(AU) Rupert Murdoch Says 'No Climate Change Deniers Around' – But His Writers Prove Him Wrong

The Guardian - Amy Remeikis

Some columnists in News Corp’s papers didn’t get their boss’s message

Rupert Murdoch’s declaration last month that ‘there are no climate change deniers’ at News Corp must have been missed by many of the publisher’s columnists. Photograph: Matt Baron/REX/Shutterstock

“There are no climate change deniers around I can assure you,” Rupert Murdoch said last month at News Corp’s annual general meeting.

His declaration that the publisher of the Daily Telegraph, the Australian and owner of Sky News was free of climate deniers was widely greeted with mirth.
The next day the geologist Ian Plimer proved Murdoch’s doubters correct when he published an opinion piece in the Australian claiming the major pollution in western nations was “the polluting of minds about the role of carbon dioxide”.
“There are no carbon emissions,” he wrote. “If there were, we could not see because most carbon is black. Such terms are deliberately misleading, as are many claims.”
That piece of commentary attracted the usual round of applause from pundits certain they knew better than climate scientists. Where once ignoring scientists and experts would result in a failing subject grade, in some sectors it’s now considered an “opt-in” belief.
That’s despite 97% of scientists standing in agreement – and apparently now even Murdoch, albeit a little later than most would like.

But perhaps someone should let his publications know. In the weeks since the media baron made his proclamation – including the tidbit “we have reduced our global carbon footprint by 25% six years ahead of schedule” – not all of News Corp’s writers received the message.
The following stories appeared over the same duration that News Corp publications were putting out articles (in the hundreds) about climate change, including warnings from scientists about the need for action, glaciers melting and criticisms of Australia’s policies.

••••••

Bushfires blind alarmists in media to climate reality
The Australian, 24 November
Chris Kenny

Hysterical efforts to blame the fires on climate change continue, even though we have always faced this threat and always will ... Tinder-dry conditions on the eastern seaboard this year are attributable to drought but as I have reported before, according to the head of the UNSW centre for climate extremes, Professor Andy Pitman, there is insufficient evidence to directly link the drought to climate change. Much media ignores the history of worse conditions and fires, and the lack of long-term rainfall trends, and runs hard on climate causal links.

••••••

SA bushfires prove where warmist beliefs fall down
The Herald Sun, 25 November
Andrew Bolt:

Let’s assume you’re silly enough to think global warming is causing worse bushfires around the world. (In fact a recent Nasa study found that the area burned by fire has dropped 24% over 18 years.)
… True, the world has warmed slightly as it rebounds from the little ice age that stretched from 1300 to around 1870, but can we cool it on this panic?
In that time of warming, life expectancy has shot up, world grain crops have set new records, and the death rate from extreme weather has been slashed by 99%.
But, above all, can we drop our incredible arrogance in thinking man now has the power to change the climate? That just a few Australian politicians could do what we once believed would test even God?

••••••

One-eyed ABC loses sight of wider, more diverse picture of Australia
The Australian, 30 November
Richard Alston:

… The ABC is, indeed, notorious for presenting only one side of the picture on many big issues, whether it be climate change, immigration, asylum-seekers, gay marriage, the Palestinians or the unspeakable Donald Trump … Have you ever heard an ABC interviewer stoutly cross-examine a refugee lawyer or put a climate change advocate through their paces?

••••••

Therese Rein goes wild: Scott Morrison caused fires
The Herald Sun, 30 November
Andrew Bolt:

This is nuts. Therese Rein, wife of Kevin Rudd, thinks prime minister Scott Morrison could have stopped fires in NSW by changing the world’s climate.
Wow. That’s religion talking, not science.
This global warming hysteria is totally off the dial.

••••••

ABC reporters the real climate deniers
The Australian, 2 December
Chris Mitchell:

Andrew Bolt told his viewers on Tuesday night that he had again complained to the ABC about the latest Media Watch segment. If you follow Bolt’s many writings about climate it is obvious he does accept the temperature is rising. It has risen one degree since the start of the 20th century.
But Bolt also reports scientists from other disciplines who question parts of the science. Many say climate models are not yet sophisticated enough to account for the effective regulation of atmospheric CO2 by the deep oceans, forests and soils. Bolt and others criticised by Media Watch often point to effects from solar activity. Many writers, like many climate scientists, say CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, pointing to water vapour and methane. These are all facts.

