Very interesting report, thanks, Michael. I also attach another of my media
scans which gives graphic illustration of what the report is saying. I an
forwarding this to the Crisis Forum list as it will interest some of them.
What do we do about it all? Hold fast to monitoring the data, I say, which
is why Roy Spencer's contrarian website has been so entertaining of late,
with his data finding out that January was the warmest in 32 years of
satellite data recording. Right now he's busy trying to explain this away. 

A. 



-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael
Northcott
Sent: 24 February 2010 19:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CHE Network] RE: RealClimate: The Guardian disappoints

Many thanks Alastair for the links and engagement in the climate sceptic
feeding frenzy of the past weeks. The attached research from Yale's School
of the Environment and Forestry shows the media spin on UEA and IPCC
'error's' is having the effect the media's corporate sponsors surely intend
on public opinion in the USA. With previous corporate sponsored rubbishing
of environmental science the counter-counter-factuals were Americans dying
of tobacco and other toxin-related cancers. For some time to come climate
change will present far fewer home based counter-counter-factuals.

Michael S. Northcott
Professor of Ethics
New College
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
EH1 2LX

Email: [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]



On 24 February 2010 11:30, Alastair McIntosh <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Apropos Chris's and David's stuff on recent media reporting, I was 
> travelling a lot last week and therefore picking up newspapers I don't 
> usually read. I am astonished by the venom being released against 
> climate change workers at the moment, and the standards of 
> journalistic spin so exposed.
>
> (I presume, incidentally, that all of you on this forum are aware of 
> SpinWatch, run by Prof David Miller and other colleagues in the Dept 
> of Geography & Sociology at Strathclyde Uni? http://www.spinwatch.org/ 
> David told me the other day that he's currently receiving about 4 
> threatening communications a week from vested interests who don't like 
> what the site says about them. All have had to back off ... but it 
> demonstrates that his team are exposing truths that hurt.)
>
> Two examples of recent outrageous reporting on climate change are
attached.
> Sorry these are low quality truncated scans - I made them for use in 
> PPT presentations, but you can find the full articles on the web if 
> needed. The Telegraph piece plays the old chestnut about heat from 
> buildings etc skewing climate data. What is astonishing for its 
> admission: "The findings by Mr Watts, whose study has not been 
> peer-reviewed..." And this was the lead item on their science page. 
> But the nature of the admission almost makes one wonder if the 
> journalist in question had been told to follow this line, didn't like 
> so doing, and so sabotaged it by speaking a truth that undermines the 
> scientific credibility of the whole article for those with any real sense
of what science is.
>
> And the Daily Mail piece ...  the £9 million Climate Challenge Fund is 
> actually £27.4 million over 2008-2011 (i.e. £9 m a year) and is a 
> Scottish Government fund, not a Whitehall fund. A Google search does 
> not suggest any English equivalent. But it wouldn't have played out 
> effectively for the Daily Mail in England to conflate what they 
> thought could be spun into a juicy climate gravy train story with the 
> beyond-the-pale Scottish Government, so they make out it's all to do 
> with Whitehall! All is forgiven, Dr Goebbels.
>
> For reality, see
> http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Environment/climatechange/ClimateCha
> llenge
> Fund
>
> Meanwhile, the climate sceptic websites are busy stringing out the 
> Mail story. A good critique of the Mail's report, though not picking 
> up on the fact that it had nothing to do with England, is at 
> http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/02/more-mail-climate-change-misrep
> orting / . And why, incidentally, did the Scottish Govt give so much 
> to climate change local initiatives? It was the price of the 2 Green 
> MSPs enabling the SNP to form a government - a price ratcheted up by 
> an effective lobbying campaign by the mainstream green NGOs such as 
> WWF and FOES.
>
> Lastly, why such media venom? My view is that vested interests are 
> only one half of the story. An agenda, or rather, an ostensible 
> scientific reality that challenges consumerism also challenges, in 
> ways of which most people are only partly conscious, what drives 
> consumerism in the psyche. It is the wounded beast that gets set 
> loose. We need to understand that when we work on the social 
> implications of the mainstream scientific consensus. On the plus side 
> of all this - see Avatar. Why is it that such profound deep ecology 
> has become such a blockbuster, and what is the counterpoint to 
> consumerism that people are also seeking, perhaps in a separate 
> compartment of the same psyches? How can we work to dismantle the 
> compartments that sustain denail ... always assuming that the 
> mainstream science is broadly correct, and remembering that the IPCC only
claims +90% probability of certainty on AGW.
>
> A.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cromwell D.
> Sent: 24 February 2010 06:09
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: RealClimate: The Guardian disappoints
>
> Thanks for this Chris. It's so important to expose the myth that the 
> Guardian is any kind of flagship newspaper for the green movement (or 
> social justice, come to that). See also the recent Media Lens alert on 
> media deceptions and *real* climate scandals:
>
> http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/100222_gates_of_delusion.php
>
> Best wishes
>
> David
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum 
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Keene 
> [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 24 February 2010 1:28 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RealClimate: The Guardian disappoints
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/the-guardian-dis
> appoin
> ts/
>
> --
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