Fox News and the Daily Mail demonstrate the state of shoddy climate change coverage throughout the UK and US media, writes Dan Holden.
Global warming is an immensely complex issue. It is all encompassing: politics, economics, geography and science. Needless to say, it is incredibly difficult to understand.
This doesn’t seem to bother Fox News and the Mail, however. Media Matters has highlighted a piece run by Fox earlier this month that claimed global warming “ended” 16 years ago.
Their report was based upon an article in the Mail on Sunday, a paper (along with the sister Daily Mail) that is described by Media Matters as having “repeatedly misrepresented climate science”.
The article itself is based upon deliberately misleading statistics. Their time frame of 16 years is entirely arbitrary.
In response to this publication the Met Office released a statement saying only multi-decade data is useful in the measuring of global warming. An overall trend is only detectable in the long term; short term data, such as the set chosen by the Mail, is not representative.
Global temperatures ebb and flow on a yearly basis but in a much longer term scale there is a definite rise in global temperatures. According to both the Met Office and NASA the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record and previous to that it was the 1990s. The phenomenon of short term cooling does not disprove global warming.
The Mail also misrepresented a statement from climate scientist Judith Curry, and used a quote she does not recall ever having given, in its argument. In the time since, she has come out criticising the Mail for twisting her statement and misconstruing her views.
This story offers an insight into the much wider problem of climate change misrepresentation throughout all media. A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists found evidence that, over a period of six months, 93% of Fox News’s representation of climate change was wrong.
This problem is not one restricted to just Fox News, however, and appears to have infected other arms of News Corp. The report also implicates the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal. The broadsheet newspaper is widely regarded as being part of the ‘quality press’ and so not expected to fall foul of scientific misunderstanding.
Peter Hitchens demonstrated the problem clearly when he claimed the greenhouse effect “probably doesn’t exist”, and there is “no evidence” to suggest it does. Despite there being general consensus by the scientific community since the mid 19th century the greenhouse effect exists, Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday columnist, felt himself qualified to refute that.
Part of the problem is that the vast complexity of climate change (of which global warming is a constituent part) means a lot of data can easily be misrepresented, giving rise to data being twisted for ideological purposes.
A famous example of this occurring is the 2007 TV documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. The premise of this programme was that global temperature variations were not in fact a result of the increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, but rather due to radiation from the sun.
The documentary came under immense criticism after broadcast, including from scientists whose work was referenced in the programme, whose research was represented in a selective and ideological fashion by the controversial film maker Mark Durkin.
The documentary went entirely against the scientific grain.
This leads us onto a disturbing fact – that it is incredibly easy to be entirely wrong and yet still be successful in pursuit of an ideological point. Whilst President George W Bush was in office there was a memo leaked on how to politically handle climate change. Instead of pursuing climate change denial, the official line instead encouraged Republicans to muddy the water. Expressing concerns about the science behind climate change and claiming there was ‘serious doubt’ were the lynchpins of this tactic.
It is worrying to think we live in a world where one of the most important issues of our time is twisted and used for ideological reasons, by politicians and press, seriously damaging our understanding and awareness of such a grave problem.
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20 Responses to “Fox News and the Mail: Does anyone trust them (on climate change)?”
Leslie Graham
Oh perleeze. You are not ‘a former believer’ (whatever that is). You are a pernicious ‘concern troll’ – and an obvious and incompetant one at that.
You spam dozens of block and paste gish gallops of long-debunked and falsified nonsense all over the web under several different names from your grotty little home in Niagara Falls. I know your real name.
Wherever possible I report you to the mods as a spammer and inform genuine posters as to what you are about.
If you genuinely want a ‘debate’ – which you clearly don’t – you could try posting a cite to just one single peer-reviewed research paper published by a reputable climate scientist that shows compelling evidence that AGW is not occurring.
Just one single paper. Anything at all.
But you won’t – because you can’t. All you have is is smears, innuendo and blatant lies.
You have been well and truly rumbled.
P Jones
The global temperature has risen by 0.75 C in 100 years. The last interglacial (the Eemian) was much warmer than today. There is no evidence that the recent rise in temperatures is solely or mainly due to CO2 forcing. It could be mainly natural – with a small anthropogenic signal. We just don’t know yet.
The science isn’t ‘settled’. The science wasn’t settled on Newton’s gravity, isn’t settled on Einstein’s relativity and certainly isn’t settled on ‘catastrophic’ global warming.
P Jones
“According to both the Met Office and NASA the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record and previous to that it was the 1990s.”
This is patently false. The temperature record goes back many millions of years, for most of which, the temperature has been warmer than now.
If they mean the thermometer based record they should say so. But considering the thermometer was only invented in the last part of the thousand year temperature cycle – it hardly helps.
P Jones
“A famous example of this occurring is the 2007 TV documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. The premise of this programme was that global temperature variations were not in fact a result of the increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, but rather due to radiation from the sun.”
which is actually research in progress. look at the CLOUD experiments at CERN where they are looking at solar modulated cosmic rays and their cloud seeding effects.
M Mann
the climate has always changed. a warmer world is probably better overall. adaptation doesn’t really cost. you just adapt. that might be growing a different crop or not building a house on a flood plain.
there is no real evidence for large positive feedbacks. the earth has spent most of it’s existence far warmer than the present. there were no runaway effects. who’s to say an antarctica free of ice isn’t something to celebrate? it would take thousands of years anyway. each generation would just see something they regard as normal. with such slow changes it just doesn’t really matter.