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When I Covered Climate Change for Reuters I Thought CO2 Was Certainly to Blame for Rising Temperatures. I Was Wrong

by Neil Winton
23 February 2023 7:00 AM

The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.

My alma mater Reuters, the global news agency, used to be above all this hysteria and would relentlessly apply its traditional standards of fairness and balance, but even this mainstream outfit seems to have sold out to the hysterics and axe grinders.

The trouble is, many if not all of these disaster stories, far from being another step in a worsening scenario, are often nothing of the kind. In a recent book Unsettled. What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters, Steven Koonin uses the UN’s Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change data to show that if reporters took the trouble to do a minimum amount of checking, most of these incidents would appear to be natural disasters, yes, but not part of some ever worsening syndrome.

Economist Bjorn Lomborg has been pointing out for years that humans are having an impact on the climate, but technology will be a match for any problems. Current Government plans to combat climate change will squander massive amounts of taxpayers’ money and achieve very little in terms of stopping rising global temperature, Lomborg says.

Warmist politicians and lobby groups regularly trash the work of a significant group of climate experts, insulting them with unfounded accusations that they can’t be taken seriously because they have barely perceptible links with ‘Big Oil’ and are ‘climate change deniers’. Criticisms are mainly personal and not aimed at their work. Koonin and Lomborg also suffer the unethical ‘denier’ slur, so let’s destroy that canard first.

Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years. Nobody denies the climate is changing. The ‘denier’ charge is nonsensical. But it performs the useful function of making clear the user knows nothing about climate science. The argument is about the ‘why’ not the ‘if’. Warmists say all the warming is because of man’s activity. The rest say some, a little or none.

Education is another area where balance has been replaced by hysteria-inducing propaganda. Children shown demonstrating on the news are often borderline hysterical. No doubt their teachers didn’t bother to tell them that man-made global warming is a theory not a proven fact, and that it’s okay to talk about different opinions.   

If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).

Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.

CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.

I asked CCN about the nature of its dealings with Reuters and the likes of Bloomberg. Was it to thrash out a general approach to climate change reporting or to be more partisan?

CCN hasn’t replied.

I have a particular interest in Reuters’ attitude because I spent 32 years there as a reporter and editor. The global news agency’s traditional insistence on high standards in reporting makes this liaison with CCN seem questionable.

When Reuters announced its tie-up with CCN in 2019 it said this, among other things.

The (CCN) coalition, which includes more than 350 organisations [there are many more now] has no agenda beyond embracing science and fair coverage and publishing more climate change content.

That is clearly not true. It has a partisan agenda and encourages reporters to dismiss those with contrary opinions as ‘deniers’.       

The statement went on to quote Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler:

Reuters is committed to providing the most accurate and insightful coverage of the climate crisis, as it threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people world-wide. Our hope is that our careful, factual reporting will help nations, businesses and individuals respond to the challenge rapidly and intelligently.

The idea of a ‘climate crisis’ is not widely accepted, but partisans shout about it. It is a very vague claim and hard to define or prove. By Reuters standards shouldn’t this include a balancing view? Certainly, many people believe that there is such a crisis, but lots of people don’t. The idea climate change threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people worldwide is an assertion, not a fact.

The involvement of Reuters in CCN seems to me to be in direct contradiction to three of its 10 Hallmarks of Reuters Journalism – Hold Accuracy Sacrosanct, Seek Fair Comment, Strive For Balance and Freedom From Bias.

I asked Reuters for its reaction to criticism of its CCN involvement in a new book Not Zero by Ross Clark, published by Forum, and it said this in a statement.

Reuters is deeply committed to covering climate change and its impact on our planet with accuracy, independence and integrity, in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t established fact. I was wrong.

My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.

My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.

Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.

The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.

The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty. They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.

Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.

Neil Winton worked as a journalist at Reuters for 32 years, including as global Science and Technology Correspondent. He writes at Winton’s World.

Tags: Climate AlarmismClimate changeClimate CrisisClimate JournalismNet ZeroReuters

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24 Comments
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FerdIII
FerdIII
2 years ago

To find the $cience, follow the money.
Plant food causes climate?
Well kill Gaia. She emits 95% of the 0.04% rounding error essential for oxygen production. Oh wait, they are doing that with their lithium mines, their rare metal mines, their bird choppers, their biomass fuels and chopping down forests….

