Guest Essay by Kip Hansen – 12 July 2020
The New York Times’ Climate section is a source of continuing amusement for me. This one made me laugh out loud.
In an exhibition of astounding audacity, the New York Times’ Editor of the Climate Desk, Hannah Fairfield, stages what is billed as a “debate” about moving forward with solutions to climate change.
Let me be perfectly clear, this is a fake debate – no debate takes place. Having given up the standards of professional journalism almost entirely, the Climate desk has moved on from misinformation, disinformation and fake news to . . . . Fake Debates.
If you have one and a half hours to utterly waste, you can watch the whole thing here.
Not only does the Times falsely claim that this represents some kind of debate, they can’t even count to ten – there are only six guest speakers and Hannah….and when I attended elementary school in the 1950s, six plus one made seven (it may be the “new math”, similar to that being used to count “New Covid Cases”). Oh well, almost nothing else in the video is true either.
We do get good insight into why the New York Times publishes so many Climate stories that are absolutely nutty [my psychiatrist friend assures me that this is a perfectly acceptable term in the mental health field] . Hannah Fairfield, the Editor of the Climate Desk, states in her introduction:
“Our mission is help readers understand their world and how Climate Change touches all parts of it. Like the science of Corona-virus, the science of Climate Change is very clear…the world is warming dangerously, humans are the cause of it, and a failure to act today will deeply affect the future of the Earth.”
“The devastation of Covid-19 has forced change for all of us. Much of it has been swift and startling. To combat corona-virus, governments poured money into rescue. Companies adapted their goals and production; central banks permitted exceptional stimulus packages, and societies mobilized to shield the most vulnerable. Have these dramatic actions given us a blueprint for mobilizing action against Climate Change? Is this an opportunity for a new path forward that puts accelerating Climate Change solutions squarely in the middle?
We know that Climate Change requires exponential solutions and that’s what we’ll focus on today. The global response to corona-virus can be the beginning of the economic, technological and society [sic] transition that will allow us to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the next 30 years, helping us to avoid the worst effects of Climate Change, and limiting the global temperature rise in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”
This introduction informs us that the Times’ Climate desk thinks its mission is to produce propaganda supporting just one side of the real climate debate and a rather radical version at that, one which goes beyond even IPCC memes. The latest version of an acceptable editorial narrative on climate change is that “the governments of the world took over ordering individual people’s lives and destroying the economy for their own purposes – presented to the public as protecting them from Covid-19 – and so governments could, should and must do the same to “save us from Climate Change”. The apparent theory is that as government actions regarding Covid have already wrecked so much of the world economy – wrecking it even more in the battle against (mostly imaginary) future climate change is a “no brainer” (well, it is, for those with no brain or suffering a total lack of Critical Thinking Skills and/or those whose own personas have been overwhelmed by GroupThink – h/t Judith Curry).
Hannah Fairfield seemingly went to great lengths to make sure that her panel consisted of radical Climate Change Warriors who would all agree with her stated purposes. The panel consists of:
Nigel Topping – “UK climate action Champion”
Christiana Figueres — Introduced as the Co-Founder of Global Optimism Better known as the Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
“I’ve never been asked why I it [the Climate Change issue] is important to me. …because, isn’t this the most important thing that every single human being should be focused on? …. is the future of the human race? …. we’re talking about human survival.”
Bertrand Piccard — of the Solar Impulse Foundation and the World Alliance for Clean Technologies
(if you’ve watched any episodes of the Netflix series “Space Force”, you might be able to identify this guy)
Alexandra Palt — L’oreal Group — Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer — included, as the PR wonk of a beauty products company, I suppose, because appearances are so very important.
Dayna Cunningham – Executive Director of CoLab, MIT
“The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is a center for planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning “. They apparently focus a lot on painting murals on buildings….. “promoting democratic engagement and urban sustainability in communities facing disruptive moments, we strive to produce shared wealth and collective well-being.”
Johan Rockström — Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Those familiar with some of these names might guess that this massively stacked panel recommends that governments take over private industry and private lives and Save The World From the Humans.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Hannah Fairfield’s introduction is so full of nonsense that I could have written a whole essay on it alone:
- The Science of Corona-virus is anything but “very clear” – the medical world barely understands what it is, where it came from, how it spreads, why it infects some without symptoms and kills others, and is at an impasse on treatment. Early and preventative treatments have been politicized out of use in some countries while being front-line successful treatments in others.
- Climate Science is likewise not “very clear” – “dangerously warming”??? “humans are the cause of it”???
- “…societies mobilized to shield the most vulnerable.”??? King Cuomo (governor of the State of New York) sent sick elderly patients to die by the hundreds in death-filled nursing homes while keeping kids, who are the safest group, out of schools and confined at home.
- “We know that Climate Change requires exponential solutions….”??? What, in heaven’s name, might “exponential solutions” be?
Enough, what the world does not need is destructive Covid Madness Solutions to be added on to what are already societally-suicidal Climate Change Madness proposals.
I can only hope that sanity to returns to our local, regional, state, national and international leaders before they do permanent damage to the great enterprise of human civilization.
