Tag: extreme heat
Right-Wing Media Deny Climate Change Despite Extreme Heat Waves

Right-Wing Media Deny Climate Change Despite Extreme Heat Waves

As the climate crisis becomes more evident and destructive, even exceeding climate scientists’ earlier predictions, Fox News and other influential right-wing outlets and figures are downplaying the severity of climate-fueled events and pushing dangerous climate denial.

This summer has been marked by a series of record-breaking extreme weather events, illustrative of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming. Unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, and floods have wreaked havoc across North America. Meanwhile, global sea surface temperatures have reached alarming levels, and the world just experienced its hottest day on record — four days in a row. These events align with scientists' warnings, but the acceleration of warming and the intensity of this summer’s extreme heat suggest that the climate crisis is unfolding faster than expected.

Last month, when smoke from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada polluted the air over major population centers in the U.S., Fox News dismissed the link between the fires and climate change; meanwhile conspiracy theories seeking alternative explanations for Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season flourished online. In response to news that Earth had reached its hottest temperatures ever recorded, bad actors attempted to distract from the unsettling milestone by focusing on CNN’s use of the phrase “hottest day ever.” As deadly heat continues to scorch parts of the U.S., Asia, and Europe with no end in sight, and with a 1,000-year flood event having left parts of Vermont and New York state underwater, right-wing media cling to talking points that deny climate science.

By flooding the zone with climate denial right when the climate crisis is most evident, right-wing media run cover for Republican decision-makers who are actively obstructing climate action, ward off accountability for the fossil fuel industry, and pollute information systems for those attempting to understand the link between extreme weather and our dependence on fossil fuels. This tactic, like the extreme heat, has no end in sight.

Right-wing media responded to deadly climate change-fueled heat and flooding with denial and delay

