Essay by Kip Hansen — 25 August 2023
I get emails and comments from readers wondering how it is that their local/national newspaper or television news outlet can get even the very basics about climate and climate change so totally wrong. These people ask “How can they get away with such outright lies?” and “Where do they get this nonsense?”
I’m going to tell you: It is through the intentional efforts of climate news cabals providing them with propaganda talking points and even complete stories. I know that that sounds like a “conspiracy theory”… but it is not a conspiracy theory if it is true and if those involved in the act of conspiring together not only do so openly but proudly publicize their actions.
The lesson today comes from an email I received from Covering Climate Now which characterizes itself this way: “CCNow collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom — from politics and weather to business and culture” and when they say “urgent” climate stories, they mean the more alarming and frightening, the better.
Who are the participants?
“Co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation in association with The Guardian and WNYC in 2019, CCNow’s 460-plus partners include some of the biggest names in news, and some of the smallest, because this story needs everyone. In addition to three of the world’s biggest news agencies — Reuters, Bloomberg, and Agence France Presse [AFP] — each of which provides content to thousands of other newsrooms, our partners include CBS News, NBC and MSNBC News, Noticias Telemundo, PBS NewsHour, Univision, Al Jazeera; most of the biggest public radio stations in the US; many flagship newspapers and TV networks in the Americas, Europe, and Asia; and dozens of leading magazines and journals, including Nature, Scientific American, Rolling Stone, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and Mother Jones.” [ CCNow About page ]
I urge you to actually read the list above, but it is not complete, for the complete list see here. Is your local public broadcasting station on the list, your local paper, does your local paper print stories from the major press agencies (AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg) or reprint stories from other newspapers or news agencies on that list?
And what does CCNow tell them to help make their stories “more informed and urgent”? CCNow posted a page on their site on 16 August called “10 Climate Change Myths Debunked”.
Quoting from the introduction:
“Scientists the world over agree that climate change is real, it’s happening now, and it’s caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Still, there are a lot of myths being repeated about climate change, and even journalists can get taken in.
Most climate change myths have been perpetuated by fossil fuel companies, their political allies, and others with vested interests in the status quo. For decades, they’ve spent millions of dollars on advertising, think tank “studies,” and lobbying to confuse the public, policymakers, and the press and thereby forestall climate action.
This has led some journalists to soften their coverage — for example, by not connecting climate change to extreme weather — leaving the public misinformed. This guide equips journalists to recognize and refute these myths and report the truth.”
It would be a whole essay just to expose the mis- and dis-information in the introduction, but that wouldn’t leave room for the main course! Let’s take a collective look at the so-called myths by looking at screen shots of their 10 ‘myths’ one at a time. Here is Myth 1:
Before you ask….yes, all ten are like that.
This so-called ‘myth’ is a simple fact. 99% of scientists do not agree about climate change (that is an absurd thing to say) or that that human activity is overheating the planet, not even 99% of IPCC associated scientists agree about that. Nowhere does the IPCC even claim that we (or Climate Change) are “overheating the planet” . An Advanced Google Search restricted to the IPCC domain returns “No results found for “overheating the planet” site:https://www.ipcc.ch.” The IPCC never says that, not once, anywhere on its website nor in AR6.
The IPCC AR6 Summary for Policy Makers uses this wording:
“It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3
The number of skeptical declarations, statements, proclamations signed by scientists skeptical about climate change around the world are legion. The CO2 Coalition is made up of about 150 scientists from all fields of study, including some of the world’s leading physicists and the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics, John Clauser, all of whom disagree with the IPCC view of climate change and do not endorse that human activity is “overheating the planet”.
It is notable that the IPCC no longer even says “dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century” (AR5) but rather, in AR6, 20th century warming doesn’t really get going until 1978/79 or so – not 1950 (mid-20th Century) as many still claim, and certainly not since 1880-1890.
CCNow, seemingly well aware of the scientific ignorance of the average journalist, gives them the wording to use in their climate propaganda stories:
“LANGUAGE FOR JOURNALISTS: Scientists overwhelmingly agree that burning oil, coal and gas is overheating the planet.”
Besides, even using the scientifically (technically) suspect present-day measures of tropospheric warming, such as all the Global Average Surface Temperature metrics, Earth is not overheating. In fact, the global average surface temperature for 2022 was 1.90 ˚F (1.06 ˚C) warmer than the pre-industrial period (1880-1900). [ climate.gov ] The pre-industrial average temperature was 13.7 °C – that plus 1.06 °C makes 14.76 °C – about ¼ degree too cool — less than the 15°C expectation for the Earth to be considered an “Earth-like” planet.
How are the propagandists doing?
Try a web search like this for the exact phrase: “overheating the planet”. I got over 58,000 returns, mostly from the climate alarm mass media.
– – – – –
Here all ten of the propaganda talking points from CCNow as a slide show. You should be able to click on the left and right arrows to move through the whole set:
This nonsense is repeated and amplified by more than 500 media outlets in 57 countries, with a cumulative reach of over 2 BILLION people.
I want to be clear – CCNow is not the only group doing this. You also have Inside Climate News, which has a convenient Inside Climate News Newsletter that it sends weekly to journalists (and anyone else) who want copy ‘ready-to-print” (requires partnership or permission) or to re-write. There are others, many national or language-specific.
