Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist and climate activist, was interviewed yesterday by Democracy Now about the impacts of Hurricane Helene. Here is part of what he said...
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I was reading articles about the flooding in western North Carolina in The New York Times. The articles did not even mention climate change, not a single mention. This is what’s driving it. And then there’s the larger context of irreversible global overheating, which is caused by the fossil fuel industry. They’ve been lying and blocking action for decades.

The planet’s overheating. It’s irreversible. It’s caused by the fossil fuel industry. And the reason I say “industry” specifically, not “fossil fuels,” is because this industry has been systematically blocking action for almost 50 years, for decades and decades.

This will get worse as the planet continues to get hotter. We’ll see even worse storms in the future. Every day that we continue burning fossil fuels and allowing this industry to continue spreading disinformation and blocking action, the planet gets hotter.

Hotter oceans fuels these storms, causing them to intensify more rapidly, to get much more powerful. And a hotter atmosphere holds more water, so we get these intense rainfalls, which cause the sort of flooding that’s happening right now.

I think that this is the most evil thing that's possible to imagine, that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists will continue to lie so they can line their bank accounts at the irreversible expense of our planet and the future of humanity.
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LEARN MORE -- https://truthout.org/video/media-fails-to-link-hurricane-helene-to-fossil-fueled-climate-change/

#Media #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange

Media Fails to Link Hurricane Helene to Fossil-Fueled Climate Change

The storm devastated large swaths of the southeastern US after making landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm.

Truthout
@breadandcircuses Media is obviously paid off since they neglect to mention the obvious truths.
@Gladso @breadandcircuses
Not paid off...OWNED.
🙈 🙉 🙊
@breadandcircuses I’m in Canada on holiday, there were two international stories in the news on TV last night: 1, the flooding, 2, the shutdown of the last remaining coal fired power station in the UK. Plus one about a new hydroelectric dam in Alberta. Not once was the word ‘climate’ mentioned, it was bizarre. They’d have had to work quite hard to avoid it, presumably cutting out bits of interviews.
@breadandcircuses They did mention worries about the dam not providing enough power as water might reduce in future, that oblique mention was close as they got, still no mention of climate change. Then in a local magazine, they’re saying they’re trying to open a new open cast coal mine :-(
@okohll @breadandcircuses
Well, we did have a bit of the flood here in Austria, and many (albeit not all oft them) local politicians and media ALSO tried to avoid the word "climate change" like the plague.
Corporate media makes money by sellig advertizing space to big corporations who do not want to change their ways or especially pay any money at all (like CO2 taxes) in order to save the earth.
Also rich media owners hate wealth taxes that political "left"-wing parties like the greens want.
@okohll @breadandcircuses
Headlines should be "Britain becomes first G7 nation to end coal power 20 years after it would have been sensible".

@breadandcircuses it is the most evil thing, condemning billions of people to a climate ravaged world so a few hundred men can be rich.

What are we doing as a species, we should be eating these men and building a better world.

@breadandcircuses that one guy editing wikipedia to take out mentions of climate change when Hurricane Katrina was happening. That sucks
@breadandcircuses They may not say it, but we can see the evidence...
@breadandcircuses
so are the folks of Fl, GA,and NC feeling better about their local/state government. Imagine how much worse it would have been if the conservatives had not outlawed global climate change. There is not even a mention of it in the news.
I also read that the conservative are planning on outlawing/defunding FEMA and NOAA so next you won't have to worry about any cleanup help and advance warning.
Do you feel safer now?
Think about this when you vote this year.</snark>#election2024
OK just to get this out, yes the NYT is a filthy nasty fascist corporate ass kissing cop humping propaganda platform for the Murdoch empire. They absolutely should feature fossil fuels as the primary cause of this.

I worry about the sensationalism of this though. Fossil fuels are killing more people with drought than flooding, but drought isn't as dramatic. I worry that as water gets concentrated in a few places on Earth, all the press is going to be on the flooding, while the rest of us bake into a desert because it's not as newsworthy. Have you seen what's been happening to cattle in Africa?
@breadandcircuses Media doesn't "fail" to link the hurricane to fossil fuels, they deliberately decide not to. That's a significant difference.
@breadandcircuses Shorter version: “Media fails.”

@breadandcircuses

“I think that this is the most evil thing that's possible to imagine, that fossil fuel executives and lobbyists will continue to lie so they can line their bank accounts at the irreversible expense of our planet and the future of humanity.”

@breadandcircuses Credit to #NPR for not only referencing climate change but almost always explicitly labeling it as "human-caused climate change."
@breadandcircuses I hate that it is too easy to sweep this under the carpet with "but we had hurricanes before all this climate change 'nonsense'".
Three cheers for slowly boiling the frog!