# # # # #
Climate activism by the news media means we no longer have a news media. All we have is climate activism.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/24/cjr/
Incidently, we no longer have an education system either as that too has morphed into climate activism.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/28/columbia-climate/
It’s all activism, all the time, without neither sincerity nor principles, and an indoc… education system that is the most expensive in the world, and second to all.
A real rogues gallery of everyone whose NOT a Climate Scientist. Except for Johan Rockström who is the Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (he at least Directs Climate Research)
No, he doesn’t. He directs investigations into the impact of climate.
Researching whether or not it is in fact changing is totally outside his remit – as it is outside the remit of the IPCC.
Nor does he investigate why it may be happening, even when they can show that it has changed.
“In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.”
Thomas Sowell
Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.
Thomas Sowell
Assume for a moment that you believe that climate change is a huge problem. And that the IPCC report represents the best and brightest consensus of what the problem is, the cause, scope, and magnitude.
How is it then that the news ROUTINELY reports things about the climate that are in direct conflict with the IPCC report, and ROUTINELY demonizes people for saying things that are perfectly in line with the IPCC report? It’s bizarre. They seem to rely on the fact that no one ever actually ever reads or understands the report, and they are therefore entitled to make things up.
Geo ==> Climate Change Madness. . . . . .
The NYT is now on par with a student newspaper from your local high school.
opus ==> Maybe, most high school student newspapers still enforce the journalistic requirement of separation of Factual News from Opinion and Commentary.
The New York Times no longer does.
“Like the science of Corona-virus, the science of Climate Change is very clear … ”
The science of Corona-virus is NOT clear.
“Coronavirus: Why everyone was wrong
The immune response to the virus is stronger than everyone thought”
https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
“Speed July 12, 2020 at 6:18 pm
The immune response to the virus is stronger than everyone thought”
Thank you for that link, Mr Speed. Amazing read. Will share on social media with your permission.
Btw, the algora blog includes that swiss study in its covid disinformation list. Whatever that may mean…
A sure sign you ought to read it?
Chaamjamal wrote, “the algora blog includes that swiss study in its covid disinformation list. Whatever that may mean…”
I guess it means the article is inaccurate.
In fairness, the article is 33 days old, and it was not so obviously wrong when it was written (June 10th). But it is now.
The article claims, ” Sars-Cov-2 isn’t all that new, but merely a seasonal cold virus that mutated and disappears in summer, as all cold viruses do — which is what we’re observing globally right now.”
I recall many people predicting that the disease would fade out in summer, but we don’t hear those predictions anymore, because it’s now very obvious that they were wrong. Here’s the unfortunate reality in the U.S.:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/#graph-cases-daily
The author said “globally,” and not every country is seeing a large increase in cases. But is obviously NOT a seasonal cold virus that disappears in summer.
The good news is that hospitals are getting better at saving coronavirus patients. So the number of daily deaths is not rising nearly as fast as the number of cases, because the case fatality rate is falling:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53192532
Dave ==> I am not sure we can depend on the numbers being published in the newspapers or collected by the CDC.
“:New Cases” is problematic, and seems to count not only newly discovered actively ill people, but anyone that tests “positive” regardless of health status. More Testing will always discover More Cases.
The NY Times says deaths are rising even though the number keeps getting smaller. Fourteen days ago, it reported 512 daily deaths — today it reports 395 daily deaths, but reports this as a “14 day change” of UP 28%
Good essay, thanks for the tip.
very good article; thanks for the link. But, I doubt it will get much coverage, since it does not fit the “narrative”.
Hansen subscribes to the NYTimes for the sole purpose of repeatedly telling us how dishonest they are … And then he rewards that dishonesty by sending them more monry for a new subscription every year.
Hansen, you’re a smart guy who writes well and I have no corrections for anything you wrote … but it’s time to let your NYT subscription end and move on to other subjects.
Been thinking about my subscription to the NYT West (I.e. Houston Chronicle). If I could sign up for only the puzzles, comics and sports it would substantially reduce the amount of paper recycled from our house. The rest is tossed.
Richard ==> It is important to read widely, on both sides of the fence. The NY Times keeps me informed of what mis and dis-information is being pumped out to the general public, both in the States and Worldwide, through the International NY Times editions.
I know we have fenced with each other on this issue before. The NYTs is a pure propaganda machine at this time. In my view subscribing to the Times is supporting disinformation and dishonesty. As an example, the writer of the lead 1619 essay was told that American revolutionaries were not motivated by the goal of preserving slavery in the war for Independence, but she included this lie in her essay. When her lie became public, she spent 6 months trying to justify it. Then when she couldn’t, she weaseled her way out stating that “some” people fought for independence to support slavery. (Didn’t mention anyone that I am aware of, in particular no one prominent)
On top of that, the author is so ignorant that she was not aware that the first Black people brought to Virginia were classified as indentured servants in Virginia and not slaves. (They were slaves in Africa though) The indentured servant classification continued until about 1660.
In any event the NYTs is a garbage publication knowingly publishing garbage and lies. The Left cannot be reasoned with — sometimes financial hits can change the Left’s behavior. Won’t prolong this difference of opinion on my side.
JD ==> To me to unsubscribe from the NY Times will have no effect on its success of failure…even if all right-thinking people unsubscribed, they would still prosper.