Bottom Lines:
The Climate News – found on the front pages and in the climate/environment sections of your newspaper, magazines, news broadcasts, and the push feed from your social media sites is not news. It is climate alarm propaganada carefully manufactured and shared by professional climate propaganda cabals like Covering Climate Now (CCNow) – they may be “true believers” but they are intentional in their knowing creation of propaganda.
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Author’s Comment:
I have been writing about CCNow for years. Anthony Watts alerted us to their upcoming Massive Collusion-fest to “Get their Stories Straight” on Climate Change. When they say “get stories straight” they mean agree on the propaganda lines to be used in all their stories. Think how many time you have heard a TV or movie detective worrying about allowing suspects time get together to “get their stories straight”.
It is hard to blame home town newspapers and under-funded local TV stations for taking advantage of this sort of journalism-free instant copy. They have to have copy and they don’t have the people to even write it – no less actually do informed research for a third page story.
I encourage readers to take which ever one of the CCNow’s ten propaganda points best aligns with their expertise and tell us just how twisted it is.
With my apologies, I may not be available to reply to your comments, I will be away for a couple of days. Please be civil to one another.
Thanks for reading.
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I notice that none of the ten “myths” mention the many benefits of global warming. A sure sign that Covering Climate Now is a propaganda outfit which is spreading disinformation about global warming.
Meanwhile, the Free Speech Union has flagged this worrying development in the U.K:
CARBON LITERACY TRAINING is spreading rapidly across UK offices and places of study, with over 67,000 citizens certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative. (Between financial year-end September 2021 and September 2022, CLP’s income grew from £183.8k to £637.7k, an increase of nearly 250%.) The training takes it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommends that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.
The Free Speech Union is concerned that this training is embedding a particular orthodoxy about climate change in British workplaces, leaving employees feeling unable to challenge it. While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-nineteenth century, people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary. Different solutions to the problems created by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution. Consequently, employees should not be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly in their private lives.
In those companies seeking accreditation as a ‘Carbon Literate Organisation’ (CLO), up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’. Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people. The Free Speech Union fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.
A Free Speech Union member contacted us because he was concerned about the repercussions on his career after he challenged the content of the training and provided alternative views and different insights on the topic. We believe he was right to be concerned. To secure CLP’s platinum, gold, and silver CLO accreditation, companies are expected to embed carbon literacy in the annual targets of staff members and evaluate their performance accordingly. This means that employees who don’t subscribe to a particular view on climate change could find themselves missing out on pay awards or promotion unless they self-censor or pretend to hold convictions they don’t have.
The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the national accreditation body for the United Kingdom. It is appointed by the government to assess and accredit organisations that provide services including certification, testing, inspection and calibration.
As carbon literacy accreditation schemes proliferate, particularly in the public sector, we believe it’s in the public interest for them to seek out UKAS accreditation. This would ensure that any concerns about the impact of these schemes on employees’ speech rights could be raised with an independent external body.
If you’re being forced to undergo carbon literacy training in your workplace and are worried you might get into trouble for challenging the climate activist agenda behind it, you can contact Thomas Harris at the Free Speech Union here.
Neo-Puritanical indoctrination.
Yup-if you don’t say you prayers you won’t get a raise (or worse!)
Climate insanity comes from the communist/socialist mindset that gave up on God on long time ago. And so the void in their souls is replaced with eco-crap.
Just part of the plan – in Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother was all consuming – in your face 24/7 – start with kids in school, through Uni, into workplaces – the blob is actively pursuing these dystopian visions
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past
One way in which employees can (maybe, depending on the country you live in and individual circumstance) deal with this indoctrination is first, find out if said training is necessary to retain one’s job. Second, if it is and they must undergo the training or otherwise lose their jobs, they can sign any and all paperwork and write “signed under duress” under their signature. This is an acceptable legal way to deal with being threatened or forced to sign off on something that you would otherwise have no intention of ever signing or sanctioning. At least it is in the US.
Or, once you complete the indoctrination and you are marked as complete, then tell everyone within ear shot that you don’t for a even a New York minute believe any of it.
Correct – do as they do and censor out the garbage
kip there is another network that converts tv weather persons into climate evangelists. I refer to Climate Matters, part of Climate Central. From their website:
“Knowing that TV meteorologists are among the most trusted local science communicators, Climate Matters began in 2010 as a National Science Foundation-funded pilot project in partnership with George Mason University. AMS, NASA, NOAA and Climate Communication later also became Climate Matters partners.”
“Following the successful pilot, Climate Matters launched as a full-time program in 2012. We’ve produced 560+ weekly bulletins and 70,000+ localized graphics since then. We also engage a global network of TV weather presenters and media through special projects, content support, and workshops.”. 3000 forecasters in 200 US media Markets.
https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters
My synopsis:
https://rclutz.com/2022/12/10/how-climate-evangelists-took-over-your-local-weather-forecast/
Kip,
Do you have any idea how many scientists there are in the world? There are roughly 8.8 million scientists currently active (plus many more who have retired). If out of those 8.8 million, 150 have joined the CO2 Coalition then that still leaves 99.998% of scientists who would agree with the claim that CO2 is heating the earth.
Now the latest study shows that over 99.9% of published papers “agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans” See
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966
So while there are certainly a number of intelligent, thoughtful scientists out there who disagree with the consensus and who are worth listening to and taking seriously, the number is a lot less than 1%. And it is decreasing all the time, both because of the prevalence of group think when it comes to hiring but also because the evidence for climate change is getting stronger and stronger.
Phlogiston and Luminiferous Aether to name two things that the entire scientific community thought was correct but wasn’t.
