How the news media is damning us all to climate purgatory.

As a reasonably well-educated and literate lay person (corporate lawyer specializing in large real estate projects) I feel compelled to observe that I, on a regular basis, depend on the news media for information as to what matters I should be concerned with (economic trends, new technologies, health risks such as seasonal flu outbreaks, new medical treatments, new scientific developments, etc.).

This information heavily influences my opinions, decision-making and voting preferences. In all of these areas, I depend very heavily on reporters to evaluate, summarize and communicate accurate information — and not to simply serve as stenographers for nitwits. Thus, while I can’t look to financial reporters to provide investment advice, I do expect them to be familiar enough with their area of supposed expertise to call out or cull out information (propaganda?) that is obviously false, misleading or incomplete in light of objective evidence.

I am dumbfounded that climate science is somehow seen as some special sort of bizzaro world where what I see as the normal expectation of news consumers (factual vetting, providing context and assessing implications based on discussions with real authorities) is thrown out the window in favor of he-said/she-said. In what universe do we expect particle physicists to be personally responsible for communicating the scientific implications of their research directly to the public, and then blame the physicists if the public doesn’t “get it”? Ditto for genetic researchers, astronomers, biologists, etc.

I came late to the party regarding AGW – until 2008, the issue was on my radar as a “century away” theoretical problem — it seemed like for every “this will be a big problem” article there was a “no problemo” article. I was accordingly floored in 2008 when I had to do due diligence research for a proposed investment in renewable energy to start reading primary materials and discovering that my media derived “understanding” was grossly in error. (And yes, in an effort to evaluate “the other side of the argument”, I did wind up visiting most of the prominent internet skeptic sites and looked at materials from Singer, Lindzen, Spencer, etc. – I concluded they were virtually useless in providing accurate information.)

I conclude that the views expressed by the moderators, Dr. Curry and others as to the lack of responsibility of journalists in this arena is directly contrary to the (apparently misplaced) assumptions and expectations that lay folk such as I bring to the table – that journalists will provide factual vetting, context and implications based on information in their respective field viewed as most authoritative. If this is the case, and if the former view is correct, media are just “filling space” with random noise and are effectively useless (or worse) in helping ordinary people assess risks, make decisions and make sense of the world.

The Press and Climate: An Anti-Testimonial
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The Greatest Threat to the Planet

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The House of Saud dictates FOX NEWS?

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Well, we can all certainly give this a 50/50, rather, a 57+2/41.

FOX NEWS in bed with Saudi Arabia? Watts up with that?

[Saudi Prince] al-Waleed has formed multiple connections with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the owner of Fox News. In September 2005, he acquired 5.46% of voting shares in News Corp., and just a few months later, when Fox ran coverage of riots in Paris under the banner "Muslim riots," he allegedly phoned Murdoch and had him change the heading to "civil riots." Murdoch’s News Corp. cements ties with Saudi prince

So, that Saudi billionaire Prince tells Aussie billionaire Murdoch how to report the FOX NEWS. But surely, both these foreign-borns have America's best interests before their own Swiss bank accounts?

Now the partnership is growing even closer, with News Corp. acquiring a 10% stake in al-Waleed's media conglomerate, Rotana, along with an option for another 10%.

And that oil-billionaire Saudi Prince is now the biggest shareholder in FOX NEWS?

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Conservative Activists Rebel Against Fox News: Saudi Ownership Is ‘Really Dangerous For America’

Call us red-blooded American, but what were the nationalities of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers?

[Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal] owns a very significant percentage of the News Corp and has let the world know that he can get things taken off Fox News when he finds them objectionable and has in the past. And I really believe this is really dangerous for America.

Perhaps, we should all crank up the odds of a congressional investigation into FOX NEWS foreign ownership to a unanimous 100% of red-blooded American Senators, unless, of course, you're not interested in facts or truth.
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What did Prof. Jones really say?

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Did Phil Jones really say global warming ended in 1995?

