Fox & Friends hosts don't understand the difference between climate change and weather

During an exchange on the August 5 edition of Fox & Friends, the hosts proved willfully ignorant about the difference between climate change and weather -- and dismissive of the millions of people who have suffered through a summer punctuated by deadly extreme heat.

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Citation From the August 5, 2021, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): It's been beautiful here in New York. No humidity, it's perfect.

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Lovely. Feels like October. 

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Right, and I think it was one of the coldest July's we've had in some while. I don't know if that's going to really fly with climate change.

DOOCY: Global cooling. 

KILMEADE: Right. Global cooling, that's right. I forgot that headline. Except for when it's really hot it becomes global warming. I keep forgetting. Keeps changing.

DOOCY: Just call it climate change and that takes -- 

[CROSSTALK] 

KILMEADE: Right. Anything that happens. If it becomes windy. It's panic time. Get out of your SUV --

DOOCY: Global wind.

KILMEADE: And run for the hills.

This bit by Fox & Friends hosts is both painfully stupid and reminiscent of a body of tweets by then-President Donald Trump, who conflated weather with global warming while suggesting that the term “climate change” was adopted by scientists and advocates to hide the incongruity between major winter storms and the idea of warming temperatures. Interestingly, the term “climate change” was promoted by the Republican strategist Frank Luntz as part of the infamous 2002 memo advising the GOP on how to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity was warming the planet.

The exchange is also utterly detached from the reality experienced by millions of Americans this past July. This summer alone the U.S. has undergone five major heat waves. The recent Pacific Northwest heat wave, described as the worst “ever observed there in modern times,” was responsible for nearly 200 deaths in Oregon and Washington and nearly 500 deaths in British Columbia, Canada.