The “divestment” approach is not valid, for newspaper subscriptions or shares in public companies.
“… the New York Times, advertising remains a primary revenue source. In its 2016 annual report, the New York Times breaks down its advertising revenue as follows:
89% of advertising revenues come from display ads, both digital and in print versions of the newspaper.”
So, subscription, especially digital subscription, is a revenue source, it is the advertising that makes the money.
It is vital in today’s world to read widely on all sides of the issues. There are few better sources of Liberal/Progressive viewpoints than the NY Times.
Advertisement revenue depends on circulation. The higher the circulation, the more advertisers are willing to pay.
No matter what the issue, what one person does won’t make any difference.
MarkW ==> Mostly right — advertising is sold based on the reach — numbers of people likely to see ads — of the newspaper AND its audience — does it reach the “right” people.
The NY Times is the paper of the middle to upper class — generally, the poor don’t read the Times.
There are some key things wrong with that essay. SARS-CoV-2 did not obviously disappear wit the arrival of NH summer. But otherwise, the author gets some key areas correct. This corona virus, while “novel,” is not something that a healthy human immune system can’t handle and beat like the red-headed step child.
That we are trying to shield healthy children and healthy young adults from this virus at this point with all we know is simply asinine. The risk to those age groups is minuscule, and their subsequent immunity then protects everyone.
corona-virus science ( presumably they are referring to nCov-19 ) is very clear. Yeah right.
We don’t know where it came from ( well we do but don’t want to admit it in the media ), we don’t now how to treat it, we don’t understand the body’s hypoxic reactin, we are still arguing about seasonality ….
In short we don’t very much at all. Just like climate science.
Thanks for the link, Speed.
I found these excerpts interesting:
“It also became known that Sars-CoV-2 had a less significant impact in areas in China where Sars-1 had previously raged. This is clear evidence urgently suggesting that our immune system considers Sars-1 and Sars-Cov-2 at least partially identical”
“So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Correct: Even if the infectious viruses are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected]. That’s exactly what happened, when there was the global news, even shared by the WHO, that 200 Koreans who already went through Covid-19 were infected a second time and that there was therefore probably no immunity against this virus. The explanation of what really happened and an apology came only later, when it was clear that the immune Koreans were perfectly healthy and only had a short battle with the virus. The crux was that the virus debris registered with the overly sensitive test and therefore came back as “positive”. It is likely that a large number of the daily reported infection numbers are purely due to viral debris.”
“If an infected [older] person does not have enough antibodies, i.e. a weak immune response, the virus slowly spreads out across the entire body. Now that there are not enough antibodies, there is only the second, supporting leg of our immune response left: The T-cells beginn to attack the virus-infested cells all over the body. This can lead to an exaggerated immune response, basically to a massive slaughter; this is called a Cytokine Storm.”
end excerpts
“suggesting that our immune system considers Sars-1 and Sars-Cov-2 at least partially identical”
Could Sars-1 infection be a reason why those nations closest to China, and China itself, did better with the Wuhan virus than other nations, because they had more people with a natural immunity from dealing with Sars-1?
While I think that thought possibly valid, it is very difficult to know at a fundamental level, as we have no idea of China’s real numbers, and all the other nations who, by the numbers, did well, did FAR worse then China.
In short, China lies!
David A ==> Quoting the fictional character Dr. House –“Everybody lies!”
The CDC has encouraged health system reporting agencies (coroners, etc) to falsely report Covid-19 deaths by telling them to include probable, possible, suspected, and even “this person could have been exposed to …” deaths. This makes better Panic News but even ALL CAUSE deaths in the US are down and down-trending.
The lie is that Covid-19 is some kind of essential-threat type plague. It is not — it is a “very bad flu year”.
Mis-steps by almost all governments have led to many unnecessary, avoidable deaths.
This Fakedebate organised by the NY Times reminds me of the old Show Trials that were organised in the former Soviet Union where the outcome was never in doubt. The verdict was always in line with Comrade Stalin’s desires. The NY Times is more and more like the successor to Pravda and Izvestia.
Nicholas ==> Cunningham, of MIT CoLab, openly calls for the socialist/communist goal “we strive to produce shared wealth and collective well-being”
I’ve always noticed how those who are the least successful in generating wealth, always seem to be the most vocal about how it is vital that those who are able to create wealth, must share that wealth.
MarkW
And they seem to not be smart enough to realize that if they destroy the incentive for creating wealth, there will be none to share.
And they do seem to clustered in taxpayer supported organizations.
“nicholas tesdorf July 12, 2020 at 6:19 pm
This Fakedebate organised by the NY Times reminds me of the old Show Trials that were organised in the former Soviet Union where the outcome was never in doubt”
This is also how climate science works. First decide what the answer is. Then look for the data and the methodology that will support that answer.
And if you can’t find it, use creative statistics to create it.
In ‘Truth’ there is no news, in ‘News’ there is no truth.
=========
I’ve long said that the NYT has ‘All the News That’s Left to Print’.
========
Or, “All the news that fits.”
“… that fits” our agenda.
All the news that’s fit to spin.
