Patchy cloud cover this early Wednesday allows a few twinkling stars to peek through and later maybe the sun will arise like thunder — up here on California’s north coast, however, the shine will most-likely be only a squeaky peek.
The weather’s been quiet around these parts lately, but that don’t mean it ain’t screaming somewhere.

In the flow of the powerful news cycle these days concerns ‘scandal,’ which means fun for one side, shit for the other. President Obama seems swamped by events that offend the moral sensibilities of morons. If the shit continues, his second term could be just a string of quotes from 2008 — the IRS focusing on tea party, right-wing bat-shit crazy groups and the US DOJ secretly snagging mainstream news giant AP’s phone records might push that ultimate, bigger than Watergate, Benghazi, to a back burner, or maybe off the stove all together.

(Illustration found here).

The bigger, wide-effecting scandal is the lack of climate change coverage by the wired-up media — the AP segment hurts its feelings — and despite the planet crossing the 400 ppm last week, TV news people seemed unaware. The MSM has become a major royal pain in the ass.
Via SeattlePI:

But America’s major TV networks have found a hotter story — Prince Harry and Britain’s royal family — according to a new study by the watchdog group MediaMatters.org
During 2012, the warmest year on record in the “lower 48″ — the average temperature, at 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit was 3.2 degrees above the 20th Century average — the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news programs devoted 12 news segments to climate change, and 92 to the Royals, according to the MediaMatters count.
ABC World News was the worst offender, with 43 reports on the Royals to just one on warming of the Earth that was producing such violent weather as late season hurricanes.
NBC Nightly News featured climate change four times, compared to 38 for their Royal Highnesses.
At CBS Evening News, the ratio was a little closer 11 (the Royals) to seven (climate change).
…
ABC World News and NBC Nightly News last week ignored evidence that CO2, which causes global warming, is building up in the atmosphere . . . even as NBC reported on Prince Harry’s tour of the U.S.
The New York Times, in its Saturday editions, put the 400 parts-per-million CO2 story atop the front page.
On Tuesday, however, the “Gray Lady” was for a time picturing picturing Prince Harry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie atop the Times’ website as they inspected Hurricane Sandy damage — evidence, many scientists say, of later and more violent hurricanes.
MediaMatters found that ABC and NBC even broadcast more news about Donald Trump during 2011 than on the Earth’s warming climate.
(Global warming is real. Trump’s claims about President Obama’s birthplace became a national joke.)

Climate change is a slow moving news item, of course, but the word, ‘slow,’ is relative.
Quick as yesterday or last week:

After seeing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpass a historic threshold last week, the world should brace for the new peak level to soon become the global annual average, the World Meteorological Organization warned Tuesday.
“At the current rate of increase, the global annual average CO2 concentration is set to cross the 400 parts per million threshold in 2015 or 2016,” the UN agency said in a statement.

The way-biggest event/problem facing the planet right now — beyond all doubt — is climate change, but in reality it’s one of the least understood things around. Mainly, because the denial side has more money and a much-bigger mouth.
One cannot grasp that 2015 is less than two years away?
And the nightmare horror to soon follow — the main disturbing aspect with climate change is time.
For instance:

The drastic decline of summer Arctic sea ice is one recent example: In the 2007 report, the IPCC concluded the Arctic would not lose its summer ice before 2070 at the earliest.
But the ice pack has shrunk far faster than any scenario scientists felt policymakers should consider; now researchers say the region could see ice-free summers within 20 years.
Sea-level rise is another.
In its 2001 report, the IPCC predicted an annual sea-level rise of less than 2 millimeters per year.
But from 1993 through 2006, the oceans actually rose 3.3 millimeters per year, more than 50 percent above that projection.

So slow is actually fast — or words to that effect.
And all this means is continual bad news of crazed weather going insane.
Dr. Jeff Masters yesterday:

It’s been a “Topsy-Turvy Temperature Regime for U.S. this May” says underground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt in his latest post.
After record May cold and snows hit the Great Lakes over the weekend, a ferocious May heat wave is in full bloom today.
Several cities are poised to experience their greatest 1-day May temperature swing on record today.
Chicago bottomed out at 36° on Monday morning, and this afternoon’s high is predicted to be 88° — a spectacular 52° change in temperature in just one day.
The all-time record for a one-day warm-up in the Windy City during May is 50°, set May 1, 1992.
A 50°+ temperature swing is also expected in Minneapolis, where the high today is predicted to be 94°, coming on the heels of a 41° low Monday morning.
The most dramatic “Weather Whiplash”, though, came in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where the mercury hit 22° on May 12, then shot up to 92° on May 13 — an astonishing 70° rise in just one day!

And that’s the scandal — we need more of “!” in climate news.