Then the arguments about wave and corpuscular light, even momentum and kinetic energy caused ructions.
Being in a minority doesn’t make you wrong, having a loud voice and shouting doesn’t make you right
Ben,
the myth being discussed is whether or not there is a substantial number of scientists who disagree with the consensus on climate change. Whether or not that consensus is correct is beside the point.
As I said there are scientists who disagree with the consensus and who should be listened to and taken seriously. But that number is a lot less than 1%.
It’s immaterial how many there are, the majority just follow the herd and as I pointed out they always have done. Invariably the herd is wrong on scientific matters, I see no reason suppose that you and the rest of the 8.8 million herd aren’t following a well trodden path of being wrong.
He’s talking out his a*se. See my comment on the peer reviewed study into the 97% claim.
Well put, Ben.
Do you think the climate opinions of sociologists, economists, geneticists, medical researchers, computer scientists, etc., etc., etc. are meaningful?
Real scientists don’t deal in consensus old chap – that’s just opinion, not empirical science – you must free your mind from its alarmist cage
They talk about 99% of ‘climate’ scientists not scientists.
“Climate Scientists” are basically journalists trained in propaganda. Their scientific credentials are typically regurgitating the ideology talking points.
Journalists as a whole, are looking for the easiest way to print a story with very few actually researching the subject matter.
They should call them Flawed Climate Model Technicians. That would be more accurate. The Sun warms the oceans and the oceans warm the air. The oceans are warmer than the air so the colder air can’t warm them.
One person can be right and 10,000 with the opposite view can be wrong.
Ignaz Semmelweis was castigated by the medical people for a long time for advocating just washing his freaking hands and keeping the rooms clean from blood and other bodily materials (Antiseptic procedures) greatly reduced puerperal fevers that saved many new mothers lives, but he was sacked for it and eventually died from being beaten.
LINK
Science illiterates ignore the Reproducible research approach for the dumb and useless consensus bullcrap.
You are conflating number of scientists with the number of articles – not the same thing as woke governments and agencies are funding research that will support their narrative, and it’s become commonplace for a group of eco-warrior science-tologists to publish re: the essentially same but rephrased or refocused research under a shifting list of their names to generate more articles and citations from really one piece of research.
The CO2 Coalition agrees that carbon dioxide is a contributing factor to the beneficial warming of the planet. So your entire post is nonsense.
It is also a howling fallacy, claiming that all the rest of the scientists believe AGW. He should write for CCNow.
Or the BBC
Exactly, we need more, about another 400ppm minimum
Another even 1000ppm. I believe greenhouses aim for over 1200, but then they’re paying to burn propane or methane to keep the levels up. If it were free, I wonder how high before the plants maximize the benefit?
That the climate is moderately warming right now: everyone acknowledges that. That CO2, and only CO2, and thus that man the driver of it is, is a whole different game. There’s even clear evidence, that the narrative the IPCC is defending is fundamentally wrong, if only for the fact that most of their assumptions are based on models that for decades are not matching observations. Even the scientific community itself is hopelessly biased by the vast amounts of money being poured into this narrative, which unfortunately biases the careers of young scientists, who have somewhat lost contact with what “real science” is, which is to focus on data and observations, and not on models.
The absolute #1 priority of young scientists is to advance their careers. Many are deep in debt and they know that few can succeed to a high level in the science community. They’ll do whatever it takes. Rocking the boat will get them canceled.
“That the climate is moderately warming right now: everyone acknowledges that.”
You’re going to have to define “now” for me to agree to that. According to the USCRN there hasn’t been any warming since 2005. According to ice core data there’s been cooling for the past 10k years. I will agree the Earth has warmed since the Younger dryas ended so is that what you mean by “now”?
I’m commenting on this because it’s important for us skeptics not to get lazy and fall into the alarmist traps. Don’t call it climate change, call it AGW. Don’t acknowledge the Earth is warming w/o specifically attaching a date to that warming. Be specific, don’t concede points that shouldn’t be conceded.
“You’re going to have to define “now” for me to agree to that. According to the USCRN there hasn’t been any warming since 2005.”
Me, too. According to NASA’s James Hansen, the United States has been in a temperature downtrend since the 1930’s.
“”the evidence for climate change is getting stronger and stronger.””
Name any period when the climate wasn’t in flux. Just one….
He could try naming some of that “evidence” he references, too.
What evidence, Izaak?
The best he can do, as far as I can see, is politics over science. That is the idea of a consensus.
“update previous efforts to quantify the scientific consensus on climate change”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966 – His link to a bit of polling dressed up as serious quantitative science.
Notes on the authors of Izaak’s reference article…
“Lynas is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change.
Benjamin Z. Houlton is the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture
Simon Perry created an algorithm to sweep the 88,125 papers for phrases common in papers that are skeptical of anthropogenic climate change.
Laughable stuff.
Funnily enough although Mark Lynas is a climate change extremist he also supports nuclear power. Strange mix.
Firstly, that is a blatantly false dichotomy. Until you conduct a poll of those 8.8 million and find out how many positively subscribe to the notion “agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans” you are making an unfounded assertion.
Secondly, given that journals are disinclined to publish papers skeptical of the climate change narrative, the 99.9% figure you claim – even if it were valid, which it isn’t – is a self-selecting sample.
Thirdly, the number of authors of those papers I suspect are a far smaller subset of the 8.8 million scientist population.