Dear Mr. Tesdorf,
I was born and lived in the former East-Bloc in Europe, so I have practical historical experiences with Pravda/Izvestia (in the school we had to read and discuss articles from Pravda/Isvestia). On the basis of these practical experiences I can state that a comparison of Pravda/Izvestia with NT and other mainstream fake news media outlets (WP, FT, Guardian, CNN, and so on) is very clearly extrem unfair: Pravda/Izvestia were very high profile quality and objective media compared to NY and to other fake news mainstream media outlets. These media could be eventually compared to the “Völkischer Beobachter” (the main media outlet of the Nazis (Goebbels)). In the former East-Bloc it was also part of the communist education against Nazism to read and analyse selected articles from “Völkischer Beobachter”. It is very sad and frustrating to see that such traditional media like NT, WP, FT, Guardian are today not more than political PR fake news media outlets specialised for paid lies.
..The NY Times is more and more like the successor to Pravda and Izvestia.
Ah yes ! Pravda (Truth) and Isvestia (News) …and as every good Russian of the Soviet era knew “there’s no Truth in the News and no News in the Truth.
( don’t have a Cyrillic key board so can’t do it in Russian.)
Cheers
Mike
It is a usual animated debate within the Central Committee of True Believers.
From the boxed text above of Hannah Fairfield’s introduction: “To combat corona-virus, governments poured money into rescue.”
Funny that . . . as we have experienced RECORD numbers of COVID-19 patient daily admissions to hospitals in many states across the US in just the last week, I can only laugh at anyone that asserts US citizens have been “rescued” from the pandemic by the US government, or any other government.
In a similar vein, it would be interesting to ask Ms. Fairfield to explain exactly what she means by her phrase “exponential solutions” . . . but on second thought, she employs so many buzzwords du jour, I’m sure the answer would be equalling meaningless.
Gordon ==> Yes, I had the same question….imagine that! An Editor of a section of the New York Times, the chief of the Climate Desk, doesn’t understand the common English word “exponential”….. it is no wonder that the “science” published by her group is nonsensical.
Heh, she probably thinks ‘hyperbole’ is a curve.
=========
kim,
+42 for you.
It’s an end-of-season football game somewhere.
@Kip – I can clear one thing up for you. “Exponential solutions” means a minimum of 10^13. Units in dollars.
Writing Observer ==> Very possibly — maybe better represented as $10.
…. $10….
well, superscript is not going to work …. $ to the 10th power….
It means an exponential increase in the number of dollars in their wallets.
‘“We know that Climate Change requires exponential solutions….”??? What, in heaven’s name, might “exponential solutions” be?’
Clearly, math is not these numpties strong suit.
If only there was some way to accountability for people that make wild claims about Earth’s Climate. It is utterly irresponsible, inflammatory (I know, this is part of the goal), it is all based on conjecture, and it only serves to cause everything in our economy and culture to become more expensive, further complicate lives, and bring hardship. Lies…
Clay ==> Although I would not have believed it last December, Covid Madness may actually end up surpassing the level of mis- and dis-information surrounding Climate Change.
Mike Crichton was spot on with the premise of State of Fear — in which government and psychotic advocacy groups team up with the Mass Media to create a sense of hopeless fear and panic in the general population.
They spread social contagion to normalize dysfunction for profit. The left-right, totalitarian-anarchist nexus is leftist.
Kip, so true about COVID disinformation. Yes, too, about Micheal Crichton, who was fully discerning, a valuable attribute lacking in this world today. He was a good critical thinker. It’s interesting to me that with having so much information available via the internet, so many people simply acquiesce, and fold, relying on someone else to “inform” them on significant issues. At least we do have the Michael Crichtons out there…
Clay ==> Many of my relatives and acquaintances are terrified — quite unnecessarily — by the constant fear-mongering of the press.
For most of them, I have found no remedy — they are unable to hear reality — having been driven to an unhealthy mental state by all that panic in the press.
The goal is to feed fear, just as with the China virus, since irrational fear causes people to react irrationally. Without the fear factor, climate alarmism would just be incomprehensible noise to most people.
This climate alarm is a campaign based on fear and guilt. It is unsustainable given that anthropogenic warming will be net beneficial and anthropogenic greening would be miraculous if not so easily understood.
Heed not fear and guilt,
CO2 and chlorophyll:
Cornucopia.
==========
Clay,
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
Thomas Sowell
KcTaz, Good reference quote. Good people would recognize its wisdom and try hard to live by it. It appears that many (most?) of the free world’s political leaders entirely miss the point, or otherwise don’t have discernment – they shouldn’t be in the positions they have.
Andy Revkin, we hardly knew ye.
I admired his intellectual honesty and curiosity. Back in the day, 2008, his was the only alarmist blog that didn’t censor my comments. A few of the disgruntled alarmist even called his blog DotKim a time or two.
=========
“Not only does the Times falsely claim that this represents some kind of debate, they can’t even count to ten – there are only six guest speakers and Hannah”
Clearly, you aren’t woke. You just don’t understand:
“A teacher named Brittany Marshall recently tweeted, “The idea of 2 + 2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing.”
