Anne Thompson

'Evening News' Showcases War of the Greens: Trees vs. Solar Panels
By Jeff Poor | April 8, 2008 | 11:07 AM EDT

Suppose you had trees on your property that served as a privacy barrier and provided shade for your home. Then imagine your eco-minded neighbor installs solar panels and demands you cut down your trees so sunlight can reach his panels.

You might think: It's my property! The problem is - your neighbor has the law backing him up, according to the April 7 "CBS Evening News." Sounds like a case of environmentalism gone wild, right?

"Richard Treanor lives across the fence, drives a hybrid car," CBS correspondent Ben Tracy said. "Ten years ago he planted these redwoods to provide privacy. Now they had his neighbor seeing red."

"He called us over to the fence one day and said ‘I am going to be installing solar panels and therefore you have to take your trees down,'" Treanor explained.

And thanks to California's 1978 Solar Shade Control Act, the trees had to go. Failure to comply is a criminal offense.

NBC’s Global Warming Magic: Cap-and-Trade to Make Solar Energy Affordable
By Jeff Poor | March 14, 2008 | 2:44 PM EDT

One of the global warming community's favorite alternative energy resources is solar energy. Since it emits no greenhouse gas, it gives alarmists a warm and fuzzy feeling. However, that feeling has affected NBC's global warming reporter Anne Thompson ability to apply basic economic principles to her stories.

According to Thompson, there are two drawbacks to solar power - 1) You're at the mercy of Mother Nature for sunlight; and 2) It's drastically more expensive than fossil-fuel electricity.

"And there is the matter of price," Thompson said. "The Electric Research Power Institute says this kind of solar power is two to four times more expensive than electricity from natural gas or coal."

NBC’s Thompson: Let Them Eat Wind or Solar Power!
By Jeff Poor | February 22, 2008 | 2:20 PM EST

Global warming alarmist Anne Thompson has shown a propensity for having little regard for economic reality.

Thompson offered viewers on the February 21 broadcast of the "NBC Nightly News" a variety of reasons why building a badly-needed coal-fired power plant in an isolated part of Nevada is a bad idea.

"Critics say emissions are exactly the issue, because coal-fired power is the nation's biggest producer of CO2 emissions," Thompson said in a February 21 report from Ely, Nev. "That's why Nevada is in the center of this fight. The Ely energy center, which would sit in this valley, along with the other two proposed coal-fired plants, could more than double those greenhouse gas emissions, sending another 31 million tons into the sky."

'Nightly News': Antarctic Ice Changes Man’s Fault; No Other Possibility Acknowledged
By Jeff Poor | January 15, 2008 | 3:02 PM EST

The penguins soon won’t have a home and it’s all our fault.

You might get that impression after watching the January 14 “Our Planet” segment on “NBC Nightly News” about the ice shift in Antarctica.

“In 2006, the Antarctic peninsula near South America lost 60 billion metric tons of ice; 132 billion tons disappeared in West Antarctica,” said Anne Thompson, NBC News chief environmental affairs correspondent. “Big numbers that could have a big impact.”

Thompson blamed mankind as the “prime suspect” for the changes – ignoring all other possibilities, despite some scientists that are skeptical of that theory.

Without Proof, NBC Presumes Global Warming to Blame for Wild Fires
By Brent Baker | October 23, 2007 | 9:00 PM EDT
ABC and CBS stuck Tuesday night with news stories on the impact of the roaring California wild fires, but as houses were still burning NBC Nightly News found it an opportune time to make the case that global warming caused the fires. NBC's sole expert, however, delivered a circular argument in which the lack of scientific proof did not detract at all from his media-shared presumption that anything bad which occurs in the environment can be tied to global warming. After reporter Anne Thompson cautioned scientists say you can't know “after just one season” whether warming is to blame, Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a leading global warming alarmist who, NBC failed to mention, serves as a science adviser to Environmental Defense, reasoned:
The weather we've seen this fall may or may not be due to the global warming trend, but it's certainly a clear picture of what the future is going to look like if we don't act quickly to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases.
‘Nightly News’ Continues Down Warpath Against Bottled Water
By Jeff Poor | October 18, 2007 | 6:17 PM EDT

Same story, different day – the networks do another bottled water/environmental story. Who would have thought corporate “big water” would ever have the bulls-eye painted on it by the rabid environmentalists in the television media? “Across the country cities are urging thirsty Americans to think outside the bottle,” said NBC’s Chief Environmental Affairs Correspondent Anne Thompson on the October 17 “Nightly News.” “From Austin to Boston, it's bottle versus tap in taste tests.

ABC, CBS and NBC Hail 'Sweet Vindication' for Al Gore
By Brent Baker | October 12, 2007 | 9:45 PM EDT
All three broadcast network evening newscasts led Friday night by celebrating Al Gore's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, portraying it as “sweet vindication” for him while presuming his global warming views are beyond dispute and speculating about the “tantalizing prospect” of a presidential run. ABC anchor Charles Gibson teased: “Tonight, the man who almost won the White House did win the most-coveted award on the planet. So might Al Gore go back to politics?” Reporter David Wright trumpeted Gore's efforts “to call the world's attention to a problem that many would have preferred to ignore,” but Wright fretted that not all are aboard the Gore adulation bandwagon: “Even the Nobel Prize is not going to be enough to silence the naysayers, some of whom still believe that man is not responsible for global warming...”

