After Petition, CNBC Unveils A “Special Week Of Climate Coverage”

CNBC has rolled out a week of climate change programming. The special coverage comes after a Media Matters report finding that the majority of CNBC's climate reporting in the first half of 2013 was misleading, leading over 28,000 people to call for improved coverage in a petition organized by the advocacy groups Forecast the Facts and Environmental Action.

On Monday, CNBC host Carolin Roth reported on “CNBC's special week of climate coverage” on her daily news show Worldwide Exchange. Tuesday, Roth again mentioned the “special week on climate change” during a segment on shale gas. On the show, Emily Wurth from Food and Water Watch asserted that “we know that all climate scientists tell us that we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and we can't drill for every last drop of oil and gas.”

However, this special programming has so far been limited to Worldwide Exchange, while CNBC's worst offenders are still misleading their audience on climate change.

Shortly after the petition was announced, Squawk Box co-anchor Joe Kernen doubled down on climate denial, bashing his critics on Twitter and on the air. During an interview with  John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company, Kernen complained about the “enviro-socialists,” calling them a “bona fide cult.” In response, Left Action created an additional petition to tell Kernen that “climate change is real, not a 'cult.'”

And Kernen's attacks on climate science have not abated. Recently, he suggested that insurance companies aren't “seeing” climate change. In fact, top reinsurance company Munich Re found in a study that there is “new evidence for the emerging impact of climate change” on increasing storm losses. According to consulting group Ernst & Young, the insurance sector is “going to be one of the hardest hit by climate change” -- and insurance companies must prepare for this to survive in the industry.

And preceding Obama's climate change speech, The Kudlow Report featured Steven Hayward of the fossil fuel industry funded American Enterprise Institute to “counter” Obama's “climate change confusion.”

The Forecast the Facts petition can still be signed to tell CNBC: “Climate Denial Is Bad For Business.”

UPDATE (8/21/13): On Squawk Box Wednesday morning, Joe Kernen confronted Carolin Roth about CNBC's climate week special. He mockingly asked whether she would cover how “climate warmers” are supposedly “predicting cold, wet, hot, dry summers,” continuing his repeated suggestion that climate change advocates attribute everything, including cold weather, to climate change.