Bobbing for evidence
When a newspaper needs to trot out a counter-point to the overwhelming amount of peer-reviewed scientific data that supports the case that human activity is causing global warming, they often turn to a man called Bob Carter. Bob has a well documented history of climate change denial and as such has carved himself out quite a career as an mouthpiece. The presence of this modern day Goebbels in any article on climate change is a canary in a coal-mine, indicating the death of journalistic credibility.
It’s a shame therefore that The Weekend Australian in today’s feature article on global warming, Too vital for guesses, felt the need to drag out this odious fellow and pull his string for a predictable comment. Carter’s only real job is to muddy the waters and create the impression that there is some sort of genuine debate on the issue of human induced global warming. As Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth makes plain, the only place you’ll find any suggestion of a debate is the press. The real scientists, publishing real peer-reviewed papers, are unanimous on this issue. Human activity is causing global warming. The Weekend Australian does acknowledge, at the end of the article, that
Mainstream climate scientists repeatedly make the point that while they stick to the accepted regime of advancing their theories and models through the discipline of publication and peer review in important scientific journals, most of their critics do not.
They also claim that many of their critics are industry-funded and not independent.
Whenever you see someone quoted in the press denying that we are the cause of climate change, do a quick search over at Exxonsecrets first to see if they are a paid shill, or known crank. It also pays to go check SourceWatch, a site that monitors the media for overt spin in any direction. You have to call into question the motives of any story that sources quotes from these shills. — DS
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