This problem is more insidious than you think. There is a fundamental disconnect between the science of Climate Change and the reporting on it. Because they don't understand it, "Mainstream Media", which reports on real climate science, often becomes a tool for disinformation.
I could give you hundreds of examples but here are two that are extremely important from last year. Both of which should have been front page news, but you almost certainly didn't hear about.
Sensors in some of the deepest parts of the oceans recorded an increase in temperature last year.
The increase was small, slightly less than a tenth of a degree. It sounds harmless. Just another data point about warming oceans right?
What none of the reporters writing on the story seem to understand is that warm water rises. Heat in water cannot warm water below 2000m. 90% of the heat from the surface never makes it below 500m.
Think about how much heat has to enter the oceans so that convection currents can expand and carry heat energy down to 3600m below the surface.
That tiny little increase is probably more temperature variation than has happened at that depth in over a million years. It is a harbinger of planetary catastrophe.
It got almost no coverage. The coverage it did get simply reported on the paper. No analysis, no context, nothing to inform the reader of the seriousness of this finding. Just reporting.
At least it got covered and a few articles were written. The most earth shaking climate news from last year got nothing.
Have you heard of this paper?
You could be forgiven if you didn't notice it. It has gotten zero "mainstream press" coverage. Which is a shame. This paper implies civilizational collapse by 2050.
The rate of warming has increased from .18C per decade to 0.36C per decade. The rate of warming has DOUBLED since 2015!
This means 3.0C by 2050 if it keeps up.
How much press has this gotten?
That's about it.
The Mainstream Press doesn't understand "Climate Change" very well so they don't report on it very well. There is a reason for this.
Good analysis is expensive.
Which is why good climate analysis is rare. It takes the time of highly qualified and motivated people. People like that can get well paid for their time.
Good climate analysis is expensive. That's why the best Climate Analysis is private and the public never sees it.
I'm retired and doing it as a hobby. If I was getting paid for my level of analysis, with my current track record for 6, 12, and 18 month forecasting, I would be getting very well paid.
And you would never see it.
That's a problem in the "Climate Reporting" field. It's part of why its so mediocre. News organizations don't fund it and so the people doing it usually don't understand what they are reporting on.
If you rely on "mainstream" coverage of the Climate Crisis you are getting a very distorted view of what's happening.
Case in point, during the Trump years they coerced the GISS into changing the baseline for measuring Global Warming from 1850 to 1880. This sounds incredibly boring and meaningless but here's the thing.
1880 was the hottest year of the 19th century. This tiny little change shaves off 0.4C to 0.6C from the total amount of warming since 1850. It minimizes the amount of warming and makes it appear that we are still under 1.5C of warming.
Press coverage of this? Zero, zip, nada. They don't understand what happened and that the GISS got compromised. They just repeat what they are told.
Here is my analysis.
Heat doesn’t “just happen” - Where it’s coming from and why that matters.
