From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Of course, they still find space to blame President Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

It’s a record 48.9°C summer. The media doesn’t care, and there’s a few reasons why

JEFF SPARROW
FEB 2, 2026

Parts of Australia recorded their highest temperature of all time this month, while across the world, the crucial 1.5°C warming limit is sliding increasingly out of reach. But much of the media no longer cares.

In January 2021, it [media climate mentions] dropped back, with 2,050 references. It then continued to slowly decline: 1,779 in January 2022, 1,913 in 2023, 1,629 in 2024, and 1,600 in 2025. …

But then came the COVID-19 pandemic …

The genocide in Gaza …

That’s surely the context for the media’s declining attention to climate. This week, the US finished its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement … political and media insiders feel less pressure than ever to discuss climate: a topic increasingly off the global agenda.

Back in the day, many scientists thought the reality of a warming planet would be enough to force a response. That’s clearly not the case. Without a renewed movement for climate action, the temperature records will continue to fall –and nothing whatsoever will follow.

About the author

Jeff Sparrow
Contributor

He is a former columnist for Guardian Australia, a former Breakfaster at radio station 3RRR, and a past editor of Overland literary journal. His books include Provocations: New and Selected Writing, Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating, Fascists Among Us: Online Hate and the Christchurch Massacre, Trigger Warnings: Political Correctness and the Rise of the Right, No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson and several others titles.

Read more: https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/02/02/climate-change-heatwave-summer-media-coverage-global-warming/

As usual greens are blaming everyone and everything but themselves.

The real reason the green agenda is collapsing is nothing bad has happened. Hitting 1.5C without any climate disasters caused a critical loss of credibility for the green movement. Their pathetic flailing about claiming the climate disaster is here, trying to redefine Australia’s beach weather Summer as a climate catastrophe, or talk up the January US snow storm, it’s like a comedy horror story reveal where the terrifying monster turns out to be a mouse.

Yale 360: We Briefly Crossed 1.5C But We Still Have Time to Reverse Climate Change

With fresh memories of the lies and the exaggerations of the Covid lockdown, the exposure of the fake climate crisis, the exposure of 1.5C as being just an arbitrary number pulled out of someone’s proverbial, came at just the wrong time for greens. People are fed up with being frightened and misled by activists in lab coats.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.