••••••

Greta Thunberg’s invincible ignorance has infected our smartest
The Herald Sun, 8 December
Andrew Bolt:

The science is clear: Morrison can do nothing to change the world’s climate and stop fires. Australia is just too small to make a difference.
[Therese] Rein and other critics such as Malcolm Turnbull are plainly irrational to suggest Morrison could dial down some giant thermostat.
Is there any point in also showing that the fires aren’t caused by global warming, and that a recent Nasa study shows fires are now burning less land, not more?
[Scott] Morrison can do nothing to change the world’s climate and stop fires.
No, facts have lost their power ever since postmodernism conquered our universities and reassured the stupid they were mere social constructs. Even conspiracies.
To mention facts now is no longer to bring light into darkness, but to set fire to your reputation.

••••••

Logic Crimes of the New York Times
The Daily Telegraph, 9 December
Tim Blair:

Formerly a newspaper of record, the New York Times has in recent decades has become a newspaper of leftist causes. Name any fashionable political trend and the New York Times is all over it.
Climate change is of particular interest to the Times, which in 2014 ran this headline: ‘The End of Snow?’
But five years later the same paper reported: ‘A powerful winter storm socked much of Montana with a wave of heavy snowfall on Sunday, with weekend totals climbing to 40 inches in some places, and breaking century-long daily records.’
Unable to get things right in the US, the Times now turns to NSW and our bushfires.
‘In some countries, such widespread environmental effects have led to changes in policy,’ the Times notes.
‘In Australia, however – where the air in Sydney was ranked among the worst in the world last month – prime minister Scott Morrison has resisted.’
What is he meant to do? Pass a law against bushfire smoke?

••••••

Turnbull and Q&A deceive viewers again on climate
The Herald Sun, 10 December

Andrew Bolt:

Tony Jones in his final Q&A as full-time host produces yet another anti-Liberal pack-attack, with nobody on the panel challenging Malcolm Turnbull’s wild global warming falsehoods:
‘We have to recognise we have a hotter and drier climate. That’s the consequence of global warming. That will mean more fires and hotter fires.’
Fact: NSW has not got drier this past century. Nor has Australia.
Fact: this drought is not caused by global warming.
Fact: fires around the world now burn less area. Fact: we’ve had worse fires and earlier ones.
And the twist is that Turnbull, having just misled people so badly on the science, promptly accuses his critics instead of not following the facts:
‘On the right, they are treating what should be a question of physics and science and economics and engineering as though it were an issue of religion and belief. And it’s nuts.’
When it comes to global warming, it seems it’s now virtuous to tell untruths and evil to counter them with facts. And the ABC is on the side of untruth.

••••••

Jane Fonda leads the world into the grip of anti-human hysteria over climate change
The Daily Telegraph, 10 December
Kevin Donnelly:

Environmental extremists like Fonda also refuse to acknowledge that the science of climate change is far from settled. In the scientific world the links between climate change and man-made fossil fuels is far from unanimous.
Not only do many scientists argue carbon is an essential part of the atmosphere ensuring plant growth but they also argue such is the complexity involved in analysing cause and effect that it is simplistic and wrong to only focus on one cause.

Links

• Rupert Murdoch says 'there are no climate change deniers around' News Corp
• (AU) Media Watch: Fire Haze
• Damian Carrington On 10 Years As The Guardian's Environment Editor
• From Kerri-Anne To The Masked Stinger: How Australia's Media Covered Extinction Rebellion
• Greta Thunberg’s Radical Climate Change Fairy Tale Is Exactly The Story We Need
• PM Sledges Media Over Climate
• How Should We Talk About What’s Happening To Our Planet?
• The Guardian Joins A Major Media Initiative To Combat The Climate Crisis
• Facebook’s Newest ‘Fact Checkers’ Are Koch-Funded Climate Deniers
• ABC Says It Didn't Reject Adani Story Because Of Company Pressure
• As Extinctions Loom, Biodiversity Warnings Fail To Resonate With Governments, Media
• What If We Covered The Climate Crisis Like We Did The Start Of The Second World War?