The Mail's Censure Shows Which Media Outlets Are Biased On Climate Change

The Guardian - Dana Nuccitelli

Right-wing media outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh echoed the Mail’s “significantly misleading” and now censured climate story

A selection of British newspapers - some more factually accurate and reliable than others. Photograph: Alamy

Back in February, the conservative UK tabloid Mail on Sunday ran an error-riddled piece by David Rose attacking Noaa climate scientists, who had published data and a paper showing that there was never a global warming pause. The attack was based on an interview with former Noaa scientist John Bates, who subsequently admitted about his comments:

I knew people would misuse this. But you can’t control other people.

The UK press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso) has now upheld a complaint submitted by Bob Ward of the London School of Economics. Ipso ruled that the Mail piece “failed to take care over the accuracy of the article” and “had then failed to correct these significantly misleading statements,” and the Mail was required to publish the Ipso adjudication.

The Mail’s manufactured controversy
Essentially, Bates had expressed displeasure in the way the data from a Noaa paper had been archived at the organization. Rose and the Mail blew this minor complaint into the sensationalist claim that “world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data.” It would be hard to find a better example of fake news than this one. The piece included a grossly misleading chart that Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies director Gavin Schmidt described as a “hilarious screw up”:

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In fact, the Noaa data and paper in question had already been independently verified by other researchers, and are in close agreement with global temperature data from other scientific groups:

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And of course the paper itself had undergone rigorous peer-review prior to its publication in one of the world’s most highly-regarded scientific journals, Science. All signs pointed to the Noaa data and paper being based on sound science that had been reproduced and verified. But that didn’t fit the preferred denialist narrative of Rose and the Mail on Sunday, so they weaved a conspiracy theory that then reverberated through the right-wing media echo chamber.
Rose’s story seemed to have all the climate denial components that biased conservative media outlets crave. A lone wolf scientist whistleblowing his former colleagues with accusations of data manipulation for political purposes? Despite the glaring errors in the story that were immediately called out by climate scientists and reputable science journalists, this narrative proved irresistible to the conservative media: Breitbart, Fox News, Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, and more ran with Rose’s story. Meanwhile, legitimate news outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, Carbon Brief, E&E News, Ars Technica, Science Insider, RealClimate, and numerous other science blogs quickly debunked Rose’s falsehoods.
The errors really aren’t surprising. Rose and the Mail have a long history of climate denial, including error-riddled stories on Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice, human-caused global warming, even the very existence of global warming. And the Mail has such a long history of inaccuracies in general that Wikipedia editors consider it an unreliable source and banned its use. But Breitbart, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other right-wing media outlets have no qualms with publishing inaccuracies from unreliable sources, as long as the story advances their climate denial agenda.

Lamar Smith (R-TX), the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, has been attacking the Noaa scientists since they published their ‘pausebuster’ paper in 2015. Rose’s piece was almost perfectly timed for one of Smith’s frequent anti-climate science congressional hearings just two days later, but alas, by then reputable journalists had already soundly debunked the story. Smith could only plead with attendees to believe that the story “may be more serious than you think.”
As Ipso has verified, it wasn’t. That Smith still tried to exploit the story, that it reverberated throughout the right-wing media echo chamber, and that the Mail published it in the first place tells us a lot about the narrative this group wants to push. The motivation is right there in the Mail’s headline – “world leaders were duped into investing billions.”
The scientific evidence is crystal clear that human-caused global warming is very dangerous. People who want to maintain the status quo that favors fossil fuel companies, who oppose climate policies that disrupt that status quo, need to somehow discredit that reality. They can’t argue the science, about which there’s a 97% expert consensus, so they instead attack the scientists themselves. They accuse these scientists – who have devoted their careers to bettering our understanding of the workings of Earth’s climate – of fraud, conspiracy, and manipulating data for nefarious purposes. Their goal is to manufacture doubt.
Usually they get away with it. This time the Mail on Sunday’s “significantly misleading statements” were so bad that they were censured, though not before they had misinformed millions of people. However, the Ipso ruling tells us which media outlets are reliable sources on the subject of climate change. Those that blindly echoed David Rose’s misinformation are not; those that debunked the Mail on Sunday’s distortions are.

