Climate reporters today can just insert activist talking points into their articles

The line between climate advocacy and journalism continues to fade

The Wretched Hive this month appeared to execute a coordinated attack on Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Multiple outlets, including E&E News and its parent Politico, CPR News, and Yale Climate Connections, produced reports explaining how Wright’s citing of IPCC research to defend his positions is in fact a new form of “climate denial.”

“This one is hilarious. Accurately citing the IPCC is now climate denial,” said Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., retired professor of environmental science and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The Bat Signal went out to media outlets to criticize Energy Secretary Wright for his entirely correct views on climate change policy,” meteorologist Ryan Maue said.

There’s plenty that’s wrong with these articles, but people with backgrounds in climate science do a much better job than I could explaining how Wright’s views are, in fact, consistent with IPCC reports.

I want to zoom in on particularly egregious instance of plain bad journalism in the E&E News article. The report lists out Wright’s alleged influences without any evidence that they have influenced Wright other than they share similar views. The notion that Wright could have come to his conclusions independently of others who share them entirely escapes the E&E News reporter’s consideration. It’s almost as if he’s trying to get readers to think that dissent against the “climate crisis” narrative is the product of some sinister cabal, as opposed to a cultural-wide shift in thinking about climate and energy issues.

The E&E News article states that Epstein “minimizes the threat of climate change.” The reporter quotes testimony Eptein gave at a Senate Banking Committee earlier this month in which Epstein stated that the “death rate from climate-related disasters has fallen 98 percent over the last century.”

E&E News wasn’t about to let readers factor this scientific data into their understanding of the impacts of climate change. “The death rate has declined substantially in the last century primarily because the technology used for storm and disaster prediction has vastly improved, as have the methods of communication,” the E&E News reporter wrote.

This is climate advocacy masquerading as journalism. The reporter is responding to data inconvenient to the official “climate crisis” narrative with a climate-activist talking point.

It’s an undeniable fact that your chances of dying in a climate-related natural disaster are about one-fiftieth what they would have been if you were born 100 years ago. There’s nothing wrong with adding facts to an article that give more context to another fact. So, for example, if unemployment is rising but other economic indicators show an improving economy, a reporter should include facts that add value to readers’ understanding of the broader picture.

But facts supporting the idea we are in a “climate crisis” or “global boiling breakdown apocalypse” don’t actually exist. So the reporter is arguing why consideration of a fact should be minimized. That’s especially hypocritical in an article that criticizes Epstein for minimizing the threat of climate change. In a very argumentative, biased way, the reporter is deliberately maximizing the threat of climate change.

Now let’s consider this reporter’s statement for what it is — rhetoric in support of net zero emissions by 2050. As an argument in support of that political objective, the “that’s just because of technology” argument is dumb. I usually don’t call arguments I find unconvincing to be stupid, because it’s sloppy thinking. But there really isn’t a more apt word for this line of reasoning.

It’s a lot like someone claiming we’re in a smallpox crisis. The virus, he says, is more deadly than ever, and we need to act urgently to address this crisis. Well, being the smallpox denier that I am, I would point out that no one dies of smallpox anymore. To that, the smallpox alarmist says, “That’s just because of vaccines.” That’s true, but the scientific data on deaths from smallpox today still make any claims of a smallpox crisis nothing more than mindless hysteria.

What makes the “that’s just because of technology” line of reasoning even more irrational is the complete lack of awareness of what makes this mysterious “technology” possible. One piece of the many technologies that make us safe from climate is doppler radar, which is a 90-foot tower made of steel, concrete, plastics and a host of other materials. All these materials are derived from petroleum or made with energy from fossil fuels — which is true of literally every product we consume.

The E&E News reporter would no doubt say we could replace all that energy and those petroleum-based materials with non-petroleum alternatives. He would be oblivious to the scale and scope of that mission, because he’s likely has never set foot on a farm or worked in a factory, much less developed even the most rudimentary understanding of how industry works. So, to him, it’s just a matter of doing it.

Rapidly eliminating fossil fuels would make industry far more difficult, expensive and in many cases impossible. That means you get fewer doppler radar towers and all the other technologies that have made us safer from climate. So, the insanity of the “that’s just because of technology” argument is that it’s meant to advance policies that would make those technologies far more scarce.

It would be like the smallpox alarmist arguing we need to address the smallpox crisis by getting rid of modern medicine. So, as they deny the science on increasing climate safety, they advocate for policies that would undermine it.

There are people who are concerned about climate change and want to address the risk they believe it poses. They also understand that it’s important to do so without creating more harm than good. But climate activists don’t truly care about climate change. They just hate fossil fuels. Unfortunately, many climate and energy reporters fall into that latter group, and the line between their advocacy and reporting is often hard to find.

Not only does the “that’s just because of technology” argument hold no merits as a rhetorical strategy, it’s not appropriate for journalists to insert talking points into their articles. It’s bad journalism, and it’s very unfortunate a publication with this much reach would have editors that allow such writing to go to publication. The Wretched Hive is a sorry thing to behold, and trust in the media will continue to decline so long as these practices are allowed.