The broadcast networks were in an uproar in June when President Donald Trump said he would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, but omitted a new study showing Paris Agreement predictions overstated Earth’s warming.
Climate scientists from Oxford and other universities published a study Sept. 18 in the peer-reviewed Nature Geoscience magazine, revealing an “important discrepancy” between climate change models compared to measured temperature data.
“Climate change poses less of an immediate threat to the planet than previously thought because scientists got their modelling wrong,” The Telegraph reported summarizing the new study on Sept. 18.
The model used for warming predictions cited by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was faulty, according to the new research. If it had been correct, “the world ought now to be 1.3 degrees above the mid-19th-Century average, whereas the most recent observations suggest it is actually between 0.9 to 1 degree above,” The Telegraph wrote.
ABC, NBC and CBS all panicked on June 1 after Trump announced the U.S. would exit the Paris climate agreement signed by former President Barack Obama. That is all the more reason the broadcast network news shows should have reported this new research. But between Sept. 18 and Sept. 20, none of the network morning or evening news shows covered the study about the faulty forecasting used in Paris.
The networks’ one-sided approach to climate news is long-standing. After Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth film was released in 2007, network coverage of “extreme weather” spiked by nearly 1,000 percent. And despite warnings that linking “extreme weather” and “climate change” was “controversial,” the media did it anyway.
In addition to the networks, most U.S. media outlets ignored the new peer-reviewed study and its findings. MRC Business was unable to find it mentioned by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today or The Huffington Post.
Quartz Media and The Washington Post weretwo of the exceptions to the near silence.
On Sept. 18, the Post wrote that the study suggested “humanity could have considerably more time than previously thought to avoid a ‘dangerous’ level of global warming.”
A Post op-ed on Sept. 19, used the study to mock climate change skeptics, saying the study proved “the scientific establishment is not corrupt.” “So much for the climate change ‘hoax,’” its headline read.
In addition to The Telegraph (UK), other British and European press including The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun, The Times UK and BBC covered the story.
Methodology: MRC Business searched nexis for mentions of the Nature climate change model report on broadcast network morning and evening news shows from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20. No mentions were found.