Links

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Jane Goodall Calls For Climate Change Action To Save Planet

Global Citizen - Joe McCarthy

“How is it that the most clever species to ever walk the earth is destroying its only home?”


In front of 60,000 global citizens, Dr. Jane Goodall spoke chimpanzee on the Global Citizen Festival stage to roaring cheers earlier this evening.
Goodall is best known for her kinship with chimpanzees. For decades, she lived with, observed, and learned about them.
In the process, she utterly transformed the scientific and cultural understanding of the species.
She also transformed how humans perceive animals and nature in general. She helped popularize the idea that, rather than being separate and above the world, humans are intimately entwined with all that surrounds them.
And because of this closeness, she advocated throughout her life, humans must respect nature and allow it to thrive.
Goodall, who is now a United Nations Messenger of Peace and Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, brought this sense of unity and responsibility to the Global Citizen Festival stage when she called on the global audience to recognize the bonds between man and nature.
"Chimpanzees help prove there is no sharp line that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom," she said. "And yet knowing that they have emotions like ours, we stil show cruelty toward animals and each other. With our clever brains, how is it that we humans are destroying the environment?"
In particular, she pointed to climate change as the culmination of bad human decisions toward the planet and its inhabitants.
"We're burning fossil fuels, creating the greenhouse gases that cause extremes of temperature, more frequent and more destructive storms," she said. "Why do we pursue the wealth at the expense of future generations?"
Goodall is revered throughout the world as a pioneering researcher, but she reminded the audience of her humble roots, suggesting that anyone out there is capable of similar feats of drive and creativity.
Global Citizen campaigns on improving access to opportunities for girls and you can take action on this issue here.
Despite all the challenges in the world, Goodall has hope for the future.
“I have hope because of our clever brains, the resileince of nature, the indomitable human spirit and above all the commitment of young peopel when they're empowered to take action."

Links

• The World Could Still Achieve Paris Climate Goal — But It Won’t Be Easy
• Can Cities Withstand More Storms Like Harvey and Hurricane Irma?
• The UN Has Called This The Second Biggest Environmental Problem Facing Our World
• These Often Forgotten Islands of Australia Are Washing Away Due to Climate Change 
• Australia Just Broke More Than 260 Climate Records in One Season 
• The globe marched for climate action, did they hear us? 
• Canadian Scientists Wanted to Study Climate Change, But Ice Is Melting Too Fast

'Attacked From Two Sides': Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Another Record Low

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Sea ice around Antarctica has shrunk about 2 million square kilometres in just three years, swinging from a record large maximum area covered to a record low, in a shift that could have implications for the global climate.
While a late burst in ice cover this spring cannot be ruled out, it appears the sea ice around Antarctica has peaked for the sea at about 18.013 million square kilometres, the smallest maximum extent in the 30-plus years of satellite readings, Jan Lieser, from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, said.

Trillion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica
As big as Bali, the loss of the Larsen C ice shelf will require maps to be redrawn and could ultimately cause sea levels to rise.

"It looks like we have passed the peak," Dr Lieser told Fairfax Media, adding the sea ice "is being attacked from two sides", from above and below.
For Antarctica, the lowest maximum extent, recorded on September 12, follows a record low minimum sea ice coverage recorded on March 1 after the summer thaw, he said.
As with the Arctic, the warming oceans are undercutting sea ice from below, while the warming atmosphere is melting ice from above.

Antarctica's variability, though, makes it a more complex problem to understand than its polar opposite.
For instance, the freshwater from melting land-based glaciers more readily freezes than salty sea water, increasing sea ice in some regions of the continent.

