As Southern Californians brace for blizzards, many are reevaluating the narrative ‘science’ pushed in the media for the past several decades.
One of those reconsidering former beliefs is Neil Winton, a former science-tech reporter and editor at Reuters for 32 years. He slammed the trends in “climate crisis” coverage in a brutal analysis published at The Daily Sceptic.
The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.My alma mater Reuters, the global news agency, used to be above all this hysteria and would relentlessly apply its traditional standards of fairness and balance, but even this mainstream outfit seems to have sold out to the hysterics and axe grinders.
Winton also opines about the current scientific media environment on his own website, Wintonsworld. Early in his reporting career, Winton says he bought into global warming assertions. However, in his quest to achieve balanced reporting based on facts, he became increasingly skeptical that a trace gas would have the enormous impact on global climate that was being presented as unquestionable fact.
Imagine my amazement when I started talking to the world’s top climate scientists and found a completely different story. The science wasn’t even close to being proven, and I had great difficulty finding anyone to say the link between excessive human-made carbon dioxide (CO2) and a changing climate was clear. There were many assumptions, but no proof. Yet the BBC and the mainstream media (MSM) constantly reported a proven doom scenario.But complying with Reuters standards of balance and fairness, I produced many stories summing up the fact that nobody really knew –a) did CO2 impact climate?b) if so, how much was down to human influence?I still don’t understand why the BBC was (and is) adamant the science was settled, or why the Main Stream Media (with some honourable exceptions) went along with it. I’m sure it was more laziness than any kind of conspiracy.Since the mid-90s, climate science hasn’t progressed much, but now the politicians are relying on computer modelling for the ever more hysterical climate predictions and panicky plans. These models are notorious for predicting unreliable scenarios, not least because they are loaded with assumptions that are often highly speculative and politically motivated.
I recently noted the hot new idea to make climate drama even more dramatic, by adding “feedback loops” to climate models.
Winton also has a few thoughts about those who would dismiss those demanding to look at alternative explanations for climate shifts as “deniers.”
These zealots, and there are some very high-profile ones in politics and academia, say the science is decided and indisputable. This is untrue. Those opposing the warmists don’t doubt the climate is changing. Everybody knows the global climate has been gradually, and occasionally erractically, warming since the last ice age 10,000 years ago.So the ugly “denier” label makes no sense. It’s just abuse, designed to shut down argument…”.
Winton points out that Reuters and other news outlets have farmed out their climate coverage to an activist group called Covering Climate Now (CCN).
Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.
As I have noted in my posts on the ideological capture of science, today’s writers do not have strong backgrounds in science, there is an interest in getting “clicks and exposure,” and social media throttles articles that go against the current political narratives.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air makes an important point in his review of Winton’s post, and one with which I concur: The complete failure of “experts” during the pandemic have people questioning the realities of other science . . . including climate science.
This corruption of news reporting into narrative journalism has been apparent for years to climate-hysteria skeptics. Until recently, however, that revolution-by-evolution process hadn’t become apparent to most of the rest of the populace. Now, however, with all sorts of new data coming out about masks and natural immunity in the COVID pandemic, many more people have seen The Science® exposed as based entirely on political agenda.The mainstream-media refusal to cover new and conclusive meta-analyses of scientific studies that refute their three-year narratives in support of government emergency rule now demonstrates that corruption on a much broader scale.
I will wrap this up with a quote from Glenn Reynolds:
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