After Hottest Year On Record, Fox News Buries Its Head In The Sand

Fox News Ignores Announcement That 2012 Is The Hottest Year On Record For U.S.

UPDATE: On the January 9th edition of The Five, co-host Bob Beckel attempted to report the 2012 heat record only to be shouted down by co-host Greg Gutfeld. It was the first time the milestone was mentioned on Fox News.

Federal scientists have announced that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the contiguous U.S., an illustration of the kind of extremes we can expect with unchecked climate change. The news was widely covered, but Fox News has ignored it entirely. 

Every major news outlet* except for Fox News has covered the record heat announcement, which drew above-the-fold, front-page coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post. This record year was an illustration of how greenhouse gases are warming our atmosphere. Thomas R. Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center, which made the announcement, told the Post, “you're going to see [records] with increasing frequency,” and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Jake Crouch told ClimateWire “Climate change has had a role in this,” adding “Going into the future, we would expect warmer years, or years with temperatures much above the 20th century average, to become more frequent.” 

Every state in the contiguous U.S. experienced above-average annual temperatures in 2012 and 19 states broke their all-time records:

Source: NCDC

The average temperature in 2012 broke the previous record by over a degree, as can be seen in this chart from Climate Central:

Source: Climate Central using data from NCDC

Fox News' failure to cover the milestone is only the latest in a long line of attempts to downplay climate change and its consequences. Of note, the network has frequently used isolated weather events to suggest the earth is not warming, ignoring the trend of many more record highs than lows. In fact, every winter since at least 2007, Fox has used snowfall to cast doubt on climate change:

*ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters have all covered the announcement.