Thursday’s PBS News Hour segment on “extreme weather events” turned out even more bluntly unscientific than the channel’s usual apocalyptic environmental “Tipping Point” fare, with reporter Ali Rogin’s “climate change” screed equating temporary weather patterns with dangerous climate change — at least when the show and its climate guest cherry-pick the hottest spots on the map. [some emphasis, links added]
Never mind the extreme cold North America suffered in late January 2026, or Cuba’s first freeze on record in early February, events ignored by the News Hour earlier this year.
Now it’s all about the heat dome, due to “fossil fuel pollution.” (From the network that also complains about rising gas prices.)
Anchor John Yang warned of a “massive heat dome…spreading across much of the United States, with temperatures reaching historic highs”, before handing off to Ali Rogin for the latest alarmist entry in the News Hour‘s “Tipping Point” series on “climate change.”
Ali Rogin: John, this heat is not just notable for nearly unprecedented early spring temperatures, but also for the amount of ground it’s covering. Temperatures have been 20 to 40 degrees above normal in the Great Plains, and it’s been moving east. Some cities are already seeing record-breaking streaks, and the heat is expected to last into early April. That’s because a high-pressure system is acting like a lid, trapping hot air underneath and allowing temperatures to rise day by day. The Southwest registered triple digits, with temperatures reaching 101 degrees in New Mexico. Kansas also set a march record with 102 degrees twice in four days. For more on what we can expect in the coming days, I’m joined by Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central…..
Her guest, Bernadette Woods Placky, admitted to “some cold stretches” at the start of the year, “But since the beginning of the year, 85 percent of our records have been warm or hot records, and only 15 percent have been cold records…”
Rogin: So you mentioned we’re seeing record heat, record cold, but why is it that we are seeing more record hot weather than cold?
Placky was exceedingly confident in her analysis.
Placky: Well, that’s because of climate change. Now, one is the weather pattern. It’s extraordinary for this time of year. It looks more like a weather pattern we’d see in July. But that weather pattern alone, combined with the additional fossil fuel pollution we put into our atmosphere, is why we’re breaking records to this level….
PBS’s expert finally noticed cold weather (“rare snow in Alabama”). Any weather anomaly is a sign of “extreme weather” and dangerous “climate change,” making the label unfalsifiable.
Journalist Rogin made the lazy knee-jerk claim that the weather just keeps getting worse every year, ignoring, for one thing, the lack of hurricane landfalls in the United States in 2025, usual dire predictions notwithstanding.
Rogin: The weather just seems to get worse and worse every year, but it’s not just extreme heat. It’s also things like flooding in Hawaii, rare snow in Alabama, shifting temperatures in the Northeast. What else can we expect in terms of extreme weather for the rest of this year?
A transcript is available here.
Read more at NewsBusters
Highest temperatures – sure, on a given date. SoCal desert, in our ‘winter quarters’ near 29 Palms. Highest daytime temperature seen in the past 10 days – 102°. We’ve had this place since 1971, and it became ‘home’ in 1991 when we got city water. Went back through some old records – the highest temperature we’ve seen here – 116°. Locals here are prepared for hot weather. Just because it happens to occur in Spring – no big deal. Any visitor to Joshua Tree National Park who wants to go rock climbing and does so in the current conditions – – well, I’m too old to be a member of a search party.