Scientists judge climate change reporting

Reports keep coming out about climate change. For example, despite the record snowfalls in the eastern United States, December 2014 through February were the hottest winter (or summer in the Southern Hemisphere) ever recorded, since such records began being kept in 1880. Yet some articles play down such findings.

Now a group of climate scientists is reviewing articles and trying to counter some of the misinformation being published. Calling themselves Climate Feedback, the group includes scientists, oceanographers and atmospheric physicists.

The group is making use of a browser plugin from the nonprofit Hypothes.is to annotate climate journalism on the Web, writes Laura Dattaro in “How Climate Scientists Are Annotating Climate Reporting” at cjr.org, the website of Columbia Journalism Review.

“Readers with the plugin, or with a link created through it,” writes Dattaro, “can read an article while simultaneously reading comments and citations from a cadre of experts. Click on the headline, and you’ll see an overall rating, based on the article’s accuracy, fairness, and adherence to evidence.”

Climate Feedback lists about 25 scientists who contribute criticism, and more can apply as long as they’re actively publishing climate research.

Dattaro gives a couple of examples of articles the group has critiqued. The first one was an article by Steve Koonin, a theoretical physicist and former BP scientist who now heads NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, which was published in the Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Essay section last December.

“Koonin argued that it’s too early to shape climate global policy because the specifics of the science are not settled,” writes Dattaro. Climate Feedback uses a rating system much like that for rating movies: four points (rather than stars) is the top grade. Six scientists gave this article a rating of a half point, which places it between “poor” and “very poor.”

Another Wall Street Journal column got a similar review. Danish author and analyst Bjorn Lomborg, has been accused of having links to the Koch Brothers, who are notorious for funding misinformation around climate science, writes Dattaro. Lomborg claimed “climate-change alarmists” are ignoring a wealth of climate data that “are actually encouraging,” to the detriment of us all, according to the review.

A major spokesperson for Climate Feedback is Emmanuel Vincent, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced’s Center for Climate Communication. He says he wants to see a more scientific point of view on what is said about climate change. “Climate change has been taken a little bit outside of the realm of science,” he says.

Many magazines employ fact-checkers (though fewer than used to), but Vincent says that’s not how he sees his group. According to Kattaro, he says “the ultimate goal isn’t to fact-check but to foster more scientific thinking in journalists and ultimately build more communication between the two parties.” The group often makes responses on articles in the comments section of the magazines where the articles appear.

New York Times climate reporter Justin Gillis says: “We’ve seen some pretty serious misrepresentation of climate science in certain news outlets. I would hope those outlets would take the comments seriously.”

Editors still make the call about what gets published. Vincent’s hope is that journalists and scientists will be more critical in their work and will “listen to each other (while also informing the reader),” writes Dattaro.

Unfortunately, too many readers aren’t interested in facts, only ideology.