Media hysterics: 84 degrees F is a “heat bomb”
29 deg C is a “heat bomb”. That’s about 84 degrees F. Good grief.
Media: “Lethal” is the new hot summer word!
We used to have hot summers. Now we have “lethal”, “brutal”, “scorching” summers.
Media: Media will soon run out of adjectives “rain bomb”
Expect a government program to provide new adjectives as the media runs out of superlatives:
Media: AP implies The Aral Sea dried up due to climate change
The AP stretches quite a bit to imply the shrinking of the shallow Aral Sea was due to climate change. Soviet-era irrigation projects diverted the incoming rivers to agriculture and the Sea immediately began shrinking.
Climate: “Fire-breathing carbon monster in the sky”
How not to do climate communications.
Climate: How the media reported on tropical storm Hilary in California
The spin began with “deadly”, “life threatening”, “catastrophic” speculation, then followed that afterwards with “It wasn’t that bad”, and stories saying the tropical storm was 100% caused by the Global Boiling ClimateCrisis, and then a few adding historical context of past tropical storms and even a hurricane.
Climate: “Rebranding Climate Change as a Public Health Issue”
Should climate change be re-branded as a public health issue?
Media: Remember July’s reports on smoke from fires in Canada?
In July, the national news reported about smoke from Canada wild fires impacting east coast cities. Why the AQI was over 100! Oh my! In the past few days, the AQI at my town has exceeded 500. It’s not even worth a news story in my state, outside the County.
The Daily Doomer: “Existential threats are getting worse: nuclear war, AI fears, climate change”
We are all going to die, Really Soon Now. Your dose of The Daily Doomer.
Climate communications: When air temperatures are normal, report “land surface temperature” – much scarier!
When the air temperature is hot, but not unusually hot, switch to reporting on the summertime ground surface temperature (80C/180F) – it’s a bigger and scarier number than the air temperature so go for it! But it, alas, it is actually a normal summertime land surface temperature and has been for years and years. But the Doomers at parody news site The Guardian know that their readers don’t know that.