The MSM and Climate Alarmism

Posted by Pointman on December 21, 2010 · 59 Comments 

The supine coverage by the MSM (Main Stream Media) of all things anti-alarmist is completely in tune with their complete failure to cover the Climategate scandal. It’s in line with what the late journalist Walter Cronkite observed (I believe it was him). Of all the kinds of censorship, the most pernicious is self-censorship. Since they’re convinced that:

– They’re saving the planet.

– They know better than us.

– They’re protecting us poor ignorant folk from ourselves.

reporters do not have to be told which stories to ignore or which way to spin them. These are also the very same reasons why scientific fraud ran rampant. Sadly, no grand conspiracy required, it’s as simple as that.

It’s now becoming obvious to the MSM that there’s an elephant in the room. By ignoring it, it’s getting bigger with every day that passes. Patently, this cannot last and it will not.

Woodward and Bernstein (real investigative reporters as opposed to the “wee timorous creatures” we have now) broke the Watergate story in the Washington Post in ‘72. The scoop was largely ignored by the other media outlets. It was only when it had built up its own momentum that they were forced to run with it too. The Climategate story is reaching critical mass and the wall of silence is beginning to crack. Some very public positions on AGW are going to be reversed with as much dignity as possible in the coming months. A word of caution though. It took two years to get Nixon’s resignation and although the AGW scam is unravelling at an astonishing speed, it won’t be over by Christmas.

At the end of the day, there will be one big winner and two big losers. The big winner is of course the Internet. Without the aid of a single organ of the MSM, it slowly but surely tyre-levered this story out to Joe Public, despite the MSM’s efforts to ignore or poo hoo it. That is a unique event. A precedent and the shape of things to come. MSM take note.

The big losers are science and the MSM. I studied mathematics as a young man and know that complex non-linear systems can not be modelled. I’ve no doubt that flat statement will be challenged but it is really self-evident. If Einstein could curse turbulence, Lord knows what he would have said about the climate system since it is a set of interacting complex subsystems. He once said that before he died, he’d like someone to explain Quantum Theory to him and after he was dead, he’d ask God to explain turbulence to him.

Interestingly, Chaos Theory grew out of an early attempt to model the weather. Anyway, I was therefore sanguine, to say the least, about AGW predictions based on computer models of complex non-linear systems. As the sheer scale and seriousness of the perversion of science and the checks and blocks that balanced it were revealed, I can only liken it to a personal bereavement, the death of a good Friend. Shock, anger, sadness – numbness. I can only say that science and technology have made a better world and will continue to do so as long as they get the funding. As the magnitude of this scam becomes more public, I fear that funding will dry up dramatically and not just in “climate science”. The world is in an economic recession and spending cuts are being made everywhere. Any perception of scientific fraud more than lays the ground for some publically acceptable cutbacks in that area.

The MSM crossed the line from any pretence at journalistic integrity into eco-activism. Any claim, no matter how ludicrous, was published without scrutiny or question. Any dissenting voice was openly called a “denier”. The reporting, what little there was of it, of any dissenting papers or studies was buried deep and usually marginalised by a pro AGW commentator. On the far side of that line, there was only one more step to take – if it isn’t pro AGW, don’t publish it at all. They took that step; the final victory of style over substance. There was to be no debate. This was the death of the Fourth Estate or if not, its entrance into a sort of Persistent Vegetative State.

There were many scoops to be had, even some very funny ones, but they were all spiked. Some of those stories were and continue to be grim indeed. Death and starvation in the third world caused directly by the switch from farming food staples to bio-fuel crops and the resultant more than doubling of food prices in poorer areas of the world. The historians of a hundred years time, especially in what is now called the third world, will label the environmental movement as the decadent, smug and self-satisfied face of mass murder. So remember, when you fight the cult of AGW, you’re fighting for real lives and not lifestyles and on behalf of other human beings who are in no position to defend themselves.

A gap developed between the real world and medialand. The more doomsday laden medialand became, the wider the gap became. This decoupling led to more and more ordinary people harbouring vague but persistent doubts about the whole thing. It then became unfashionable to the point of being anti-social to voice these doubts so people began to keep them to themselves, an act which increased the public’s resentment even more. As this scam gets forced into the MSM, those silenced voices will express themselves with alacrity, accelerating the crash of this execrable movement into the dustbin of history and good riddance to the murderous abomination it truly is.

© Pointman

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Filed under Article · Tagged with AGW, Alarmism, Censorship, Climategate, Global Warming, MSM