  • Fox Business host Stuart Varney indulged climate change denier Marc Morano and said climate change is “a good debate.” When discussing extreme heat in Phoenix, Arizona, Morano said, “This is not outside the normal bounds of hot summer weather,” and claimed that CNN, The New York Times, and others are “weaponizing hot summer heat waves to turn it into some kind of climate action.” Varney asked Morano whether “that is not the result of CO2 emissions'' and said, “It's a good debate. This is a very good debate.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 7/19/23]
  • Far-right radio host Steven Crowder hosted climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg, who downplayed the climate crisis by arguing that more people die from cold than heat: “We are not talking about a world where most people die from heat. No, most people die from cold. Cold is fantastically more dangerous for a lot of different reasons.” [Rumble, Louder with Crowder, 7/19/23]
  • The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh suggests that the extreme heat is normal for summer: “Well it’s summertime and that means it's hot outside … This is when the media, as it does every year, claims that the hot weather is a sign of our impending planetary doom.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 7/18/23]
  • Far-right pundit James Lindsay: “Climate struggle sessions ramping up. They're going to try and fail to make that transition again. The propaganda isn't going to work this time either, though.” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
  • Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in response to an Axios article about extreme weather: “I'm not taking@Axios seriously until they start crusading against coal burning in China — anyone who claims to worry about carbon emissions should start there or button it. Even the ‘best states for climate change’ get hit with extreme weather” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
  • COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Dr. Naomi Wolf: “Oh! Conclusions: this will happen more and more often because climate change so: stay indoors, do remote work, ‘mask’. Back where we were again.” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
  • Right-wing Irish political activist and conspiracy theorist Ben Gilroy: “Today media continue to propagandise weather showing high temperatures in Death Valley USA — yet the park rangers wear jackets and gloves? The elites UN climate scam is really about securing a world government plutocracy, depopulation, and severely cutting your quality of life.” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
  • Fox host Jesse Watters downplayed the extreme heat as simply “summer”: “It's been a hot July. Some call it ‘global warming,’ some call it ‘summer.’ But what's the best way to beat the heat? Ice cream.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/17/23]
  • Lindsay mocked conditions in the southern U.S. that were so humid they had the potential to interfere with humans’ ability to sweat, pushing the limits of survivability. [Twitter, 7/17/23]
  • Longtime fossil fuel shill Steve Milloy: “@AP: 'Around the world, millions feel the heat of an unrelenting summer.' Two points: 1. It is summer. It gets hot. 2. There 8 billion in the world. If only 'millions' are experiencing extreme heat, that doesn't sound much like 'climate change.'” [Twitter, 7/17/23]
  • Misogynist influencer and alleged sex trafficker Tristan Tate: “They’re naming heatwaves like they used to name new ‘Covid variants’. Can somebody in the government give me the job of whoever makes the names up? I’ll do it for free. Watch out! The ‘lovely warm summer’ heatwave has just hit Europe.” [Twitter, 7/15/23]
  • COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine influencer Dr. Eli David: “When the weather is a bit warmer than usual: Experts™: IT'S PROOF OF GLOBAL WARMING!!!!! When the weather is colder than usual: Experts™: WEATHER AND CLIMATE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS YOU MORONS!!!!!” [Twitter, 7/17/23]
  • Newsmax host Chris Salcedo mocked concern over the record heat: “Newsflash folks, it gets hot in the summer.” He continued, “After a few particularly hot days on the Fourth of July weekend, the left — they went into full fearmongering mode.” Salcedo then interviewed Milloy, who warned that climate activists would call for climate lockdowns. [Newsmax, The Chris Salcedo Show, 7/17/23]
  • On The Five, Jesse Watters attacked “the left” for connecting climate change to heat waves across the globe and mocked climate activists: “The left rushing to blame global warming for that dangerous heat wave gripping the nation and the world right now. But I think the heat's getting to their heads. Climate change-obsessed liberals are actually acting crazier than usual, with eco-extremists in Germany literally gluing their hands to airport runways as a way to sound the alarm on how the planet's cooked.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/17/23]
  • Fox host Greg Gutfeld also attempted to downplay the record-breaking heat with bizarre logic: “The problem with using weather — like saying, ‘This place broke records’ — how many states, how many countries didn't break records? Nobody ever provides you the context. They’re going, ‘Three countries had record breaking heat waves.’ It’s like, well, ‘How many countries are there?’” [Fox News, The Five, 7/17/23]
  • On America’s Newsroom, Lomborg suggested that more air conditioning is the way to address extreme heat: “The way to fix this, of course, is to make sure that people get lots of air conditioning and that they can actually afford the energy that they will run their air conditioning on. That’s one. The second one is to remember that, yes, there are many people dying from heat, but many, many more people dying from cold.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 7/17/23]
  • Climate change denier and former University of Alabama professor Matthew Wielicki: “We used to call this summer. Now we call this a climate crisis.” [Twitter, 7/15/23]
  • Milloy: “India's monsoon season is not affected by emissions. Indians have died in monsoon flooding since there have been Indians and monsoons. It is really dishonest and disgusting to surf tragic deaths for climate.” [Twitter, 7/14/23]
  • Right-wing British pundit Brendan O’Neill, who has been praised by anti-renewable energy activist Michael Shellenberger, wrote that “global warming could be good for humankind.” Citing Lomborg, O’Neill wrote that “the truth is that global warming could be good for humankind” because more people die from the cold than heat. “It’s pissing down in Britain,” he continued, “Where’s our global warming? Even the name of the heatwave is designed to conjure up visions of hellfire and torment.” [Spiked, 7/14/23]
  • On Fox News at Night, Carl Demaio, a political operative and conservative radio host, called a California campaign to warn residents about climate-driven extreme heat “wasteful spending” and “fear porn.” [Fox News, Fox News at Night, 7/12/23]
  • Newsmax host Eric Bolling, in response to calls for climate action after flooding in the Northeast, denied that human activity is responsible for warming: “It's raining, so we all must change our behavior. Unprecedented weather events — look flooding’s terrible, loss of property is a disaster, and our hearts go out to those affected. But just imagine, for one moment, the ridiculousness and the pompousness to think that: one, our behavior has any real impact on weather and the Earth, and two, even if that were true — which it’s not — that we could do anything about it without making things worse.” [Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, 7/11/23]
  • Fox host Laura Ingraham also mocked the extreme heat and calls to action, suggesting that climate change is a made-up crisis: “It's hot, hot, hot all right. After all, we're in the middle of a season called ‘summer.’” Ingraham later played a clip from a previous show, arguing that “COVID lockdowns set the predicate for more to come.” She said, “Their so-called public health experts were wrong on everything from lockdowns to masks to social distancing. And yet now we see the usual suspects lining up to exploit another hyped crisis: of course, I’m talking about climate change.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 7/11/23]
  • Right-wing journalist and author Alex Berenson: As climate change hysteria reaches a new level of screeching (1-in-1000 this, world's hottest that), remember that weather-related deaths have PLUNGED since 1970. The wealthier the world becomes, the easier managing climate change will be. And wealth requires energy. Period. [Twitter, 7/10/23]
  • On Jesse Watters Primetime, guest host Pete Hegseth mocked reports of record-breaking heat and blamed media for “hyping climate insanity”: If there is one thing the mindless left loves to magically discover every year, it’s that summer is hot. Hegseth continued, “It was hotter in New York in April. And it’s not even the hottest June we’ve ever had. The data shows that the 80s and 90s … were a lot hotter.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/7/23]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Pakistan Heatwave Toll Crosses 1,000

