Journalism & Media

"As North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory's budget director, Art Pope will help make important fiscal decisions for a state facing serious threats due to climate disruption, from destructive storms and more intense hurricanes to unusually fast-rising seas. But he will carry out that work in a political context that's been shaped by disinformation about climate science -- thanks to efforts Pope himself has generously funded."

"The National Weather Service moved to fire one of its top managers Friday, four days after he was quoted in an article in The Washington Post lamenting that budget cuts and the threat of further reductions in March were forcing him to pare back a public safety service."

"The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - known by its critics as a 'corporate bill mill' - has hit the ground running in 2013, pushing 'models bills' mandating the teaching of climate change denial in public school systems."

"Three senior Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee defended a clean-energy grant program Wednesday, saying Republicans used misleading figures in a report earlier this month to slam the initiative."

"The Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal judge in New Orleans to require BP to produce documents that outline how it low-balled the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from its Macondo well in 2010. The estimates were sent to the Coast Guard and Congress."

"A paltry 1.2 percent of headlines in prominent media outlets focus on environment. That's the depressing finding from a study out today that surveyed headlines from 43 news and related organizations between January 2011 and May of 2012. Interestingly, Fox News devoted significantly more time to covering the environment, including healthy doses of climate change-denial, than did MSNBC and CNN ...."

"Last month Fox News reported on the 'grizzly deaths' of 500 songbirds in West Virginia. Behind the fell deed: a wind farm, caught red-turbined. 'To date, the Obama administration... has not prosecuted a single case against the wind industry,' the Fox reporter laments. Opponents of renewable energy love to trot out the risk wind turbines pose to birds, and some engineering work has gone into making them more avian-friendly. But a new study released today in Nature shows that if you really want to protect birds, forget about wind: You need to lock up Kitty."