Duh, no. All you have to do is read the BBC interview. But we shan't expect too much from Daily Mail journalists or WattsUpHisButt, esp. when it comes to reading & comprehending the actual science.

BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

Phil Jones: I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

And what in tarnation does IPCC Chapter 9 say about understanding & attributing global warming & climate change, you might ask?

Human-induced warming of the climate system is widespread. Anthropogenic warming of the climate system can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the troposphere and in the oceans. Multi-signal detection and attribution analyses, which quantify the contributions of different natural and anthropogenic forcings to observed changes, show that greenhouse gas forcing alone during the past half century would likely have resulted in greater than the observed warming if there had not been an offsetting cooling effect from aerosol and other forcings.

In fact, the science shows that, without human-caused greenhouse gases, reduced solar activity & other natural causes would likely have cooled the planet. How cool is that?

It is extremely unlikely that the global pattern of warming during the past half century can be explained without external forcing, and very unlikely that it is due to known natural external causes alone. The warming occurred in both the ocean and the atmosphere and took place at a time when natural external forcing factors would likely have produced cooling.

Walter Cronkite, roll over.

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The disinformation & denial about climate science promoted by so-called science journalists these days is unconscionable for a free society.

Walter Cronkite, roll over.

"Like so many of our problems today," he says, "it all starts with education. We need to teach [children] how to read a newspaper, how to listen to radio, how to watch television, how to understand a film, so that they become properly skeptical. If a public understands the limitations of television, the limitations of print, deadline pressures, all the rest of the things that go into the making of a newspaper or broadcast, then that public will be far less likely to fall into a demagogue's trap when the demagogue attacks the press for its unfairness." And That's the Way It Is

Of course, Walter probably never counted on anti-science demagogues, within his lifetime, if not shortly thereafter, gaining control over so many news outlets in English-speaking America, Britain, & Australia, if not Texas. But that's ExxonMobil money, for ya.
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Another Daily Mangle or just another ExxonMobil mouthpiece?

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We don't blame those around here who can't help themselves because they don't know any better. However, we do hold to account the dishonest journalists & editors & news organizations -- including their colleagues who don't respond with corrections & apologies -- who blatantly, if not intentionally, publish disinformation (propaganda in some circles) to confuse the American public about what the climate science & leading climate scientists say.

Unfortunately, these kinds of distortions are all too common in the press nowadays and so we must all be prepared to respond to those journalists and editors who confuse the public with such inaccuracies.

The title itself is a distortion of what Jones actually said in an interview with the BBC.

The article [in the Daily Mail] also incorrectly equates instrumental surface temperature data that Jones and CRU have assembled to estimate the modern surface temperature trends with paleoclimate data used to estimate temperatures in past centuries, falsely asserting that the former “has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’”.

Finally, the article intentionally distorts comments that Jones made about the so-called “Medieval Warm Period”.

Time for science journalists at the Chron to man up before it's seen as just another Daily Mangle, if not just another ExxonMobil mouthpiece.

re: The post-Copenhagen view of U.S. climate policy in Europe
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Is Houston the epicenter of anti-science?

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Food for thought.

Back later with our take after some fun on Not on the origin of species, but the origin of life over at our favorite Houston science blog, SciGuy.

Won't you join Eric Berger (the SciGuy moderator) & the rest of us? Pewfuls of anti-science guaranteed.
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Time for science j**rnalists to grow a pair.

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James Hrynyshyn on The Island of Doubt has some self-respect advice for other science journalists.

I have only one suggestion at this time, though hopefully more will become evident in the near future. The mainstream media has got to stop giving time and space to those who have no expertise in the field. Journalists who consider themselves in the business of supplying something akin to the truth have got to stand up to editors who insist on upon false equivalency or stop calling themselves journalists. News outlet administrators who pretend to respect their readers, viewers and listeners should read the riot act to anyone who blogs or otherwise works under their banner and insist they start respecting science if they want to continue in that capacity. Why the denial camp is winning (and we're all losing) the climate wars

SciGuy re: "feedbacks in a warming world"
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