Blue iceberg floating in the sea near Cierva Cove on the Antarctic Peninsula. Photo: Renato Granieri / Alamy Stock Photo

Altered precipitation patterns can also lead to extra snow, adding depth to both land and sea ice.
Zack Labe, an ice researcher at the University of California, Irvine, cautioned against a definitive call that maximum sea ice coverage had been reached this year.

Melting is going on at both ends of the planet, with Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extents reaching record lows in the past year. Photo: Richard Harker

He noted the first week of October in 2015 had a large net increase of sea ice after an extended retreat. (See chart below from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.)

"Antarctic sea ice extent is particularly variable day-to-day, given weather conditions, and it's worth waiting another week," Mr Labe said.
Those conditions include wind and wave action that can bunch sea ice or spread it out.
John Turner, a research scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, said the September 12 maximum reading - which he put at 18.023 million square kilometres - looks to have been the peaked. That would place it at slightly less than the previous smallest maximum of 18.027 million square kilometres in 1986.
"This year's maximum is a far cry from the 20.201 million square kilometres record maximum we had in 2014 and shows the highly variable nature of sea ice around the Antarctic continent," Dr Turner said.
"[On 25 September], the ice extent had fallen to 17.689 million square kilometres so it's highly unlikely that the extent will increase by much over the next few weeks and we can assume that we've seen this year's maximum."

Climate signals
Even if the record low maximum wavers slightly, the Antarctic sea coverage is well shy of the average of about 19 million square kilometres over the past three decades or so, Dr Lieser said.
(See the latest NASA satellite image of Antarctica below.)

While the climate change signal is much clearer in the northern latitudes - where longer-term records show a relatively steady retreat of Arctic sea ice - evidence of global warming's impact around Antarctica is also showing up in the observations.
"We see an increase in the storminess of the Antarctic, and that's obviously redistributing the sea ice around" the continent differently, Dr Lieser said.
"Maximum sea ice extent is attributed to that change in wind patterns."
The storms can also have an impact "far and wide", including on Australia's weather, he said.
Scientists are less sure of the trends in sea ice volume in the southern hemisphere than in the north, given the difficultly satellites have in distinguishing sea ice from the snow that has accumulated on it, for instance.

'Conveyor belts'
Understanding such processes, though, is "critically important to understanding the climate of the earth" because of the way sea ice formation works as the initial driver of the global ocean "conveyor belts", Dr Lieser said.
When sea ice forms, brine from salty sea water is expelled. As it sinks by gravity, it draws in surface water, helping to disseminate warm tropical heat towards the poles.
There is no sign yet of a slowing in the major over-turning circulation belts, such as the Gulf Stream that transports warmth from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Scandinavia, keeping that region much more habitable.
Still, climate models suggest the belts could weaken or change course in the future, Dr Lieser said.
Disturbing one variable in such complex systems can have "major implications" on the global climate, he said.
(See US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chart below of percentage changes of sea ice concentration in September, compared with previous years in the satellite era.)

Dr Lieser is one of more than 60 representatives from 12 countries gathered this week in Hobart to discuss sea ice, including how it is beginning to affect ship traffic
"We have seen a number of private and commercial ships becoming stuck in the Antarctic sea ice in recent years, which have led to costly rescue operations that can delay scientific work," he said.

Links

• The continent that climate change has not forgotten
• Antarctic sea ice 'obliterates' previous record in remarkable reversal
• How Antarctic Ice Melt Can Be A Tipping Point For The Whole Planet’s Climate
• The Larsen C Ice Shelf Collapse Is Just the Beginning—Antarctica Is Melting
• I’ve Studied Larsen C And Its Giant Iceberg For Years – It’s Not A Simple Story Of Climate Change
• Iceberg Twice Size Of Luxembourg Breaks Off Antarctic Ice Shelf
• Guest Post: Is The Collapse Of The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Inevitable?
• Why Did An Enormous Chunk Of West Antarctica Suddenly Start Melting?
• Antarctica’s Sleeping Ice Giant Could Wake Soon