Accuracy in Media

On Tuesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews used the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy to attack global warming skeptics by calling them “pigs” who “don’t care about the planet.”

Matthews was speaking with Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and professor Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, who is also a former chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. Rep. Markey said that the hurricane “frames the election next Tuesday” as a battle between “Mother Nature” and the “Koch brothers,” who have been vilified by the Left for funding groups that push back against global warming.

Markey added that if Romney wins the election, he will roll back the fuel economy standards which will endanger the planet, and endanger the people who will have to go to the Middle East to import the oil.

Matthews then turned to Oppenheimer:

Back in the 60s, we called such people pigs. Pigs. No, really. They don’t care about the planet, they don’t care about the destruction of war. All they want is what they got, their stuff, and they want more of it. Is that what we’re facing here, just greed? I’m not talking about the guy at the coal mine—that’s hard work. I’m talking about people who won’t listen to you, won’t listen to science because they want more stuff.

Matthews has joined Al Gore in taking the tragedy that has resulted from Sandy and turned it into a political football. They are saying that the hurricane and its subsequent devastation is a result of global warming, though they don’t have any solid evidence to back up their claims. They are using it as another reason to support Obama, because he believes in global warming and Romney doesn’t.

If Matthews was truly interested in having a legitimate discussion about global warming and hurricanes, he should have asked Joe Bastardi from Weatherbell Analytics. Bastardi has pointed out that we having cooling in the Pacific and warming in the Atlantic, and that it’s all part of a cycle, and not global warming.

Matthews, Gore and other global warming alarmists would like to see this become a bigger campaign issue, as opposed to jobs and the economy which have dominated the election, because they believe it would help Obama’s reelection chances. The economy has been the albatross around Obama’s neck that could drag him down to defeat next week.

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