Finally, that paper does not show what it claims it does. Only 428 out of a sample of 2718 papers explicitly claim that climate change is human-caused. The rest either implied it, or took no position. I have inserted the graph from the paper below. That is not 99.9% in favour of the proposition, no matter how you look at it.
All these “97 Percent” studies are climate change propaganda in themselves.
Every one of them has been debunked.
Propagandists know people tend to go along with the thinking of the crowd (it’s an ancient survival instinct), so the climate change propagandists try to make everyone think that belief in human-caused climate change is almost universal and you should believe in it, too. Everybody can’t be wrong, they say.
It’s another way to lie.
Hilarious. 99.9% of scientists have never agreed on anything. If you had cared to read any of the critiques of 97% Cook nonsense you would see that even at that time far fewer than 97% of scientists were playing along with “support the narrative or you won’t publish”. Since then the screws on publishing have been turned tighter and scientists being the generally cowardly bunch that they are, mouth the words required to be published. Why does the 99.9% paper use such an obtuse method as surveying publications to establish 99.9% agreement. If their method demonstrated anything it is that there is huge market for papers that appear to support the global fear campaign. Why not just ask scientists directly what they believe when their ability to publish is not affected by the answer they give. Where is the simple, unencumbered, survey? Surely it has been done dozens of times by now.
The Cook(ed) paper wasn’t the first to make the claim. The first was the result of polling members of scientific societies, if I remember correctly. Only a very small number of recipients even responded.
A peer reviewed study into the claims of 97% of scientist agreeing on climate change was found to be, at best, badly analysed, at worst (and more probably) fraudulent.
It found the number of scientist ‘agreeing’ was 0.3%.
Or is peer review not good enough for you?
99.9% of scientists believe that the force of gravity is real and universal.
The fanatical need for evidence of AGW belies the doubts of the believers.
But “just stop oil”, “the end is near!”
I don’t believe that actual opinion polls bear you out Izaak. Perhaps you can cite a scientific poll (statistically valid) restricted to “scientists” that shows greater than 99% agreeing that human activity is OVERHEATING the planet?
Bear in mind that the question you and CCNow claim to be agreed by over 99% is NOT merely that climate is warming. You MIGHT achieve that level of agreement even among WUWT authors.
It is NOT that human activity has some impact on warming. Again, high concurrence among WUWT authors.
It is not even the IPPC claim that human activity is the dominant driver of observed warming, which I could swallow as plausible but highly unlikely.
Your absurd claim is that over 99% of “scientists” agree that human activity is OVERHEATING the planet. That claim starts with the premise that the planet is ‘overheating’.
Even if we accept a very weak definition of overheating to mean net harmful warming, less than one in a hundred trained scientists recognize that the planet is experiencing a net beneficial warming?
Awaiting your poll citations with bated breath.
Well said.
“Do you have any idea how many scientists there are in the world? There are roughly 8.8 million scientists currently active (plus many more who have retired). If out of those 8.8 million, 150 have joined the CO2 Coalition then that still leaves 99.998% of scientists who would agree with the claim that CO2 is heating the earth.”
No, what that really means is that 99.998 percent of scientists are not members of the CO2 Coalition. It doesn’t say anything about their opinions on human-caused climate change. I’m not a member of the CO2 coalition, but I don’t believe human-caused climate change has been shown to be real. One doesn’t have to be a member of the CO2 coalition to discount human-caused climate change. All one needs is a little common sense.
99.998 percent of scientists are not climate scientists and they know little about the topic so even if that % agreed on anything, which of course is absurd, it would not be meaninful
What is a “climate scientist”?
good question- I presume it’s a scientist who studies the climate- maybe gets an advanced degree in climate or related sciences
does not include social scientists and many other scientists whose work is unrelated to climate
I don’t know the numbers but I bet very few scientists have a clue about “climate science”- so the suggestion that a vast majority of scientists support the climate emergency paradigm is absurd- even if they do, it’s meaningless.
You don’t have to be an expert in climate science to know we’re being lied to!
Climate emergency panic over gentle warming of 1 degree spread out over a century?
Eco obsessed politicians ignoring the effects of their costly policies on the every day lives of their voters, to save them from some vague disaster in a ‘future’ around the corner that never seems to, come?
The science results staying essentially the same but the climate cries just keep growing more frantic and ridiculous every year and the climate mob gets more and more dictatorial and totalitarian.
Any of these alone should raise the suspicions of any wise person, but the whole of all the climate scam should make it be clear that we are being scammed like the Germans under Nazism.
“You don’t have to be an expert in climate science to know we’re being lied to!”
I do agree with that!
All one needs is a little common sense.
________________________________
Yes, the notion that a warmer world would be a problem is absurd.
And that’s what’s missing in all of the 97% surveys is the question:
“Do you think a warmer world will be a problem?”
For example:
Doran Zimmerman 2009
(1) Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels?
(2) Has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
Unfortunately common sense seems to be in very short supply in today’s world.
Isn’t that the truth!
It doesn’t matter how many believe in something; it just takes one to prove they are wrong. Think Albert Einstein.
And Gallileo
I always think about Albert when the subject of scientific consensus comes up. He had the right take on the subject.
Most scientists have little to zero understanding of the climate- so who cares if 99% agree in any way about the climate?
Of course the correct answer on the test is not necessarily the one that is given by the most people taking the test. It’s possible that nobody gets the right answer or only one or two people get it right out of thousands.
I suppose you’re right that most scientists are not expert on a contested aspect of climate theory, but it’s certainly a stretch to say zero understanding of climate.