“She describes herself, among other things, as a “scholar,” a “social justice change agent,” and as a “wannabe math person” and notes her undying adherence to Black Lives Matter.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-revolution-must-be-beaten-do-the-math
Brittany Marshall is no doubt completely unaware of how arithmetic was invented by Babylonians, taken up by Indians, who rendered it in numerals and added the concept of zero, and transmitted by Central Asian* Muslims. It really is neither cultural, nor specifically Western.
*Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī was born into a Persian family in Khwarezm (part of Modern Uzbekistan). The term algebra itself comes from the title of his book. His name gave rise to the term algorithm. His work “On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals” written about 820, was principally responsible for spreading the Hindu–Arabic numeral system throughout the Middle East and Europe. It was translated into Latin as Algoritmi de numero Indorum.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi
Woke = AEIOU which is an initialism for “About Everything Ignorant & Obstinately Uninformed”.
Walter ==> I am afraid “WOKE” is more like entering into a dreamlike state where reality is replaced by the latest popular Twitter memes and advocacy positions, entirely divorced from actuality,
‘Woke’, a joke,
Just prick or poke,
The bubble’s broke,
The hucksters hoke.
=================
And all this time I was convinced it was Al Gore who invented algorithms, along with many other things.
The Maya also used zero in their counting.
And the Woke middle-agers in Europe called his book Gibberish. They could not handle Algebra.
Tell the good Ms. Brittany that 5 is NOT a prime number : (2-i)(2+i), and by the way that’s the next number after 4. And by the way the very Woke Euler termed the number “i” imaginary. So Ms. Brittany is not alone.
What a hoot. The state bird of Minnesota is the loon…looks like the loon is expanding his/her territory.
rocdoctom ==> To refer to these uber-activists as “loons” or “loony” does a dis-service to a lovely and melodic bird. I like birds — I don’t like crazed activists masquerading as journalists.
The simple definition of a debate shows this is not that:
DEBATE
a discussion, as of a public question in an assembly, involving opposing viewpoints:
a debate in the Senate on farm price supports.
a formal contest in which the affirmative and negative sides of a proposition are advocated by opposing speakers.
The real Key – OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS/SPEAKERS
Quite correct Liberator. What Ms. Fairfield put together is a one-sided discussion panel, not a debate. When a journalist at a major newspaper doesn’t understand the difference between the two, it is a sign that the paper is likely in a very sorry state.
CD
I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a “discussion panel.” It it more like a vehicle or opportunity to have different people put their similar ideas into their own words.
Heh, a Circle, uh, Work.
============
Kip & Writing
Re: “exponential”
There is a nice rule of thumb on nonsense from the chattering class {in this case the NYT Climate Desk]:
“Anything is possible to those who don’t know what they are talking about”.
Civil society is being attacked by Marxists on several fronts – Covid, climate and race
relations come to mind. And sadly, I think the forces of illiberalism are winning.
Bill ==> The real danger is the media which has abandoned journalism for advocacy thus we don’t get straight unbiased news, we don’t get well-rounded analysis — we get propaganda instead.
I just read that 2 billion people on this Earth drink water mixed with faeces because they have no choice.
And the NYT and governments and sundry don’t care.Tragic.
Inhaling wood or charcoal smoke. Laboring sunup to sundown for barely enough to live on. Cheap electricity, read coal, would make a miraculous difference for them.
What are Western virtue signalers doing for them? Raising the price of energy in this desperate, damaging, and deluded campaign of fear and guilt about carbon dioxide, plant food.
This too shall pass, but meanwhile billions suffer and die needlessly.
A price will be paid, when, even kim doesn’t know.
==========
Typical AGW propaganda. Man bad, earth good. The fact that the MSM gives them an audience says more about their bias than the truth reveals.
Fake facts. Fake history. Fake debate. Fake news. Some, select, opportunistic principles. The audacity of deceit. #HateLovesAbortion
The Covering Climate Now organisation is a primary source of CC propaganda.
The NYT appears to follow their gudelines:
What is good climate coverage?
Good climate coverage connects the dots between human-caused climate change and stronger heat waves, droughts, storms, and sea level rise and the damage caused to people and the economy.
Good climate coverage humanizes the story by focusing on how real people and communities are experiencing the climate crisis, and it recognizes that the poor and people of color suffer disproportionate impacts.
Good climate coverage eliminates the silos which confine climate coverage to the science desk and increases infrequency of reports as a regular part of every beat in every newsroom, especially weather, business, and politics.
Good climate coverage gets sustained, prominent attention.
Good climate coverage is accurate and fair but need not be neutral about humanity’s survival — it holds political, business, and other leaders accountable for delivering the rapid emissions reductions and other measures scientists say are imperative.
Without drifting into activism, good climate coverage explores solutions — technical fixes such as solar panels and sea walls but also policies such as pricing carbon or halting fossil fuel subsidies, as well as political actions taken to advance such policies, including voting and marching in the streets.
Good climate coverage is responsive to its audience, accepts constructive suggestions, and corrects errors promptly.
Good climate coverage is always a work in progress.
In other words: advocacy, activism, propaganda, em-pathetic appeals, and normalization of a protection racket to force leaders, businesses, and people generally, to kneel.
Notice how he assumes that “good climate coverage” agrees with him on everything.
