Did you know that one of the leading scientists (do we still have to call them scientists?) behind the “man-made-global warming” alarmist division of the United Nations has backtracked and admitted he was wrong and claims to have “lost” crucial documents “proving” his theory? Shouldn’t you already know this, loud and clear? If you didn’t know this, check your news source. You just might be watching the CBC. Or any other agenda-driving liberal-left news media, which, it can be credibly argued, are effectively misinforming you by an omission of facts, possibly because they and their cohorts are personally and professionally invested in the culture of this specious, left-wing “man-made global warming” claptrap. Just as they were and mostly still are invested in Barack Obama, and things like government-run “health care” and “the public option”…
There are articles like this every day, but they’re largely buried by urgent stories and breaking news alerts about how Sarah Palin wrote something on her hand, in which they find a need to report that she is, in fact, dumber than a billy-goat. Actually that’s not even true. Liberal-left media like the government-owned CBC don’t even report these things like these Climategate stories until they are forced to by complaints, finally causing expensive, taxpayer-paid official inquiries by the state-paid CBC’s own “Ombudsman”. See “FORCED”, below, for yet another real classic Soviet or North-Korean—style moment in Canadian “news” history.
THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE RETREAT
THERE has been no global warming for 15 years, a key scientist admitted yesterday in a major U-turn.
Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.
The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory. …
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits:
There has been no global warming since 1995The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. …
World may not be warming, say scientists
The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.
It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
[…]
Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said. …
FORCED
Here is the Ombudsman’s review of the CBC reporting on ClimateGate (or the attempted lack of reporting on it, as I see it), as supplied to PTBC by a reader, Jay S.
It exemplifies some of the most arrogant, biased, and insulting blatherings of the self-anointed elites found in state-owned anything, but especially from the self-defensive, snotty, state-owned CBC.
EMAIL to Jay S.:
From: CBC Ombudsman [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 2:56 PM
To: Jay S
Cc: Esther Enkin; Jennifer McGuire
Subject: Review of your complaint (Jay S.)Dear Jay S:
Attached is my review of CBC’s delayed coverage of “Climategate.”
Sincerely,
Vince Carlin
CBC Ombudsmancc:
Esther Enkin, Executive Editor, CBC News
Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief, CBC News
AND HERE IS THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT referred to in the email above:
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CBC * Radio-Canada
OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSMAN
English ServicesReview: Delayed coverage of “Climategate”
________________________________________February 5, 2010
We received 82 complaints concerning the absence/delayed coverage of the story concerning e-mail traffic in the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Many saw a conspiracy among those who support the theory of Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) to keep the revelations under wraps. Many also claimed that the “hacked” e-mails completely undermined the basis for accepting that theory.
Esther Enkin, the Executive Editor of CBC News, responded. She said the explanation was more mundane—a lapse in assessing the value of the story which essentially broke over the weekend. She pointed out that a number of high-profile mainstream media outlets found themselves in the same predicament. She went on to explain how CBC News responded once the story’s significance became evident.
Several correspondents were unsatisfied with Ms. Enkin’s response and asked me to review the matter.
REVIEW:
Scepticism is one of the cornerstones of journalistic practice. Of course, it is not to be confused with cynicism, nor with manipulation, “spin” or denial of fact.
The good journalist should always view the “accepted” with an appropriately open mind, but not an empty one. Evolution can be acknowledged as accepted science, without closing the mind to new discoveries that might amend the theory.While the “theory” of evolution can be tested with actual artifacts, the “science” of climate change appears to be a mixture of “artifact” and projection. Journalists should approach any kind of projection openly, but skeptically. This is a quite different position from those who argue against AGW and more in line with those who see that the broad spectrum of scientific opinion tends in one direction, but remain open to both historical and current data which might suggest alternatives.
There is no doubt that CBC News was slow to the so-called “climategate” story, although that trope overstates the extent and nature of the revelations. Most mainstream journalists should have become aware of the story over the weekend of November 21, 2009. A number of agencies carried stories then about the stolen e-mails. By Monday, the story had more general, but not universal, coverage. As Ms. Enkin noted, various major outlets had not yet carried the story.
A number of those who wrote cited the Google search numbers for “climategate,” but this tells us little since there was a very high “churn” rate among those looking for information to discredit the main body of climate change opinion. That being said, CBC News was extremely slow in picking up on the story, even after hearing from a significant number of people in the early part of the week.
Finally, on Thursday, Nov. 26, CBCNews.ca carried an item on the reaction to the story and the other services of the CBC began to pick up on the main drift of the revelations. Subsequently, both radio and TV in different ways gave appropriate and balanced coverage to the story. It should be borne in mind that the information contained in the published e-mails, while worthy of note, does not achieve the impact stated by a number of complainants—i.e., the complete undermining of the AGW position. They do show that some scientists are as capable of being petty and manipulative as their opponents.
The situation is, though, an object lesson for a news service to be prepared—weekends or not—to respond to significant stories and put them in appropriate context. It does not seem reasonable to me for a news service the size of the CBC’s to not have the resources and capacity to do so. Weekend staffing questions do not seem to cover the lapse on the Monday in following up this bit of news. It would appear that the senior journalists coming on after the weekend assumed that something appropriate had been done. Then, by the time they realized nothing had been done, lapsed into a somewhat self-protective “it’s old news” mode. Only as other major media began to catch up to the story did CBC News do so as well.
While it may be comforting to some to point to the lapse in coverage by other major main-stream outlets, I am afraid that CBC Journalistic Standards and Practices, and our own self-esteem, do not allow that as an excuse for poor journalism. Ironically, the story may have received more coverage than was really justified by the “real” scientific revelations contained in the documents—i.e., not many.
In any event, this was not the CBC’s finest hour. I trust that appropriate attention will be brought to bear on the weekend staffing of CBCNews.ca and other immediate response units of CBC News.
CONCLUSION:
The slow up-take on the story was a serious lapse in performance by CBC News. The fact that other major outlets were slow is noteworthy, but not an excuse for the CBC. Appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that events that originally occur at odd times or weekends can be properly assessed and covered.
Vince Carlin
CBC Ombudsman
Please note that the Sarah Palin writing on her hand juggernaut occurred on a weekend, and was INSTANTLY reported over and over and over again on CBC News Network on the immediately following Monday morning. So it’s all working out marvelously well now. Worth every one of the BILLION dollars PER YEAR in taxpayer-funding and countless hundreds of millions in other supports and countless hundreds of millions in advertising revenue lost by citizen-owned competing media.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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