In a scandal taking in virtually the entire mainstream Media, hordes of public commentators and powerful opinion-formers, and multitudes of social discussions at watercoolers, school gates, corridor junctions and dinner parties, a pack of Climate Change self-styled “sceptics” have run rampant, roughshod over Climatological Science, unhearing fingers jammed in their ears, baying for the blood of researchers over non-errors in the United Nations reports on Global Warming.
Now of course, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has cleared the Science of all wrong-thinking, and naturally enough, the pseudo-scandaleers have retorted with foul cries of cover-up. As an example of the Media infection/infarction – note how different the following two newspaper articles are about the non-scandal non-whitewash report everyone’s not calling “Dutchwash !”.
(1) Daily Telegraph
This report is rather confused, I find. The journalist, or their editor, do not seem to have a full handle on what is accurate and what is assertion :-
(2) The Guardian
I think more balanced – but a bit frayed at the edges :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/05/dutch-support-ipcc
Are they deliberately taking “sides” on this ? Creating an artificial “debate” ?
Summary : a few minor adjustments would have made the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report better, but there’s no need to change the report conclusions.
In other words – strong concern (not destabilising alarm) about the risks of dangerous Climate Change is an appropriate reaction.
How can Society express greater, now properly validated, concern about Climate Change without it degenerating into outright panic ?
And is Richard Black at the BBC, surprisingly, pleasingly, pitching it about right in his appraisal of “Dutchwash” ?
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10506283.stm