RE: “Without drifting into activism, good climate coverage explores solutions — ”
‘Good’ climate coverage explores non-solutions to a non-existent problem. Without drifting beyond reality, climate change is natural. It doesn’t need to be ‘fixed’ by yours or anyone else’s dystopian, wasteful, ineffective non-solutions.
David George ==> Yes, the Covering Climate Now cabal, run out of Columbia, is a huge MSM coordinated propaganda effort to mis- and dis-inform the general public about Climate Change.
Although “400 hundred news outlets partner with Covering Climate Now”, the New York Times is not one of them — it has its own Editorial Narrative on Climate Change.
Readers can check to see if their local newspaper or TV station is part of this propaganda effort by checking this page:
https://www.coveringclimatenow.org/partners
Very interesting and illuminating list — the only one I get is the IEEE Spectrum (free as a life member). Every issue has at least one bit of CC spin inserted by the tech writers into articles, even if it has nothing to do with the topic of the article: “This new gizmo will be great for combating climate change!”
Carlo
I run across similar insertions in technical articles, which are essentially non sequiturs. I call them “gratuitous graffiti.”
Kip
Not surprisingly, (un)Scientific American is a member.
Clyde > Good Catch. I have quipped in the past that the magazine’s name is a Double Oxymoron it does not represent real science, often being intentionally anti-scientific, and happily violates the values that are known as the American way — free expression, freedom of religion, free speech, free association, diversity of opinion, etc.
Good grief – both Nature, Physics Today and the New Scientist ( a magazine incorrectly listed as a TV station!) in the UK, plus several UK universities. That explains a lot.
John ==> Yes, this has been covered here at WUWT several times, first by myself:
A National Narrative for Media on Climate Change and then at Climate Catastrophe News Cabal Ramps Up.
“Good climate coverage connects the dots between human-caused climate change and stronger heat waves, droughts, storms, and sea level rise and the damage caused to people and the economy.”
Since there is no human-caused climate change, there are no dots to connect.
None of the things you list are statistically different from their rates in past decades.
“Good climate coverage humanizes the story by focusing on how real people and communities are experiencing the climate crisis, and it recognizes that the poor and people of color suffer disproportionate impacts.”
There is no climate crisis, the only impacts of a slightly warmer climate are completely positive.
The only impacts of more CO2 in the atmosphere are completely positive.
“Good climate coverage gets sustained, prominent attention.”
By lying about everything.
“Good climate coverage is accurate and fair but need not be neutral about humanity’s survival — it holds political, business, and other leaders accountable for delivering the rapid emissions reductions and other measures scientists say are imperative.”
If you claim it’s about humanities survival, then it isn’t accurate. What about the vast majority of scientists who say that emissions reductions, much less rapid ones, aren’t necessary.
“Without drifting into activism, good climate coverage explores solutions — technical fixes such as solar panels and sea walls but also policies such as pricing carbon or halting fossil fuel subsidies, as well as political actions taken to advance such policies, including voting and marching in the streets.”
Exploring solutions to problems that never existed in the first place.
“Good climate coverage is responsive to its audience, accepts constructive suggestions, and corrects errors promptly.”
If good climate coverage corrects it’s errors, then there is no such thing as good climate coverage.
MarkW > Fairfield describes not real good climate coverage, but lays out the mandated Editorial Narrative for all climate stories in the NY Times. It is basically a propaganda/advocacy position and has nothing to do with the actual science about Earth’s Climate.
I think NYTimes is valuable now as a signal to what the Left’s next offensive strategic move will be in the Culture Wars.
Fake Debates may be their response to the valid criticism that they are part and parcel charter members of the Cancel Culture club.
So the next move will be some sort of Fake Debate claims to try to mollify thir obvious intellectual dishonesty as members of the Cancel Culture. Claiming to be journalists but also being part of a cancel culture is so anti-journalism and they know it.
Doesn’t 6 round up to 10? ;*)
Lucy to Charlie Brown: “Liberal scientist can prove that climate change is real”.
Charlie Brown to Lucy: “They can’t even tell the difference between boys and girls”.
The next step of climate tarot….. CHIMP7
or should that be CHUMP7 ?
I have never subscribed to the NYT. I have never purchased a copy. Indeed, I have never, not even once, read somebody else’s copy of the NYT. I have never visited their website. As we used to say in the distant past, the NYT is not and never has been “in my movie”.
Yet every day on some news channel or blog, I am subjected to some sort of nonsense attributed to that otherwise imaginary (from my point of view) newspaper.
I surmise from all the negative reviews that the NYT is some sort of seditious font of insane communist propaganda. I believe that is the case, and so am even less interested in perusing their garbage than I used to be, which was totally uninterested.
I get my news from a handful of weblogs, chief among them this one, WUWT. It suits me, I enjoy the essays and commentary, and am fully satisfied that I am getting all the news I need to know or care about.
If the NYT imploded tomorrow, my life would be unaffected. I suppose that some people feel a need to report on what those ridiculous nincompoops wrote about this or that, but frankly, I don’t care. In fact, it surprises me that so many do care.
It’s not communist though is it? It’s people stealing money from the people who create wealth by using some -ism that dupes young and impressionable people and people with Chronic Virtue-Signaling Disorder. It’s capitalism-parasitism aka Kleptocratism. Does anyone actually read the NYT and go “wow that must be true”. People here may actually be the only people who read this drivel. You have to even dumpster-dive to find it.
