Weiss's Intense CBS Change Storm Hits 'Climate Desk' Hard - Blows It Right Out of the Building

There have been personnel shufflings and goings, the CBS Evening News will get a new anchor sometime soon (once Weiss settles on an available choice or successfully poaches someone she wants now), staffers and stars at 60 Minutes are seething over Weiss sticking her nose in where they don't believe it belongs, and there's a general sense of upheavel in the air. The old, smug, comfortable progressive cocoon is being shredded from around them by the new owners and their new management.

One of the things the old CBS News Division was most proud of, but which wasn't a broadcast program in and of itself, was the much-ballyhooed 'Climate Desk' or, as things became ever more climate cult hysteria inclined, they became known as the 'climate crisis production team.' 

Of course, they did.

As you all know, we watch the Evening News darn near every night, and it was irksome to say the least to have every raindrop or hailstone attributed to the worsening of the climate, as if it had never rained or hailed before. Every. Single. Time.

Strangely enough, a report broke back in September that the venerated and revered 'climate crisis team' and all those urgent reminders in every single report on the news broadcasts weren't actually the result of an earnest Scientic™ team so much as serving as the mouthpiece for climate crisis propaganda flowing from a wholly separate organization.

WHUT

Former CBS staffers who were also cult members had left the network to form an organization called 'Climate Central' devoted to spreading the gospel of climate change through means fair or foul. With their access to CBS News, they had a ready-made vehicle for spreading The Word.

CBS News has leaned on content from a climate change group produced by former network staffers. 

In recent weeks, CBS News has disclosed in both on-air and online reports its coordination with Climate Central, a nonprofit that calls itself a "policy-neutral" and "independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about our changing climate and how it affects people’s lives." 

CBS News has cited Climate Central research dozens of times since 2021, according to Grabien transcripts. But it wasn't until July that the network began consistently referring to "our partners at Climate Central" on air.

Climate Central is pretty upfront about its mission.

...Climate Central describes itself as a "nonadvocacy organization" that "communicates climate change science, effects, and solutions to the public and decision-makers." Among its stated values: "We advance no specific policy, legislation, or technology to address climate change. We are scrupulously non-advocacy and non-partisan." 

The organization emphasizes "equity," writing, "We are committed to investigating and communicating the unequal burdens of climate change and to engaging with affected communities," a sentiment echoed in its "Fairness statement."

"Climate change is an engine of inequity. Around the world, socially and economically disadvantaged groups that have barely contributed to the problem often face its gravest threats and impacts," the group states. "In turn, these impacts magnify the inequalities that precede them, as the most-affected populations commonly have the fewest resources to prepare, respond, or recover. In the United States, historically marginalized groups at special risk include Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities."

And when CBS was busted, both for the revolving door between their producers and Climate Central as well as the open acknowledgments now at the end of any segment that they were produced with 'our partners,' the erasers quickly came out at the network, now in the throes of the acquisition.

...After Fox News Digital asked CBS News for comment, the network scrubbed the "partnership" language in its disclaimer from one of the articles, which now reads, "This story was provided by Climate Central," and also removed Tracy's byline. A spokesperson for CBS News declined to comment.

The last straw for the climate desk came during the recent drama concerning Hurricane Melissa, the little storm trucking across the Caribbean until it got trapped between two high-pressure systems just south of Jamaica. Stuck in place for days over those warm waters, Melissa spun into a ferocious, monster Category 5 storm that eventually turned north, laying waste to Jamaica as she charged on out.

As our Ebola says (after a couple of years working with the Joint Typhoon Center while he was in Guam), the axiom is, 'If it slows, it grows, and goes north.' Holds true every time.

To the head of the CBS climate desk and fervent true believer, Tracy Wholf, this was a picture-perfect opportunity to once again preach the Green gospel. So, Ms. Wholf did what she'd always done - sent an email to all with a suggestion on how to tie the burgeoning disaster in the Caribbean to climate change.

One teensy addition. For maximun effect.

...CBS News senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf, the former head of the climate desk, was among those who were fired. Two other producers on her team were also laid off, with a third producer reassigned to a different department. Only environmental correspondent David Schecter remains in his position, without an assigned producer overseeing his work.

