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Eh, I had a look earlier today and noticed they had a story on climate change. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/18/global-warming-blamed-deaths-
by rndmize 10y ago
Eh, I had a look earlier today and noticed they had a story on climate change.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/18/global-warming-blamed-deaths-80000-reindeer/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/18/global-wa...
> Yet as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has noted, many of the recent climatological events and trends “can be explained by the natural variability of the climate system,” without excluding an indeterminate influence from atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. In the same report, the WMO said that, at this time, researchers have not yet been able to ascertain “the respective roles being played by climate variability and human-induced climate change.”
The report is six years old, the first quote is taken out of context, the second doesn't even exist in the paper, and here's the first paragraph of the paper's conclusion:
> Understanding the Earth’s climate and trends in temperature, precipitation and extreme events is of vital importance to human wellbeing and sustainable development. As the report The Global Climate 2001–2010 confirms, climate scientists can now link some natural oscillations to seasonal climate trends. They also understand the mechanisms by which humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions are raising global average temperatures.
Regardless of where you stand on climate change, this is a pretty gross abuse of the source.
Repeat this kind of thing across most articles, throw in some editorializing to push your opinion in "news" pieces (see paragraph 3/4 of article), add "PHD" to your byline even if your field has nothing to do with the material being covered...
Bad sources aren't about deliberately lying, they're about constructing an alternative, semi-plausible reality that meets idealogical goals. Frankly, I'd class most anti-AGW articles as provably fake based on the scientific consensus for the last twenty years, but who am I to judge.
- tomp 10y agoFinally something a bit more concrete. Not unlike how most other journalists report on scientific studies though...