Deprecated: mb_convert_encoding(): Handling HTML entities via mbstring is deprecated; use htmlspecialchars, htmlentities, or mb_encode_numericentity/mb_decode_numericentity instead in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/super-cool-ad-inserter/inc/scaip-shortcode-inserter.php on line 37
Fake news usually does not involve complete fabrications. Often, news-fakers cherry-pick a real fact and repackage it in a misleading context. This example was posted on Breitbart News on Nov. 30, 2016, by British-based writer James Delingpole.
1The world’s climate researchers overwhelmingly agree that climate change is real, man-made and happening now. But this snarkily written piece, complete with sensational headline, cites an article in British newspaper The Mail on Sunday to argue that climate change is the province of “alarmists.” The Breitbart story was widely shared, and the subject of an approving tweet by the climate-denying U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
- A guide for navigating “good news” and “bad news” in the fake-news era
- In the current news climate, it’s time to question where news outlets get their information
- Media consumers are taking memes at face value, but they often contain misinformation
- TV news is not the best place to “go local”
- MedLocal TV newscasts keep it local
- The Eight Stages of a Golden Shower (Story)
- Evisceration Nation
- How Journalists Can Mislead Readers: An Annotation
- Pittsburgh Left: Our paper may be alternative, but our facts are on the money
- Real News About Fake News Quiz
2 The Mail article was written by David Rose, whose professional affiliations Delingpole never identifies. Rose is a veteran climate-change denier who has approvingly passed along predictions of a mini ice age. (Delingpole himself is known for questioning both the role human activity plays in climate change and the severity of climate change itself; he also promoted “Climategate,” the fraudulent 2009 attempt to claim that scientists had conspired to fool the public into believing in global warming.)
3The Mail article argued that last year’s unusually high temperatures were due to El Niño, not climate change, and that a recent drop in land temperatures is cause for disbelief in global warming. Sounds convincing — until you recall that some 70 percent of the world’s surface is covered by water, which is a big heat sink.
4Delingpole’s only other source is “Dr. David Whitehouse, science editor of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.” Sounds authoritative, no? But Whitehouse is an astrophysicist, not a climate scientist. And notwithstanding the Foundation’s neutral-sounding name, in 2014, The Independent described the British-based think tank as “the UK’s most prominent source of climate-change denial.”
5The Mail on Sunday article was debunked in a Dec. 2 New York Times article that quoted two actual scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. El Niño, they said, was not solely responsible for the warmer temperatures, but merely added to a pronounced long-term warming trend.
6All this confusion might simply be attributable to bad reporting — a journalist swayed by a flawed article. But this “death rattle” part of Delingpole’s article is an outright lie: In the real world, evidence that climate change is real, happening now and caused by humans is only mounting. Important indicators like declines in polar sea ice suggest that the climate is warming even faster than previously predicted.
7 The idea that there was a recent “pause” in global warming is another lie, thoroughly debunked. Within weeks of the Breitbart article’s publication, NOAA confirmed that 2016 was our third straight hottest year on record — and that 10 of the other 11 hottest have been since 2003. The 12th was in 1998.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2017.
2016 was warmer by .04 degrees. The margin of error is .1 degrees. And why did you wait five months to address an article that at the time was correct. There was a La Nina. Temperatures did drop. And the 97 percent consensus has been debunked so many times and by so many publications, including the WSJ, it’s a wonder only alarmist outlets are still using it. It’s akin to saying Politifact isn’t a left-wing outlet. Has the Earth warmed since 1890? Yes, about one degree. And after the Little Ice Age ended in 1850. Does man have an influence on the climate? Yes. Those were the two questions the survey asked. Even I would be in the consensus, except I’m not. From the Urban Heat Island affect to razing forests to grow corn for biofuels, man has and always will affect the climate, especially when there are billions of us spreading out and multiplying. Global warming has become a religion being pushed by plutocrats like Al Gore. And if not for the internet, it would be a dead issue like the ice age scare in the 70s. But too many climate scientists have put their reputations on the line so they refuse to look at other non-atmospherically causes like geological disturbances and naturally occurring events. The only spot in Antarctica that’s even slightly melting is in West Antarctica, which sits on an active, geologically active fault line that’s constantly emitting vast amounts of heat. There are at least three active volcanoes in areas where the most melting is occurring. Geologists know this and find climatologists amusing as they try to pin everything on climate change. NASA used to have a VENTS program to study these phenomena but much of its budget has been diverted to the atmospheric sciences under Obama’s eight years. Eight long years of making the most outlandish, scientifically unsupportable accusations driven by science advisor John Holdren, whose history as an activist is well documented. Finally, science has returned to agencies once run by environmental activists using agendas provided by environmental groups. Is it just a coincidence that environmental lawsuits dramatically fell under Obama’s tenure?