Who Are the Real Skeptics?

Good question, and good answer, from Australian journalism student Matt Bush has an excellent piece on the horrid reporting around “Climategate 2.0.” Here’s the intro as a taster:

Did you hear about this Climategate 2.0 bullshit? Why are journalists not getting fired for all this ridiculously irresponsible misreporting?

Over the last couple of days, we’ve been graced with the news that 5,000 personal emails exchanged by climate scientists have been leaked to the public. These aren’t recent emails, mind you, these emails cover the same time span as those released in the last ‘shattering’ leak. So hack journalists and parties with vested interests are forcing us to discuss yesterday’s news today.

The mass media is once again doing the public a gross disservice through an unbridled flexing of staggering incompetence. Many reporters are defiantly refusing to even look beyond the now infamous text file (itself consisting almost entirely of shamelessly mined quotes) when writing their stories. What makes this myopia so damning is that in most cases, a f***ing glance at the actual email the mined soundbite came from will lay the context bare – effectively refuting the entire article.

Seriously, I don’t know how so-called “climate change skeptics” can call themselves skeptics when they won’t even look at the original emails, when they just take Anthony Watts’ or Marc Morano’s or James Inhofe’s word for it (people whose climate change “theories” or assumptions have been debunked so many times that your first response to a statement from them should be, “That must not be true.”).

Anyway, read Bush’s full piece for more fun tearing into the ridiculousness of the mass media’s and global warming deniers’ response to “Climategate 2.0.”

h/t Climate Progress | “Skeptic” photo by Maslov Dmitry via shutterstock

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