Several far-left foundations and advocacy groups gave money to news organizations to report on climate change in 2022, and despite denials that the cash didn’t affect their reporting, some of the stories are based on outrageously unscientific data.
The Associated Press received $8 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation to write about climate. And judging by a lot of the climate stories the AP ran this year, it didn’t waste the money.
The information, along with numerous examples of exaggerations, false statements, and unreliable data was contained in a report from several right-leaning, free-market organizations.
The “Climate Fact Check 2022” report, presented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), stated that “climate alarmists” and members of the media engaged in claims about the relationship between manmade emissions and natural disasters, claims that clashed with “reality and science.”
Indeed, it used to be an article of faith in the press not to try to connect weather to climate change because it’s impossible to scientifically verify that one specific weather event can be connected to the climate of the planet changing.
But that hasn’t stopped the AP and other major media from trying to do exactly that.
Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told Fox News Digital, “It’s hard to claim it’s news when you’re being paid to report only one side of the climate discourse.”
The Washington Post in November published a piece by Barry Svrluga with the headline “In this World Cup ski season, climate change is winning.”
The piece claimed that climate change had led to shorter winters and made it so warm that only one of eight races was able to be held as of mid-November. A fact-check of the claim found that when the World Cup skiing started in the 1960s, the season began in January. However, now it begins in October.
“If the competition began in the winter everything would likely be okay because wintertime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has been increasing since the 1960s, the report claimed.
As long as I’ve been writing for news sites and before, the climate change debate has gotten increasingly one-sided as opposing viewpoints are stifled. But when climate hysterics make idiotic claims like the one above, why does no lover of science and facts jump down that author’s throat the way they pounce on climate skeptics?
“Instead of moving on to something else, they’re doubling down on this, and they’re making themselves look worse at the same time,” Milloy added.
Climate change sells for the same reason that all disasters and catastrophes sell. Whether it’s a train derailment, a freeway pileup, or climate change, the stories allow the reader to vicariously experience death and danger without leaving the comfort and safety of their own home.
And the media is getting very good at giving their readers exactly what they want — whether it’s true or not.
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