There is no such thing as climate science per se. Most of the hard sciences have some aspect relevant to climate. Not to mention engineers. I would actually argue that engineering opinion may be even more relevant than the opinions of theoreticians. But even unanimity can be wrong.
If most of what they know is from reading in the MSM- then they’re mostly aware of misinformation. I know quite a few scientists and I know they know almost zero about the climate- not even the prevailing dogma. Perhaps they read about the issue in Unscientific Unamerican so they think they’re up on the latest thinking.
I agree about engineers. Their work is soon found out to be right or not.
The moment you said ‘CO2 is heating the earth’, you lost me and the 99.998% of sensible, unalarmed people
Your 97% was debunked years ago and ended up as 0.3% – for some common sense I suggest you reference the Clintel WCD or Oregon Petition – these are just the tip of the silent majority realist ice berg
Not a great way to start an alarmvolution old chap
You can’t conclude…”99.998% of scientists” agree. You don’t know that.
Assume much?
Are you trying to imply that 99.998% of scientists agree with CAGW just because they haven’t joined the CO2 Coalition?
I’m not an NRA member but that doesn’t I support “gun control” here in the US.
(We need criminal control, not gun control.)
We definitely need criminal control in Democrat-governed U.S. cities.
Here’s how to control crime: Lock up the criminals when they break the law. If they are locked up, they can’t commit more crimes. See how simple that is, Democrats?
A good idea would be to reinstitute the “Three Strikes and You are OUT” law, where if a person is convicted of three violent felonies, that person goes to jail for life on the third conviction. That will prevent that felon from harming society any more. And it will deter others from committing that third violent felony.
Democrats are obviously not fit to rule when they think it is a good idea to coddle criminals. Coddling criminals leads to lawlessness, like we have now in major American cities run by radical Democrats, who are destroying these cities in real time with their delusional worldviews.
Unbelievable!
Nonsense, Izaak. You are positing that any scientist who has not come out publicly as a sceptic agrees with the “consensus”. This is an absurd and fallacious non sequitur. Consider:
(1) Most scientists are not specialists in climate-related fields and many of them don’t know any more about climate than what they read in their newspapers or twitter feeds.
(2) A substantial number of scientists who do work in climate related fields are overtly sceptical of the alarmist agenda in private, but they keep their heads down and say nothing in public for fear of jeopardising their status, their tenure, their research funding, or even their jobs. I know, I’ve met them.
(3) We all know (and if you don’t, you should really go back to fishing) that proposals for research funding in natural science fields that have little to do with climate often (or even usually) contain reference to “the effects of climate change on blah blah blah” because if they don’t, their chances of getting funded become very small. And the resultant papers typically contain similar statements to ensure a favourable response to future grant applications. So they all get swept up in your “99% of published papers”
(4) Authors of papers that cast doubt on alarmist orthodoxy often have great difficulty getting their work published. Ask Pat Frank. See climategate.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
LOL! Lets take Hurricanes/tropical cyclones. Their consensus is now that “climate change” is making the storms stronger and more frequent and causing near shore intensification.
Never mind that already in this century the US went a record 9 years without a major hurricane striking its shores. That is all forgotten. As is the fact that for the three previous years Global ACE was near record low values.
They use the same tactic for “Climate Change” they do in trying to advance every other agenda. Ignore or suppress the history and science that damages the credibility of their claims.
NASA instead of trying to figure out why we went those 9 years without a strike when others were saying that “climate change” would cause more powerful storms instead wrote it off as “luck”. How scientific of them.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/no-major-us-hurricane-landfalls-in-nine-years-luck/
So NOAA says that 8 major hurricanes have hit the Gulf Coast in 6 years. First off, only 7 were actually majors. Idalia showed only CAT I winds at landfall. NOAA can do what they want but the fac is they do not have the directly measured windspeeds from a ground station to justify it as per the specifications for classification of the Saffir-Simpson scale. Irma that I mentioned earlier was a major when it hit Cudjo Key but was not a major when it hit the mainland near Naples. I monitored all surface station and buoy data real time as it came ashore and it was a CAT II according to the windspeeds taken by land stations.
And of course NOAA or anyone else hyping that claim will mention that in the 6 years from 1944 to 1950 7 major hurricanes hit FLORIDA. Two of them in 1950.
“And of course NOAA or anyone else hyping that claim will mention that in the 6 years from 1944 to 1950 7 major hurricanes hit FLORIDA. Two of them in 1950.”
Just think if that happened today. The Alarmists would be convinced that CO2 had caused it. There would be 5,000 articles written about how it was our fault. Seeing what they want to see. Seeing what they expect to see. Seeing things that aren’t really there.
You got me there, isaak. I remember about The 100 Scientists Against Einstein. That put the upstart young patent clerk in his place. Had 99% of scientists been against, that might have made Einstein quit science out of shame.
Why don’t YOU shove that stupid consensus fallacy into the dumpster as there have been many consensus errors over the centuries.
The Authority Fallacy is also stupid since it is REPRODUCIBLE RESEARCH that matters not how many believe in something which is a political approach.
Excellent point, Izaak!
By the way, could you point me to the document the document signed by 8.8 million (-150) scientists who agree that CO2 is heating the Earth?
Internationally, there’s the “Trusted News Initiative” with Reuters, AFP and other major press centers. Their job is to forge the narrative, and with that, the creation of a “subjective reality” that everyone is supposed to have, almost everywhere. Whether this has to do with reality itself or truth is not important for these people. I recommend to watch “Pandamned” a documentary by Marijn Poels.
