STUDY: Networks Air over 90 Global Warming Stories, Ignore Lull in Temperature Trends

The news departments at the Big Three TV networks have done 92 new stories on the global warming debate recently, but not one of them informed viewers that there has been a decade-long lull in rising temperatures.

A new Media Research Center review of network news coverage shows that ABC, CBS, and NBC have each completely ignored the 10-year “mystery plateau” in global temperatures in favor of stories about rising sea levels, allergies, and extreme weather.

The MRC review found that no network climate change story thus far in 2013 has reported the slowdown in global warming. It also discovered that “experts” that promote man made global warming were quoted or featured in network coverage eight times as often as those critical. It also found that links between extreme weather and global warming were made nearly one-fourth of the time despite scientists disputing the notion.

The review also found that the networks ignored scientific findings that tend to cast the global warming theory into doubt:

The problems with climate forecasting models weren’t mentioned either, even though a researcher at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg found that many climate models couldn’t correctly model known temperatures in China. Investor’s Business Daily reported on March 28 that “Only half of the 21 analyzed climate models were able to reproduce the changes in some regions of China,” he said. “Few models can well reproduce the nationwide change.”

But the Big Three networks may be harping on a story that is starting to fall on deaf ears. A new poll by the Pew Research Center has found that Americans are not particularly concerned with global warming these days.

In the latest poll only 40 percent of the American respondents said that global warming was a threat to the country, that compared to 54 percent of respondents in foreign countries.