I would argue that The New York Times is in the service of communism. It may not act like a Communist entity in itself, just like a Soviet spy in America would act very much like an American citizen. The purpose of The New York Times has become the destruction of Western civilization in the hopes of creating a global socialist utopia.
James ==> Liberal/Progressive/Democratic, so far left leaning that it nearly rests on its left shoulder. It is possibly the least unbiased paper in the country
Phil ==> Yeah . . . the NY Times is one of ten or so World “Newspapers of Record” . . . what appears in the news sections is assumed to be reliable (as in “true”).
This was mostly true 20 years ago – not true at all now,
“It’s people stealing money from the people who create wealth”
That’s communism.
Asked why he robbed banks?
========
where was greta ‘i ditch school’ thunberg?
btw, for a ‘debate’ i’m surprised it didn’t devolve into ‘i’ll rap to win.’ because that’s what college debate is now.
She’s discovering what the realities of 15 minutes of fame is all about. She is soooo…2019.
I feel sorry for her, trapped in a permanent, petulant childhood.
Or maybe not, give not up hope for her; she’s had so little of it.
==============
I fear the damage already done is irreversible. Done quite purposefully and planned years in advance.
The analogy that comes to mind, is the clergy who used to argue about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
“the world is warming dangerously, humans are the cause of it, and a failure to act today will deeply affect the future of the Earth.” This is repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated…
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed” – Joseph Goebbels
It’s very simple. ‘Activism’ means reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s all. We’ve done that. No we haven’t. We’ve significantly reduced emissions. Moans Loa says it’s still increasing. Something wrong here?
The BBC brainwash the public almost daily with record high temperatures in the UK
But this is not always the case.
The Central England Temperatures, which go back to the mid 1600 s and give mean max and min temperatures as well as seasonal means.
The warmest summer in England was 1976 with a mean average temperature of 17.7 C
the second and third warmest were 1826 ( 17.6 C ) & 1995 ( 17.3 C)
The warmest June was 1846 (18.2 ) & the warmest May was 1833 15.1 C )
With regard to one of the coldest months of recent times December 2010 holds the record
for the coldest minimum mean temperature since records began.
But the UK is not the world…obviously everywhere else it is blazing hot 😉
It’s blazing hot here according to some, but hey, it is summer time.
Blazing heat, as we know, leads to Blazing Saddles.
For some reason we are failing to transmit a sense of humour to the next humans.
We’re rapidly becoming a fearful kindred, cowering instead of laughing, sullen instead of joyous, subservient and not masters of our souls.
Are we dancers or are we humans? To be continued.
========
I wonder where the times keeps their Pulitzer Prize for the coverage of Russia Cooolusion?
It seems only massive power grid failures will reverse this sort of “thinking” — oh no, my iphone has died, I’m sorreeee!! Those grid failures will become inevitable as the technical infrastructure is undermined by these people, the only question is when.
“I can only hope that sanity to returns to our local, regional, state, national and international leaders before they do permanent damage to the great enterprise of human civilization.”
I second that motion.
“Climate Change” people are no different than flat earthers or people who believe one can choose to switch genders!
Propaganda for vested interests, platitudes and trivia, that is the sum of the modern MSM, not even worthy to be classified as the adult comics they have been for decades anymore. Nor is just in terms of climate change, it extends across the entire spectrum of ‘news’.
At least the NYT in this episode is not as bad as the BBC often was. Before any kind of ‘climate denialism’ was utterly banned from the airways by them they too staged so-called debates on climate issues. They would sneakily pair an arch alarmist with a moderate alarmist and call it hearing both sides of the argument. And once again, this method was not restricted to climate issues, they still do it relentlessly in every other area.
The web of deceit is vast……….
https://www.climatecentral.org/
Partnerships Journalism- https://www.climatecentral.org/partnerships-journalism
Guided by data and science, our journalists collaborate with local newsrooms on compelling climate change coverage.
“Collaborate”? That sounds so admirable.
Re Debating. Here’s a comment I posted on WUWT a month ago (6/8):
———–
Christopher Monckton wrote here, early in June, in “Big Oil must fight on the science or die”:
“By the very nature of that disciplined and generally even-handed forum, both sides must be fully and fairly heard, and each can cross-examine the other. There is virtually no other forum where such a debate between the skeptics and the cultists can take place. For the latter, having lost just about every face-to-face debate that has been held on the climate question, go to elaborate lengths to avoid debate with the former. They know their shoddy case cannot withstand examination.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/08/climate-litigation-big-oil-must-fight-on-the-science-or-die/#comment-3013114
This made me think of a suggestion for Big Oil. Fund debate-sponsoring institutions like the Oxford Union (and/or establish such institutions) to hold a series of annual climate-change debates. For instance, to hold twelve debates over the course of a week, one-third on attribution, one-third on impacts, and one-third on responses, paralleling the structure of the IPCC reports.
Some topics in each sector would be new each year, and some would be oldies about which new evidence, claims, and arguments had accumulated. Each year’s agenda would be set by a seven-member (say) Board of Respectables, with the assistance of a similar number of staffers, some working part-time while otherwise employed.