It probably has a lot to do with establishing authoritarian rule in the Western Democracies.
The Western Elites seem to be trying to implement the Chicom form of government in our nations.
Controlling the Press and keeping them on message is an essential part of the plan.
Now, it’s climate change. Tomorrow it will be some other narrative that gives the Elites more political power. And the Elites need an entity to promote these narratives and it looks like they are spending big money to do just that, right this moment, with this gathering together of leftwing propagandists and leftwing billionaires.
The situation gets worse when you realise that the smaller, local news outlets report local news but also copy news items, sometimes word for word, from the larger news agencies and outlets. These smaller outlets may not even be signed up to the alarmist propaganda machines directly, just an example of a snowball or domino effect.
Good point. I see a lot of articles on the same climate change subject that have the same basic theme, with just a few changes made by the local journalist. So they are basically forwarding a template climate change story and putting a little of their own spin on it. Sometimes, as you note, they don’t put their spin on it at all but just pass it along the way they recieved it.
There are a lof of copycat journalists out there, on any subject, and climate change is included.
The 1.2C number describes the Feb 2016, temperature, which was the warmest in the 21st century.
We are currently slightly cooler than that, after an unusually large just in the temperatures in the recent past.
The United States/North America has been in a temperature downtrend (cooling) since the 1930’s.
NASA’s Climate Czar, James Hansen, shows (and said) that 1934, was 0.5C warmer than 1998 (see his U.S. temperature chart below), and that would make 1934 about 0.4C warmer than 2016 (1998 and 2016 being statistically tied for the warmest years in the satellite era (1979 to present) going by the UAH chart. The bastardized NASA charts show 2016 being a little bit higher than 1998, but we discount bastardized charts around here).
So, at least in the United States, that 1.02C temperature above the NASA average has already been exceeded by quite a bit, and everyone and everything, with a few exceptions, did very well at those temperatures.
And of course, I would submit that North American temperatures represent global temperatures at the time. It was hotter in the 1930’s than it is today in the United States, and just as hot in nations around the world, in both hemispheres. I have charts that show just that, and nobody can dispute them.
We have been hotter in the recent past. There are many people today who have lived through hotter times than this.
And the bottom line is there is no evidence that CO2 is going to drive the temperatures even higher. That is pure speculation. If the climate does today what it did in the recent past, then we are in for a little bit of cooling in the near future. Look at the chart below. It shows a period of warming from the 1910’s to the 1940’s, and then a period of cooling from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, and then a period of warming from the 1980’s to the present day. And both warming periods are of the same magnitude. After the previous warming period, the temperatures cooled by about 2.0C. So what do you think will happen this time, after the current warming period? Will it cool, or will it warm? That is the question. History says it will cool. CO2 may have something else to say, but we haven’t seen it yet.
Hansen 1999:
Here’s the current UAH chart. It shows the temperatures from 1979 to the present:
The years 1998 and 2016 are statistically tied for the warmest year in the satellite era.
Covering climate?
Pumping propaganda
And isn’t it interesting to see how many of these disinformation points are regurgitated by the visiting climate alarmists onto WUWT? Propaganda prone pillocks or just weak-willed idiots following the herd over a cliff?
Quite possibly even paid messengers – did Griff’s contract run out or was he promoted to make way for Stokes, BigOilBob, FinalBore etc?
Griff got paranoid – he knew his tinfoil hat would work only so far and signing up would invalidate its warranty! I do hope the poor guy is lurking and seeing how often his name is being mentioned.
I don’t know why you even give him the press.
State sponsored trolls – better left unacknowledged to simmer in their ignorance
There’s nothing more enjoyable than a holy and bloodless crusade, and, besides, no news does not sell papers or get much attention.
But ordinary people are starting to see through all the hype spewed out by the climate zealots. The world is not melting. The hysteria is too shrill. The predictions are so wrong. The costs are too great. All this, and more, is leading to a healthy skepticism which will eventually bury the whole AGW nonsense.
What worries me is the possibility that we may enter a cold phase after the present moderately warm phase ceases. Then we would have something to shout about.
“All this, and more, is leading to a healthy skepticism which will eventually bury the whole AGW nonsense.”
Been hearing that for 20 years. They’ve only gotten stronger.
Not a single, credible, peer reviewed, scientific study has reliably demonstrated that atmospheric CO2 causes planetary warming.
The worlds future hinges on an unproven hypothesis.
But it’s partly the fault of we sceptics.
There are less than 10% (probably 1%) of people on the planet with a higher scientific qualification. We sceptics chose to communicate reliable science to convince people the whole thing is bunk, and only 1% of the world understands what we are saying.
Our competition here, the alarmists, like any far left cult chose to communicate with propaganda. 100% of the worlds population understands propaganda.
Ultimately, this is a political battle, not a scientific one. People vote based on their emotions, not on objective fact, so people are voting for the cult.
But that’s changing, as the financial reality of their ignorance begins to bite.
They will soon be voting on their emotions alright, the emotions of poverty, food shortages, energy restrictions, skyrocketing cost’s of living etc.
It’s beginning in Europe.
The pro-farmer populist party that upended the political establishment in The Netherlands has selected a former government minister who was sacked for her opposition to coronavirus passports as their candidate for prime minister in the race to replace globalist PM Mark Rutte.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/09/03/dutch-farmer-party-picks-anti-vax-pass-crusader-as-prime-minister-candidate/
Timmermans has thrown his globalist hat into the ring.
