race and/or climate science, poo pooing so called elitist intellectualism…just in 2022 alone.
Here is what Dr. Michael Mann thinks about Fox News and the current state of the fascist Republican Party:
Rolling Stone Magazine directly goes after Fox, which is our highlighted article of the day:
Study: Watching Fox News Actually Makes You Stupid – Rolling Stone
Study: Watching Fox News Actually Makes You Stupid
It’s not exactly a revelation that Fox News viewers are spectacularly ill informed about current events compared to people who watch other networks. But according to a recent report, the Fox audience knows less even than folks who don’t watch any news at all.
Researchers from New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University asked about a thousand people five questions on domestic issues (e.g., “Which party has the most seats in the House of Representatives right now?”) and five on international ones (e.g., “There have been increasing talks about economic sanctions against Iran. What are these sanctions supposed to do?”).
Fox viewers scored the lowest in both categories, getting an average of 1.04 questions right on domestic issues and 1.08 on international, behind people who watch MSNBC (which, on international affairs, also lagged the non-news watchers) The Daily Show, and the Sunday talk show viewers, as well as NPR listeners – the best informed audience – and, yes, people who don’t “do” news.
“We expect that watching the news should help people learn, but the most popular of the national media sources seem to be the least informative,” said Dan Cassino, professor of political science at FDU and analyst for the poll.
The reaction from Fox? “Considering FDU’s undergraduate school is ranked as one of the worst in the country,” said a company spokesperson, “we suggest the school invest in improving its weak academic program instead of spending money on frivolous polling – their student body does not deserve to be so ill-informed.”
Here are some “ET’s” recorded over the last couple of days with one wintry precipitation note:
Here is some more March 2022 climatology:
Here is more climate and weather news from Tuesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid war on Ukraine:
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”