Forget Islamist extremism, nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, and U.S. challenges needing prompt attention such as swelling national debt, growing federal welfare programs, reversing scaled-down U.S. military forces along with efforts to boost the American economy and jobs…the biggest threat facing the U.S. is --- climate change, according to President Barack Obama, notes Grumpy Editor.
The president continued to beat drums for climate change (formerly global warming), which many top media continue to report without raising eyebrows.
"No challenge, no challenge, poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," the president declared in his State of the Union Address to Congress.
This contrasted with top priorities cited by Americans that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, prior to the president’s address that evening.
A WSJ/NBC News poll put creating jobs at the top of the list, followed by defeating/dismantling Islamic State, reducing the federal deficit, securing the border with Mexico, and addressing Iran’s nuclear program, among others. Climate change/global warming doesn’t appear on the list.
Obama delivered a similar message four months earlier at the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City: “For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address this week --- terrorism, instability, inequality, disease --- there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.”
In last week’s address, he pointed out that “if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe."
Meanwhile, continuing in the “climate change” category, a Washington Post story last week went into detail on “an Arctic ice cap appears to be sliding into the sea.”
(Keep in mind that for years, going back to black-and-white newsreel days, there were periodic attention getters that showed glaciers sliding, with great splashes, into the sea.)
The Post story mentioned ice is disappearing in Austfonna, north of the Arctic Circle in Norway territory, which is the longest glacier front in the Northern Hemisphere. Since 2012, the story pointed out, the ice cap covering an island has fallen by 160 feet, based on satellite (not human) measurements.
The material said rapid melting of glaciers and ice sheets “could swamp coastal cities around the world.”
But a line at the end of the feature cautioned: “Still, researchers can’t definitively say the shrinking of the Austfonna ice cap is due to global warming.”
FYI, IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE EDITORS MISSED THESE…
The Santa Barbara News-Press continues to use “illegals” when describing people living illegally in the United States, prompting protests and counter-protests in the community. Explains the daily: “It has been the practice for nearly 10 years at the Santa Barbara News-Press to describe people living in this country illegally as 'illegals' regardless of their country of origin. This practice is under fire by some immigration groups who believe that this term is demeaning and does not accurately reflect the status of ‘undocumented immigrants,’ one of several terms other media use to describe people in the United States illegally --- it is an appropriate term in describing someone as ‘illegal’ if they are in this country illegally"…Stars and Stripes reports the much acclaimed film, American Sniper, is “also a big hit at Army and Air Force Exchange Service theaters, with the average attendance for the Iraq war film almost three times higher than attendance for other films being shown”…Carson (Calif.) city council members are grumpy over coverage the Daily Breeze in Torrance is giving their city. So they are mulling whether Carson, 12 miles south of downtown Los Angeles and four miles east of Torrance, should cancel subscriptions to the Breeze --- along with urging residents and businesses to boycott the newspaper --- claiming it published several “accounts of homicides, other crimes and negative stories” that were reported as “misleadingly located near Carson.” The Breeze’s executive editor explained his newspaper “has consistently referred to the unnamed unincorporated area of Los Angeles County near Carson as just that”…After five years without one, J.C. Penney Co. is bringing back its catalog with a 120-page version to select customers in March…In a $300 million deal, up from $275 million for TV rights, CBS Corp. and the National Football League renew their partnership for another season…Speaking of football, a 30-seconds TV spot on NBC’s Super Bowl coverage next Sunday costs about $4.5 million…U.K.-based The Economist names Zanny Minton Beddoes as its first female editor…Blaming “economic circumstances,” Sports Illustrated lays off all six staff photographers. However, they will be allowed to freelance for SI, a weekly magazine owned by Time Inc. which was spun off from Time Warner Inc. last year.
Giving a Crookston (Minn.) High School senior a taste of a newsroom:
The Crookston Daily Times will see Allison Reinhart as a writer-photographer during the spring semester. A position on the staff is part of an independent study curriculum in which she will earn academic credit while spending two hours in the newsroom each morning. She will be attending the University of North Dakota in the fall.
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