The Ignorance of Climate Change Reporters is Breathtaking
July 4, 2008 · By Shane Edwards
It’s been documented before that climate change reporters and pundits love to pretend that what is happening now has never happened before.
Here’s one more example in that file:
But the blazes are giving researchers an unprecedented close-up look at boreal fires, which are expected to grow more common as the climate changes.
Two years of Forestry at NAIT taught me a lot of things. One is the fire history of Western Canada. The reason fires are getting more common is because Lodgepole/Jack Pine forests (what most of the Boreal Forest is made up of) only last 80-120 years. Then they either fall down and die from bugs (like the Mountain Pine Beetle), get succeeded by Spruce trees, or they burn. If I recall the numbers correctly, in the 20 years between 1880 and 1900 something like 60% of the forest in Western Canada burned. Was that global warming?
No. It was a natural cycle of a healthy forest.
When exactly did reporters begin to leave out the “investigative” part of their job?
“When exactly did reporters begin to leave out the “investigative” part of their job?”
When Stephane Dion came into office.
I don’t think it was necessary to put “Climate Change” into the title.
I’m not exactly clear why you’re calling this ‘breathtaking’, Shane. The reporter didn’t claim that the boreal forests in Western Canada are burning because of climate change, but rather that boreal forests in general are expected to do so more frequently.
Boreal fires in Western Canada may be growing more frequently also because of natural cyclical trends, but the reporter was speaking of general trends.
Are you simply taking exception to a reporter who suggests that scientists believe something will happen due to climate change?
It’s right back to the “climate change causes everything” mentality.
More fires - must be global warming. Mountain pine beetle - must be global warming. Melting ice sheets - must be global warming. No science to back it up, just assumptions that raise the stress levels of everyone with no basis in fact.
Well, tempers flaring is a source of man-made global warming.
It’s unfortunate that we have ‘journalism’ schools that graduate 22 year olds who believe it’s their mission to ‘educate and enlighten’ the ignorant, they may know how to spin stories for editors, but they’re not very inquisitive and that combined with a shallow depth of knowledge and experience ultimately makes their tales boring. Nothing can be taken at face value so you might as well listen to the loudmouth at the bar rant about politics.
[...] had consoled myself when I read the article I commented on last week, that at least it was an off-the-cuff remark, maybe they just hadn’t done their due diligence [...]