Pakistan Heatwave Toll Crosses 1,000

By Deutsche Presse-Agentur (TNS)

ISLAMABAD — More than 1,000 people have died from a recent heatwave in southern Pakistan with thousands still being treated as temperatures started to ease, officials said on Thursday.

Karachi, capital of Sindh province, and several other districts are in the grip of soaring temperatures since the start of Ramadan on Friday.

“More than 950 people have died in Karachi and over 50 in [the] rest of the province,” an official at Jinnah Hospital said.

More than 40,000 people have suffered heatstroke and over 8,000 were treated at the facility, he said on condition of anonymity.

The temperature in Karachi, which had reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) over the weekend, dipped to 37 (98 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

The government has set up 100 heatstroke centers in Karachi, while an influential religious scholar on Wednesday issued an edict that sick and frail people can skip fasting in the holy month of Ramadan.

Photo: Jacksoncam via Flickr

Weather Could Make Firefighting More Difficult In Northern California

Weather Could Make Firefighting More Difficult In Northern California

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times

As two Northern California wildfires continued to burn out of control Sunday, weather in the days ahead is threatening to worsen and expand the blazes.

The Sand fire east of Sacramento grew to 3,800 acres Sunday, and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents, destroyed 10 homes, and may not be fully contained until the first week of August, officials said.

A second blaze outside Yosemite National Park had chewed through 2,100 acres, forcing evacuations and was drawing closer to homes.

The efforts of hundreds of firefighters could be complicated this week by extreme weather conditions. Thunderstorms are predicted near Yosemite, raising the possibility of lightning strikes, while the unrelenting heat and winds near Placerville could fan the flames and push the Sand fire deeper into brittle vegetation.

“Any time we have gusts along with high temperatures and low humidity it’s a recipe for aggressive fire growth,” Drew Peterson, a Sacramento, Calif.-based National Weather Service meteorologist, said of the conditions near the Sand fire.

Temperatures this week are expected to climb into the low 100s, with humidity hovering around 10 percent — a level that presents a significant fire danger.

To the southeast in Yosemite, meteorologists said they were unsure how expected thunderstorms in the area might impact the other large fire in the state, which had been burning for about a day.

“A thunderstorm is a mixed blessing,” said Hanford, Calif.-based National Weather Service meteorologist Gary Sanger. “You get rain, but you also run the risk of lightning and more fires, and gusty winds which can cause the fire to spread.”

About 1,500 firefighters aided by a dozen air tankers and water-dropping helicopters were battling the flames of the Sand fire Sunday, said Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. One inmate firefighter suffered minor injuries Saturday, she said.

By late Sunday, officials said, the fire had destroyed 10 homes in two separate areas and was 35 percent contained.

Half of the houses were near San Ridge Road near California 49, where the fire started Friday afternoon when a vehicle drove through dry brush, Tolmachoff said. The rest of the homes were to the south and east, burned by a part of the fire that “blew up” Saturday afternoon, stoked by a combination of high temperatures, low humidity, and 20-mph wind gusts, she said.

A Red Cross shelter at Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs was set up to assist the roughly 1,200 people who’d been evacuated from more than 500 homes in the area, officials said.

Scott Gediman, a spokesman for the park in Yosemite, said that fire started at 4 p.m. Saturday near El Portal. He said more than 400 firefighters were attacking the flames on the ground and from the air, with more expected to arrive.

One home was burned and about 100 homes in the communities of Old El Portal and La Floresta had been evacuated.

“We have steep, rugged terrain and hot, dry conditions. It’s supposed to be over 100 here today,” Gediman said. “We’re working aggressively to get the fire out.”

Last year, the 410-square mile Rim fire burned an estimated 77,000 acres, or 120 square miles, within Yosemite National Park. Sparked in mid-August by an illegal campfire in the Stanislaus National Forest, the Rim fire was not fully contained until late October.

Peterson, the Sacramento-based meteorologist, said the Sand fire has so far proved to be easier to access for firefighters than the remote Rim fire.

Staff writer Adolfo Flores contributed to this story.

AFP Photo/Jorge Cruz

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