Neil Winton worked as a journalist at Reuters for 32 years, including as global Science and Technology Correspondent. He writes at Winton’s World.
Winton: “When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.
My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.”
By: Admin – Climate DepotFebruary 27, 2023 6:33 PM
From Neil Winton’s blog WintonsWorld: Climate Change; An Alternative View But Backed By Top Experts
Excerpt– Jan 23, 2023:
Winton: When I first started writing about human-induced climate change (or global warming as it was then known) as Reuters’ Science & Technology Correspondent back in the mid-90s, I turned to a subject I knew from headlines rather than research.
But I had expectations. After all, even then, the BBC was reporting as fact global warming was upon us, it was all our fault, and we’d all die soon if we didn’t listen to those that know best and act.
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.
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Neil Winton worked as a journalist at Reuters for 32 years, including as global Science and Technology Correspondent. He writes at Winton’s World.
Excerpt:
When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.
My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.
My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.
Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.
The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.
The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty. They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.
Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.
Neil Winton worked as a journalist at Reuters for 32 years, including as global Science and Technology Correspondent. He writes at Winton’s World.
“Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years “
Say what. !
It warmed at the start of the Holocene, and has been cooling for the last 4000 or so years (neoglaciation), apart for warmer periods through the RWP, MWP and, thankfully, the current slightly warm period.
This underscores that (dated in terms of media, but otherwise on point) quote from Mark Twain –
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
He assumed “climate change” was true because it was convenient to. He still made an ass out of u and me. Oh, and that “I’m not a scientist” cop-out is classic. You have a brain, don’t you?
aren’t reuters reporters all funded now by climate change evangelists , like the way AP is ?
Oh well, only a few million U.S. families will be displaced in the misunderstanding of the ages.
story tip
Here’s how the $7,500 EV tax credit factors into Tesla’s Mexico plan (dallasnews.com)
Back in the 1970’s, Human-caused Global Cooling was all the rage.
At that time I didn’t know whether these claims were valid or not, but I assumed that shortly evidence proving these claims would be presented by the various climate scientists involved.
And over the years, I scoured each article pertaining to Human-caused Global Cooling looking for the evidence of confirmation of the claim, but there wasn’t any evidence provided, just more claims and assumptions and assertions. Which became extremely irritating as the years passed and no evidence was ever presented.
And that is the way it has been all these years since, whether it was Human-caused Global Cooling or Human-caused Global Warming, the people making these claims have *never* produced any evidence to back up their claims. All they do is make additonal claims. That’s about 50 years worth of unsubstantiated claims about the Earth’s climate.
I think I have seen just about every claim made about human emissions affecting the Earth’s climate, and not one of them has the evidence to substantiate the claims they make.
You don’t really have to spend 50 years studying the subject. All you really have to do is be capable of distinguishing between evidence and what is not evidence, and then look at the climate change claims. None of the claims provide any real evidence. None of them.
This isn’t that hard to figure out. The Climate Change Alarmists have never made their case. Never.
It’s happening. The door has opened just a crack, we need to put our foot in and keep it open. This needs wide distribution. People need to be informed that their political leaders, administrators, bureaucrats, academics, experts, professionals, mainstream media and no nothing activists have been lying to and cheating them for decades. It must stop.
All those that have outed themselves as warmists need to live by their words when the power supplies become limited. AND not be allowed to use generators to keep themselves in power supply, oh what ignore their own diesel or petrol is a pollutant when it suits them.
We have cyclic water heating in australia, must be possible to write a program that blocks water heating to selected homes. Oh dear cold showers will not kill you.
Watch the squealing then.
Husband has a heart condition that he forgets to breathe when asleep, he has a cpap machine, a pacemaker defibulator and latitude that downloads his pacemaker memory to the heart hospital every 24 hours.
I really don’t like to idea of a battery backup in our bedroom, oh well a lot more visits to the heart hospital on the govt’s purse, but at what point does he collapse in a regular power outage because he is afraid to sleep and when he does his defibulator fires off and saves his life again, already has fired off a number of times before severe sleep aponea identified.
We are pensioners living on a govt pension, how in the hell are we going to afford a battery system big enough to power our house.
No!
Politicians and lobbyists see their chances for their highest income levels, luxury and travel to exotic locations through pushing the “
Anthropogenic Global Warming,AGW“, “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming,CAGW“, “Global Warming“, “Climate Weirding“, “Climate Change”, scam.It’s known as riding the climate change green funding trough scam for personal benefit and glory.
Of course, one would think that during 32 years of Reuters science reporting, an alleged journalist would notice alarmists constantly changing their scare porn titles in an effort to keep/increase the continuing scare and demonization of CO₂, carbon dioxide.
If the alleged journalist is serious, then they should be naming names and citing their words/actions pushing the faux climate change messaging.
” I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact.”
You could have looked at the evidence!!
There NEVER was any beyond coincidence
If Mr. Winton had decided to come forward, say, 15 years ago (before retiring) and published his skepticism on climate change (if he interviewed some skeptical scientists for technical support), he probably would have been fired from Reuters and lost out on years of a lucrative career. That would have been the mark of true courage.