Wholf’s departure came shortly after she sent an email within the news department suggesting that the network’s reports on Hurricane Melissa include context about the climate crisis. Wholf had suggested including a simple sentence in reports to link the storm with the crisis: “The above-average Atlantic Ocean temperatures, made worse by climate change, helped Melissa rapidly intensify into a category 5 storm.”

To the climate change community, it was a Scientific™ connection. 

As Hurricane Melissa raced toward Jamaica on Monday, CBS News senior coordinating producer Tracy Wholf sent an email to the newsroom, detailing the historic storm’s scientific connection to climate change.

In the message obtained by HEATED, Wholf explained how an overly-hot Atlantic Ocean supercharged Melissa, fueling its rapid 70-mph intensification in a single day, boosting winds by about 10 mph, and turning what might have been a category 4 storm into a category 5. Wholf suggested a simple sentence CBS News reporters could use in storm-related stories to make the connection.

Wholf usually sent emails like this in the wake of deadly extreme weather events, two CBS News staffers told HEATED. But it was the first such email Wholf had sent under the company’s new pro-Trump billionaire chief executive David Ellison, and its new anti-“woke” editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.

The cult is in absolute spaz mode over this post-Melissa purge, spitting mad about 'pro-Trump billionaires' and sneering at 'anti-woke' Weiss.

'But that's what we ALWAYS DO!' was all it took for the new bosses to boot the entire climate crew.

Under new management, CBS News immediately ditched its biased climate coverage instead favoring a balanced approach practiced at Free Press.

From Emily at Heated (great blog) https://t.co/PQJCNgfd1e

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) November 4, 2025

CBS under Weiss is looking for a return to science-based reporting vice blatant advocacy. My friend Charles, below, is right - the reaction has not only been ferocious, it's been downright hysterical, in both meanings of the word.

...When CBS’s new management decided to end that practice, it didn’t silence science—it disrupted a form of sermonizing. The layoffs weren’t about censoring truth; they were about ending a pattern of prepackaged conclusions masquerading as news. That’s why the reaction has been so ferocious. What the press corps mourns is not a loss of information but a loss of control over the story line.

The irony is that even in its coverage of the hurricane, the “climate desk” offered little actual evidence. It leaned on an “attribution study” from Imperial College claiming that Hurricane Melissa’s winds were seven percent higher than they would have been without climate change. Seven percent—an estimate derived from a computer model run on assumptions stacked upon assumptions. This kind of statistical acrobatics is then presented as certainty, with phrases like “we know that warming ocean temperatures are being driven almost exclusively by increasing greenhouse gases.” Such declarations are indistinguishable from theology: the conclusion is predetermined, the variables chosen to affirm belief, and dissent treated as heresy.

The truth is that the media’s climate beat has long since ceased to function as journalism. Its purpose became to moralize, to scold, to reinforce the idea that every gust of wind is proof of humanity’s original carbon sin. And when that kind of moral messaging fails to hold an audience—when viewers start tuning out—the newsroom doubles down, convinced that the problem is not with the message but with the unconverted.

What CBS seems to have realized, whether intentionally or by accident, is that audiences might prefer news to narrative. Removing a department dedicated to producing climate catechism isn’t “gutting science coverage.” It’s cleaning house. A network that stops treating speculation as revelation has not gone rogue; it’s rediscovering the difference between analysis and advocacy.

TRUMP'S BUDDY WAAH BOUGHT THE NETWORK WAAH

Demand more climate news.
⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
118 minutes of climate news stories in a single year isn’t enough, but CBS was covering more stories than NBC and FAR more than ABC. But that’s ALL OVER now, because Trump’s buddy bought the network.… pic.twitter.com/0Zg5rXhKgO

— Danielle Langlois (@DanielleLangWa) November 5, 2025

Adieu, doomsayers at the Climate Watch desk.

I'm sure there are tons of cult think tanks waiting to snap you up as a reward for all the good deeds you've done as on-air apostles of the Church of Change during your years at CBS.

How nice it's going to be to miss the inserted sermons. 

My eyeballs will hardly know what to do if they can't roll backwards anymore.

I look forward to simply hearing about 'the weather.'

SQUUEEE!!!!!