The right-wing outfit “Newsbusters” has targeted ABC News correspondent Bill Blakemore for his coverage of climage change.
Blakemore was the first major network correspondent to make the connection between weather extremes and global warming (in his recent segment on the 10-inch flood in Houston and the spreading wildfires several hundred miles away in Arizona. For breaking the long-standing reluctance of the media to make that connection, he deserves GREAT congratulations!
The Newsbuster site emphasizes that Blakemore does not have a climate science background. It conveniently ignores the fact that Blakemore interviews Kevin Trenberth, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, for the segment.
The site also conveniently ignored the fact that more intense downpours and more severe droughts have been an established indicator of man-made global warming since 1995, when Tom Karl of the National Climatic Data Center (and a longtime skeptic about greenhouse warming) declared such extremes are exactly what we expect to see in an enhanced greenhouse. Newsbusters, by the way, whose mission is to “Expose and Combat Liberal Media Bias,” was set up by right-wing activist Brent Bozell. A sister organization, The Media Research Center, is launching a campaign to prosecute the New York Times for compromising national security by revealing a Treasury Department program, unauthorized by Congress, to screen financial transactions by citizens.