The global warming/”climate change” scaremongers are trying to instill so much fear that people will voluntarily give up relatively cheap and abundant energy for unproven technology in the name of “saving the planet”, and those in government and “green” energy industries will reap tremendous profits while ordinary people shiver and starve. They are willing to pay journalists, many of whom do not have the scientific training to argue the facts, high salaries to repeat the “party line” and label the skeptics as stooges of fossil fuel industries.
It’s probably relatively easy to delude young people into thinking that their elders are “cooking the earth” by emitting CO2 from fossil fuels, because they don’t have long memories. But the debate about CO2 causing global warming was started in the 1980’s, and those of us who were alive back then have noticed that none of their dire predictions have come true, and the actual warming rate is much less than predicted by their models over the past 40 years. Contrary to Al Gore, the Arctic still freezes every winter, Florida is not flooded (lots of people live near the beaches), polar bears are thriving, and world crop yields have been increasing (CO2 is actually helpful for crop yields).
So it’s time for everyone who remembers the 1980’s to tell the younger generation to chill out, the world won’t end in 12 years, and there’s no reason for the USA and Europe (or any other country) to cut back on fossil fuels, because everyone knows that China will keep right on burning coal, so why should we deprive ourselves of cheap energy?
I originally read this story on February 23 at the Daily Skeptic, a most interesting UK website that I look at every day.
When I Covered Climate Change for Reuters I Thought CO2 Was Certainly to Blame for Rising Temperatures. I Was Wrong – The Daily Sceptic
Then I looked at the guy’s own blog
Neil Winton’s Blog, dedicated to the truth about politicsWintonsblog
I’m not convinced he has learned much about climate science.
He has learned about journalism, although too late
He had not looked for alternate opinions as a journalist
Concerning climate science, he apparently moved away from the consensus view that CO2 is evil, to the almost as wrong view that CO2 is not proven to be doing anything. So he has moved from dumb to dumber.
He seems to think that something can not be happening unless proven to be happening by science. That is false.
He does not recognize that the huge range of beliefs about CO2 only means that scientists are not sure exactly what CO2 does. But I estimate that 99.9% of scientists recognize CO2 as a greenhouse gas and more greenhouse gases can affect the climate. Unfortunately, 59% of scientists also believe in CAGW, and that is pure fantasy.
I believe I had an advantage in 1997 when I first investigated climate change. I was working in product development driving a company muscle car burning lots of gas. A leftist friend claimed I was hurting the planet by burning so much gasoline. So I decided to research climate change online in 1997.
I started with early training by the parents not to believe predictions.
Good advice.
I was a libertarian since 1973, so did not trust governments.
I quickly found out that climate always changed, and the coming global warming crisis was just a prediction by government bureaucrat scientists. That was strike one and strike two in my first hour of reading.
I thought the climate predictions were for the next 100 years at the time, not realizing ECS was for 200 to 400 years in the future, which is even less likely to be true.
Then I discovered the ECS prediction was from +1.5 to +4.5 degrees C. per CO2 doubling. A huge range that obviously meant no one really knew the right answer. That was strike three for me.
The coming climate change crisis prediction stuck out in my mind after one hour of study.
And then i developed my fist climate prediction: “The climate will get warmer unless it gets colder”. I have since added that “Winters will be cold and summers will be hot”. I’m not sure anything else needs to be predicted about the future climate.
What the former Reuters reporter has not seemed to have learned yet is that our planet’s plants benefit from more CO2 in the atmosphere, and the side effect of mild global warming has been a net positive too: Most affecting winter nights in higher latitude nations in the Northen Hemisphere.
As a RESULT of climate change in the past 325 years, since the very cold 1690s during the coldest Maunder Minimum decade, the climate of our planet has improved.
What the Reuters journalist still needs to learn is we live in the best climate is about 5,000 years, thanks to climate change. And we should be celebrating today’s milder climate … which is good news, even compared with the colder 1970’s, just 50 years ago.
The Ice Age retreated? We’re in the middle of a two-and-a-half-million-year-old ice age. Guess that was another point they never clarified for him…
Anybody else notice the operative word “worked”? As in past tense?
the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact
Well I’m one paragraph in and it’s not looking good for you.
Why did you have no reason to think that wasn’t fact?
You had no reason to question why CO2 was bad you don’t need to be a scientist to know that plant food isn’t bad.
You said this was your top story did you not do any research did you not listen to any experts?
It took you 32 years to figure this out…LMAO.
That’s not saying much about your critical thinking ability
Neil I don’t have any Illusions or any doubts climate change caused by man is fake 100% contrived CO2 is not a poison it’s plant food we’re actually in a CO2 starved environment it’s only 400 parts per million it used to be 4,000 parts per million and the Earth was a lot more Lush.
Is the earth warming yeah of course it is because we’re still coming out of the little ice age that ended at about 1700 1800.
The sun controls 99% of the weather that is a scientific fact let’s stop dancing around the edges here the New World Order has come up with this hoax to enslave the planet
Nice to see the truth from someone in the centre of the media storm on climate change. Doesn’t happen nearly often enough. Real journalists care about the truth, not the politics.