“Respectable” representatives of both “sides” in the debate would be consulted regularly. Both sides would need to agree on the choice of moderators (who would not be the same for all debates)—and/or, if a panel of “judges” is involved, each side would choose one, and the Board would choose a third.
Participating debaters would be given $100,000 [or maybe just half that], to overcome the reluctance warmists supposedly feel about arguing for a position that’s already settled against the supposedly motivated reasoning of opponents. (This reluctance led to the demise of the Dutch-government-funded Climate Dialogue site.)
At a minimum these events would clear the air of the worst excesses of both sides (e.g., the recently disavowed unrepresentative “path” much alarmism has been based on). They would tend, over time, to clarify the points of agreement and disagreement and their relative importance. They would draw attention to areas where uncertainties exist and more research is needed. They would bring risk/reward thinking to the fore.
At a maximum, shoddy and deceptive claims and claimants would be exposed, and low-quality courses of action or inaction avoided.
Provided that a crew of unimpeachable Respectables could be recruited to oversee this endeavor, which should not be impossible, the sponsors would be spared 90% of the flak they’d draw from taking a skeptical position themselves, especially after a few rounds of well-conducted events. And they’d by spared 90% or more of the expense of becoming belligerently involved.
Twenty or thirty years ago it would have been far easier to set this in motion. But now the conventional wisdom is that the matter has been settled in the warmists’ favor and that only cranks dispute them. It will therefore take some bravery to volunteer to serve on the Board, or to back its mission, or to fund it.
But it could still be done. A grant of a mere $20 million would suffice to fund a debate-holding organization’s activities for 10 years, which should be sufficient. There must be a thousand foundations that could afford such a sum, and a thousand academic or professional organizations that could, collectively, do the same.
The funder should not have much if anything to do with that organization after funding it—especially not if it’s Big Oil!
At any rate, advocating the establishment of an institution to hold impartial structured debates on scientific matters of public interest is one that would or should evoke a generally favorable reaction. Opposing it would look bad to the public and to reasonable opinion leaders.
But many warmists would feel a need to do so, knowing the weaknesses of their case and the simplistic, propagandistic methods used to “sell” it. This would awkwardly position them: they’d then be confronted by the question, “What are you afraid of?” and by Tom Paine’s saying, “It is not truth, but error only, that shrinks from examination.”
Even if our side’s pro-debate advocacy gets blocked by the Consensus, we will have some compensation. We will have positioned ourselves to exact implacable justice on its members and supporters for their willful obstruction of the truth, in the aftermath of a non-warming world and a “wasted” global economy. A cold but enjoyable dish to contemplate.
There is a terrible irony working here. It may well be that the only cure for this fever of the Alarmists, this destructive madness of the herd, is global cooling.
That is a tenuous thread upon which to hang our hopes, and of course that would be destructive to the whole biome and human society.
To add poignancy to the irony, we may already be cooling. The deep oceans hide the truth. We pretend to command but do these secrets come when we ask?
========
I’ll have what they’re having.
The New York Times is pure propaganda – they PROUDLY jettisoned their journalistic ethic, and did so high-profile.
In case somebody reading WUWT comments isn’t paying attention to events, the 2020 Nov. 3rd elections have become an extinction level event. If the Democrats take the White House and the Senate, the country will undergo changes that will substantially extinguish the American way of life… first here then worldwide.
The Democrats will turn 11 million illegal immigrants into voters…forever cementing total control of our already mostly Globalist Government via the Deep State. The Republican Party will exist as a ghost.
The borders will be thrown open and all comers will receive free education and free healthcare.
Energy costs will skyrocket with the GND and a dependency on the Mideast will return. The stock market will crash. China will become the ultimate superpower. Jobs will remain in China. The debt will spiral even more than the epidemic mismanagement has forced upon us. The Cancel Culture will rule business and commerce and education and science and pretty much every other institution.
Police will quit or retire by the 100,000’s. Crime will skyrocket. Education will collapse under total teacher’s union control.
The managed decline of America that Obama was so fond of will spiral into an uncontrolled steep decline.
Mistreatment in the courts of conservatives will become common everywhere and evlove into a system of re-education centers…and some impossible to remediate conservatives may require special treatment for the good of the country.
This election has become the extinction event that it is because the left has pulled out all the stops…the Media is full bore propaganda now with no pretense to actually performing journalism. The coordination of the lies is obvious now…all the national networks put out the exact same anti-American stories using the exact same talking point words and phrases. The NYT quit even pretending to do any news fit to print…it’s all far left propaganda…financed by billionaires looking for power…and by us taxpayers.
We need a big victory in November or America could be ground into dust by the foreign power that lives amongst us. It will never be the same.
Even if we win, there will be decades of strife ahead of us. The nation is split with neither side sharing any core principles with the other. It’s raw State Power vs. Individual Rights.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and the tree of liberty is often best nourished with blood.
H/t some people I read once upon a time.
=========
Thomas Jefferson, “the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Been saying this for a long time. Progressivism is a mechanic of extinction.
Twilight,
Star bright,
Dystopic night,
In a bight,
I see light
In the fight;
In a mite
It’ll be right.
========