A Brief History…

By Bradley J. Fikes

Someone who is paid to find evidence of environmental catastrophes would probably find them more often than someone whose pay doesn’t depend on finding them. That’s something to keep in mind when you read environmental reporting on Climategate.

Any large news organization, such as the Associated Press, has reporters assigned to cover environmental issues. The agenda in environmental reporting is that humans are damaging the planet, and the role of the reporter is to wake people up to the damage. Otherwise, the beat would not be justified. For example, here’s how the New York Times explains its Dot Earth blog:

“By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life.””

It’s not hard to see what the point is — humans are a plague on the planet, and overpopulation is the problem. This is the discredited enviro-Malthusian view that prompted discredited doomsayer Paul Ehrlich to make his famous bet with Julian Simon that the price of five metals — selected by Ehrlich — would rise as demand increased. Ehrlich lost.

A field based on the premise that humans are ruining the planet is naturally going to attract reporters who think that way. They talk to like-minded scientists, they talk to each other, they talk to Greenpeace, with a token skeptic or two thrown in to give the pretension of balance.

So the output of these environmental reporters is generally swayed toward the most alarmist views. Global warming is the poster child.

Climategate is an unwelcome gate-crasher at the doomfest. Top climate scientists are caught red-handed discussing how to hide information that would call man-caused global warming, AGW, into question. They discuss how to squeeze skeptics out of peer-reviewed journals, and even blackball journals that discuss skeptical work.

(Skepticism does not mean disbelief, by the way. It means you don’t take something at face value. It means you look at all sides of an issue and remember that the burden of proof is on those making the claim, such as man-caused global warming. And if the evidence is insufficient to meet the burden of proof, you say, “Sorry, come back again when you’ve got more information.” That is my personal belief about AGW for the time being. I’ll trust the science again when the fraudulent climate scientists are rooted out and skeptics welcomed as an essential part of the scientific process.)

Climategate has validated the skeptical position on AGW. So these environmental journalists, who have published story after story about impending doom, can either downplay Climategate as much as possible or take it seriously as a real scandal, which would call their previous reporting into question. Guess which course most are taking?

And with the mondo politico/enviro bash of the Copenhagen summit just ahead, Climategate couldn’t come at a worse time. Environmental journalists are going to descend on the city in droves to warn the world of the dangers of AWG. They’ll attend events, receptions, parties, and just play stenographer. What could be easier? But Climategate might actually force them to do some real work, and ask awkward questions of those who say man-caused global warming has with certainty been proven a global threat. If they’re too diligent, they’ll be ostracized as a “skeptic”.

That’s why you’re not going to see much skeptical coverage from environmental reporters at Copenhagen. A story from Copenhagen by AP reporters Charles J. Hanley and Jan M. Olsen breaks out the knee-pads for the summit, without once mentioning Climategate.

This is standard stuff for Hanley, an AP environmental reporter since the 1997 Kyoto summit. Hanley has written about how global warming will cause mass migrations and war, and spun a story about the decade’s warming, which has virtually plateaued, to make it see as if warming was getting faster.

“By year-end 2008, the 2000s already included eight of the 10 warmest years on record. By 2060, that trajectory could push temperatures a dangerous 4 degrees C (7 degrees F) or more higher than preindustrial levels, British scientists said.”

This is how to lie with a half-truth. Global temps show no clear trend this decade. One of the Climategate emails shows shows what a quandary this posed for scientist Kevin Trenberth:

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”

The data are surely wrong. Usually, when data doesn’t match a theory, it means the theory needs work. But with the Climategate scientists, it’s the other way around. Here’s a Sept. 27, 2009 email, that in some detail describes how Tom Wigley wants to change data that showed rapid warming in the 1940s — which he called a “blip” — to make it more in line with predictions of ever-rapid warming. (A fast rise of temps in the first half of the century would call that trend into question):

“Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip.
“If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
“So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip.
“I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.”

If a bank did that kind of “correcting” on its balance sheet, the perps would go to jail.

Don’t expect the environmentally correct Charles J. Hanleys of the world to point this out. Their job is to sound the alarm, not to exercise skepticism, which is supposed to be a virtue in reporters as well as scientists. There is a saying in journalism, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Evidently, the Associated Press has never heard of it.

Regardless of Climategate, the enviromental journalists, with some honorable exceptions, will double down on producing more alarmist stories about how global warming is disrupting everything on the planet, even threatening caribou. Just keep in mind that what you’re getting isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda. Read their stuff as you would read a Greenpeace press release.

Caveat lector.

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(As with everything I publish here, this is my opinion, not necessarily that of my employer, the North County Times)

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 10:22 am and is filed under corruption, energy, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.