Pass the popcorn
That’s because climate alarmism is deceit, built on money, money, money
Nut zero is 100% deceit, for 100% cash cow purpose
The useful idiots caught in the headlamps will be as poor, cold, hungry and unhealthy as everyone else
“Not a single, credible, peer reviewed, scientific study has reliably demonstrated that atmospheric CO2 causes planetary warming.
The worlds future hinges on an unproven hypothesis.”
I would modify that a little bit to say the “Western” world’s future hinges on an unproven hypothesis. The rest of the world will do just fine because they are not paying attenton to this unproven hypothesis.
From the article: ““It is very likely that well-mixed GHGs were the main driver of tropospheric warming since 1979…” AR6 SPM A.1.3”
“Very likely” is not definitive. Therefore, it is meaningless. It is not science, it is guessing. It is in the same category as IPCC “CONfidence levels”. The alarmists say: “This is my guess and I’m very confident I am correct. Meaningless. it proves nothing.
Kip
Pertinent to your article, I was astonished to hear on one of the largest commercial radio broadcasters here in the UK, the statement:
“It’s a beautiful sunny day across England.”
Insignificant one might think, but today’s top temperature is forecast to be 27ºC (in our region).
Only weeks ago that was welcomed with lurid warnings to “stay indoors”; “keep hydrated”; “stay out the sun”; “cover up” etc.
Being that broadcasters are known to get their feeds from the same organisations, this is something of a change. I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer but this is interesting and I’ll keep my ears open over the next few, hotter, days.
It’s too late in the year for a good scare.
They know it and so do we.
He/she will have been sent to room 101 for reprogramming after that slip from the narrative
Hot ==> 27C is a coolish day in the Virgin Islands — and England doesn’t get that many beautiful sunny days. Certainly something to celebrate. But,righto, odd that without being ordered to do otherwise, they tell the truth instead of declaring another “it must be a heat wave!”
And my next question is: Why is all this human-caused climate change propaganda being directed at the Western Democracies? The same Western Democracies that are bankrupting themselves trying to reduce CO2 as much as possible? The Western Democracies and their ignorant and/or conniving politicians don’t need any convincing that human-caused climate change is real.
These climate change propaganda outfits ought to be focusing their efforts on places like China and India if they were really serious about reducing CO2.
The Climate Change Propagadists are preaching to the Choir in the Western World. The Choir being our befuddled/selfish Elites.
The poll numbers for believing in human-caused climate change aren’t too good from the alarmist perspective, but that isn’t stopping the bankrupting of the Western economies over CO2, so what is all this propaganda effort about really?
Well, there’s the critical question. Perhaps the simple answer, that the “progressive” elites want control of the west’s energy supply as part of their attempt to control all aspects of our lives, is the correct one. It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s actually happening. I’ve listened to Dr. Lindzen’s interview with Jordan Peterson several times, and he certainly alludes to this possibility whether intentionally or not.
Klaus Schwab visited China recently – getting China (and BRICS+) on board is critical to the civilisation regression mission – funnily enough, I’m not sure BRICS+ are up for self harm, but happy to help the West achieve theirs
The BRICS+ know it is in their interest to stick together whilst the West impoverishes itself by pursuing the idiocy of net zero by 2050.
The Western climate change alarmists are driving nations into joining BRICS because of their stance against coal, oil, and natural gas.
The Western Democracies are discouraging developing nations from using coal, oil, and natural gas.
The BRICS nations are encouraging the developing nations to use coal, oil and natural gas to improve their futures. If I were a developing nation, I know who I would be going with.
Western politicians are such fools.
The green movement is a disinformation campaign’
Michael Shellenberger explains why climate change is not the end of the world.
The planet is on fire – and it’s all our fault……
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/04/the-green-movement-is-a-disinformation-campaign/
Like many, I don’t reference local or MSM for news, weather etc – it’s all click bait dressed up with narrative
I seek unbiased outlets, view opposing data etc, then make my own mind up who’s selling truth and who’s selling deceit
The blobs propaganda shill units have self mummified and no longer represent the vast majority
The CCNow folks never heard of the Young Dryas or never would publish myth 4 rebuttal.
“In this second warming interval, average global temperatures increased by up to 10 °C (18 °F) in just a few decades.”
We survived this as did other animals so we will survive anything happening naturally now.
mkelly ==> It is not so much that they never heard of it,they just don’t care because they have a scary story to sell and YD doesn’t fit the narrative.
Climate change is not the only area where this sort of collaboration occurs. The same thing happened with the nuclear industry, starting in the late 1970s.
“The Nuclear Information and Resource Service [NIRS] fights for a nuclear-free, carbon-free world powered by clean, renewable energy.” They feed information and “facts” to all sorts of “public interest” and “journalists” who use it to paint the technology in a bad light.
Standard leftist tactics, invented by some very “smart” people.
A 2022 study you never heard of, not funded by the IPCC and not involving Mann, which used tree rings and many other proxies as well… No Frankenstein graph with thermometer data stapled on the end. Guess what they found, a gradual decline in global temperatures for the past eight thousand years, no hockey stick at the end and no anthropogenic climate crisis.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2022.781882/full
idbodbi ==> Hey, thanks for the link.
the CAGW hoax has always been about two things: 1) money, in the form of research grants and more recently, windmills and solar arrays; 2) political power over us. For instance Joetato wants to take away ceiling fans *facepalm*. It’s all a strategy of the NWO jerks, otherwise China and India would be front and center for a thrashing by the greenies.