CBS's Katie Couric wondered: “Will the former Vice President now go after the prize he lost, the biggest prize in American politics?” She touted him as “the first American Vice President to win this most prestigious award since Charles Dawes back in 1926.” Reporter John Blackstone hailed “a remarkable comeback for a man who seven years ago seemed all but finished with public life,” a comeback attributable to how Gore “traveled the world with a slide show talking about the reality of global warming.”

NBC anchor Brian Williams empathized with how “he never was awarded what he tried so hard to get and wanted so badly -- the American presidency -- but today former Vice President Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” Anne Thompson stressed the “prize has done nothing to stop the speculation about Gore's political future.” She enthused that a presidential bid by Gore is “a tantalizing prospect,” though “few expect” it to happen. Thompson concluded by seeing complete vindication: “Gore's co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, left no doubt that man is responsible for global warming. The debate now is over how much the climate will change if nothing is done.”
Disgraceful Global Warming Hysteria at NBC: ‘Meltdown in Greenland’
By Noel Sheppard | September 19, 2007 | 12:28 AM EDT

The media's global warming hysteria is clearly becoming unhinged.

First, ABC News published a photo essay at its website Friday prominently displaying computer generated images of U.S. cities drowned by climate change raised seas.

Then, on Monday's "Nightly News," NBC's environmental correspondent Anne Thompson, reporting from Greenland, cautioned viewers that the "summer thaw, picking up dangerous speed 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle...could ignite worldwide disaster."

How pleasant, wouldn't you agree? I sincerely hope few Americans were watching this abomination while they were eating dinner. After all, Thompson ominously began her report (video available here, h/t Marc Morano):

NBC Nightly News Joins Newsweek in Smearing Global Warming 'Deniers'
By Brent Baker | August 16, 2007 | 3:10 AM EDT
Only days after Newsweek was embarrassed when its own columnist, Robert Samuelson, excoriated the magazine for a “fundamentally misleading” and “highly contrived” cover story meant to defame the global warming “denial machine,” Wednesday's NBC Nightly News aired an equally distorted story which smeared “deniers,” a term no doubt meant to conjure a similarity to dishonorable Holocaust deniers. Reporter Anne Thompson began her crusading piece with “In Denial” on screen over video of the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels. She fretted about “interest groups fueled by powerful companies, including oil giant ExxonMobil.” Citing the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists, she highlighted their claim that “ExxonMobil gave almost $16 million over seven years to denier groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute.” But as Marc Morano, of the minority staff of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, disclosed in a posting, “proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so,” not even counting the impact of one-sided media reporting, “while skeptics have received a paltry $19 MILLION.”

Nonetheless, touting Michael Oppenheimer as an expert, whom NBC identified only as an “atmospheric scientist” with Princeton University, Thompson asserted that “climate experts say whether hired guns or honest dissenters, deniers are confusing the issue and delaying solutions.” Oppenheimer, who NBC failed to note is “science adviser” to the left-wing Environmental Defense organization, ominously warned: “This is a problem that needs to be attended to very soon, immediately, or else it threatens to get out of control.” Thompson's conclusion echoed: “The scientific debate is no longer over society's role in global warming. It is now a matter of degrees.”
Another Hot Summer, Another Chance for Nets to Blame 'Man-Made Global Warming'
By Brent Baker | August 7, 2007 | 10:15 PM EDT
NBC has apparently abandoned any doubt about the formulation that bad or hot weather in the summer proves man-made global warming since just two years after NBC Nightly News pointed out how “three of the five warmest summers on record were in the 1930s,” Tuesday's newscast showcased a UN report to contend “extreme weather” and an August heat wave demonstrates man-made global warming. Back on the July 25, 2005 NBC Nightly News, after a man on the street declared that “it seems like each summer is a little warmer than the one before,” reporter Carl Quintanilla countered: “Actually, that's not right.” He noted that “three of the five warmest summers on record were in the 1930s. Climate experts like Kevin Trenberth say the one-degree increase in temperature this century is no reason to break a sweat.” (MRC CyberAlert item which began with panic from CNN's Lou Dobbs: “Record heat and drought in the United States and Europe. New fears tonight that it's all the result of global warming. Is the Earth witnessing a massive environmental change?”

Two years later, on Tuesday night, fill-in NBC anchor Ann Curry segued from a summer heat wave story to how “a new report out from the UN says we are in an extreme weather year all over the globe and the question tonight: Is global warming to blame?” Citing “a worldwide path of destruction,” Anne Thompson asserted that “global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began 120 years ago, extremes scientists say are consistent with an increase in carbon dioxide, man-made global warming.” Thompson moved on to a report from the left-wing, though naturally unlabeled, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on how heavy rains caused by global warming “churn up pollution in waterways, ruining beach plans.”