The hoax is meant to destroy the US and western Europe which have been the freedom loving power centers of the planet for a very long time. A Middle Ages feudal-like economy and culture cannot get ahold of the planet as long as we two are healthy and strong, so we have to be destroyed along with the weak and lazy. The putative kings and princes want more money and more power without end. Look who’s driving this, billionaires like Soros and Gates and a host of hidden actors.
Getting back to news – papers:
The local small-town paper (and I suspect this is true for most or all) is no longer locally owned, having gone through several occupiers**. There is a sports writer and a city & county meetings writer.
Otherwise, articles are all provided by far-flung sources.
Meanwhile, the paper dropped a Monday edition and then a Friday one. It now charges $5 per week (4 deliveries) for “news” available elsewhere for free. Local deaths are on-line, so many people won’t pay the paper’s fee to put an obituary in the paper.
**1992 – McClatchy Newspapers; 1996 – Pioneer News Group; 2017 – Adams Publishing Group. Adams owns 127+ newspapers.
John ==> Yes, the change of ownership — consolidation of the local dailies/weeklies. Two decades ago I knew the Editor-in-Chief and the journalists of our local town newspaper, published once a week. I could get stories published and suggest topics — sometimes followed-up on.
Now, no one knows who is involved, except for a few “local color journalists” (all volunteers) who cover local school board meeting, Little League baseball, the Youth Soccer league, and “school news”.
“CCNow collaborates with journalists and newsrooms to produce more informed and urgent climate stories, to make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom — from politics and weather to business and culture”
CCNow has just admitted that they are nothing but lobbyists. Any organizatoin that publishes copy from lobbyists are not journalists or newsrooms, they are propaganda outlets. Apparently, those who cannot do math and choose journalism as a career cannot source their own information either.
Journalists are most often left-leaning and want to change the world, but they are also lazy and not the sharpest bulb in the drawer that doesn’t go all the way to the top floor…
Plus the “news” business always accentuates the negative and minimizes the positive – that’s what sells. “Journalists”, academia, government – all united in spreading the propaganda of fear.
These people are really dangerous and we need to do something about them. To their credit they are doing exactly what I have been harping about. They aren’t using complicated scientific principles or mind numbing math or technical/academic language or long detailed analysis. No they are doing none of that, they are using short, easy to understand language that any high school student can understand and repeating it ad nauseam. We need to do the same thing only we will only tell the truth. These people are deplorable liars and cheats and we need to show that to the world. They make me sick.
Bob ==> It is the nature of propaganda that it should excite the emotions: fear, loathing, guilt, anxiety etc.
Climate reality is a hard sell because it does not make good propaganda.
Here at WUWT and a dozen other climate reality sites the truth is repeated in simple terms over and over again, mixedin with a series of incomprehensible science-y pieces with cool looking but equally incomprehensible graphics (which is very similar to the tactic used by NOAA for temperature — no simple to understand numbers, but rather colored world-views with biased hues to make things look hot hot hot).
This recent study shows that cold weather we have every year causes about 4.6 million deaths a year mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks, compared with about 500,000 deaths a year from hot weather. We can’t easily protect our lungs from the cold air in the winter and that causes our blood vessels to constrict causing heart attacks and strokes.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
This article from 2015 says that cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather and that moderately warm or cool weather kills far more people than extreme weather. Increased strokes and heart attacks from cool weather are the main cause of the deaths.
‘Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multi-country observational study’ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
story tip
scvblwxq ==> Thanks, I may follow up on that. There has been a lot of pressure on researchers to “prove” that higher temperatures kill more people than cold temperatures….but it just isn’t true. This has a lot to do with how governments record Cause of Death, which I have written about here before.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/28/cause-of-death-a-primer/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/12/18/cause-of-death-follow-up/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/29/extreme-temperatures-linked-to-nearly-1-million-deaths/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/09/from-the-scientific-urban-legend-department-slight-rise-in-temperatures-tied-to-heat-wave-deaths/
I guess COVERING CLIMATE NOW is a UK non-profit organization? It’s not registered with US IRS or GuideStar.
Gator ==> CCNow does no fund raising and does not claim to be 501(c) charity. If you wanted to donate to them, or have a question about their corporate structure and IRS tax classification, you’d have to contact them at editors@coveringclimatenow.org.
“Co-founded by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation in association with The Guardian and WNYC in 2019, CCNow’s 460-plus partners include some of the biggest names in news, and some of the smallest, because this story needs everyone. In addition to three of the world’s biggest news agencies — Reuters, Bloomberg, and Agence France Presse [AFP] — each of which provides content to thousands of other newsrooms, our partners include CBS News, NBC and MSNBC News, Noticias Telemundo, PBS NewsHour, Univision, Al Jazeera; most of the biggest public radio stations in the US; many flagship newspapers and TV networks in the Americas, Europe, and Asia; and dozens of leading magazines and journals, including Nature, Scientific American, Rolling Stone, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and Mother Jones.” [ CCNow
About this same time the ability to comment on online news articles and opinion pieces was brought to an abrupt halt. A coincidence????
Mike ==> I would guess “No.” The NY Times and the Washington Post, for instance, allow comments on many articles, but never never never in Climate and Environment sections.
This is concurrent with the social/political pressure to limit social media to messages that concur with “approved narratives” in almost all fields. The sciences, medicine, climate,environment, etc.