125
0
David Tallboys
David Tallboys
2 years ago

The devil carbon dioxide has been used to scare the children.
But, once you see it ain’t what you’ve been told to believe you can relax – and do nothing but smile benignly at the deluded.
–
Climate disease is an odd affliction. Most sufferers of an illness are pleased to be told their life is no longer in danger, that the fever is subsiding, and they can stop taking the expensive medicine because, well it was only a placebo anyway.
But with climate disease the afflicted don’t believe the good news and want to continue their suffering – hence indicating it is more of a mental illness than a physical one – and they can’t stop wanting more people to suffer from it.
—-

I say; Reject Dogma; Question Authority

In fact, Just Stop Net Zero https://juststopnetzero.com/

141
-3
David Tallboys
David Tallboys
2 years ago

Is there a Woodward and Bernstein opportunity, or perhaps a Pulitzer prize in the offing, for the first team of journalists to dispel the WEF/UNIPCC belief system?

71
0
Smudger
Smudger
2 years ago
Reply to  David Tallboys

Unlikely, the whole media establishment is corrupt to the core.

25
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
2 years ago

Welcome to the Dark Side, Neil 😉

47
0
psychedelia smith
psychedelia smith
2 years ago

The idea that we are some kind of CO2 induced climate crisis is such demonstrably bollocks now that it can only mean Reuters have been bought by the Gates/Getty/Soros/WEF cartel to add to their roster of many other previously ‘independent’ publications. They’re having to work hard though, word is fast getting out that this is the biggest mass deception and financial scam in human history.

Send this to anyone who still uses the words ‘climate emergency’ and ‘science’ in the same sentence.

WHO WOULD YOU TRUST? smaller.jpg
58
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

“Reuters is committed to providing the most accurate and insightful coverage of the climate crisis, as it threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people world-wide. Our hope is that our careful, factual reporting will help nations, businesses and individuals respond to the challenge rapidly and intelligently.”

This whole statement is self-contradictory. It starts with the premise that the “climate crisis” is a given. The possibility that this “fact’ deserves to be questioned is ignored, therfore “careful, factual reporting” is inherently impossible. The author is clearly not well versed in either logic or the use of English.

Without labouring the point my one word critique would be – bollox.

Last edited 2 years ago by huxleypiggles
50
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

There is one huge flaw in Mr Winton’s argument and that is that he appears to accept that the Wannabe Powers That Be believe in global warming, the next ice age or climate change or whatever is dish of the day, except…they don’t.

Climate change is the mechanism upon which all the desired control measures can be hung. Carbon dioxide, widened out now to include anything containing carbon, and essential for all life, is easily measured and because we are expected to believe that it is pushing climate change we have to be seen to control it.

Aah, that will be your carbon credits then. Every single action will soon have a carbon value. It is not inconceivable that even a visit to the bathroom will soon have a carbon value.

Climate change = measurable carbon = complete population control.

The myth of climate change is being used to introduce the most dystopian society ever and one which will ultimately destroy humanity.

66
-2
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
2 years ago

Climate change hoax crushes freedom

*****

Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane 

Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field 
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE

24
-1
MichaelM
MichaelM
2 years ago

“Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why.”

This video clip, showing a panel of climate scientists, suggests that during the last 10,000 years the Earth has been warmer than now 90% of the time – and the same applies over the 4.6 billion years of the Earth’s existence.

https://youtu.be/mqejXs7XgsU

23
0
sskinner
sskinner
2 years ago
Reply to  MichaelM

You beat me to it. Great video. I’m guessing you are aware of Tony Heller and teh website wattsupwiththat?

12
0
MnemonicMike
MnemonicMike
2 years ago

I’ve never ever considered Reuters to be a non-partisan news source, so that bit sort of gobsmacked me.

17
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sskinner
sskinner
2 years ago

All good except for this:
“Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years.”
The Holocene Climate Optimum was the warmest period in the last 10,000 years. During this time the Sahara was green and wet due to the vast amount of moisture brought to this region because of the extra heat. Also, Neolithic settlements were a lot further north as can be seen all across northern Scotland and it’s Islands. They were all abandoned when temperatures dropped. There has since been the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm period and each was a step down on the previous. We are in the Modern Warm Period where temperatures have come up following the end of the Little Ice Age. The current warm period is coolest of all of them although and the warmest period in the last 200 years were the 1930s.
Looking at the pattern of global temperature covering the last 4 glacial cycles there is nothing to indicate that the pattern has stopped. The last inter-glacial ended while CO2 remained elevated indicating CO2 was unable to prevent temperatures from falling.
CO2 is measured in parts per million. To see exactly how much it has increased create a graph where the y axis is scaled to 1,000,000 and then see how ‘scary’ the increase in CO2 is.

28
0
varmint
varmint
2 years ago

I think the population of the world reached 8 billion a couple of weeks ago. They all need energy. Where is to come from? It obviously cannot come from coal oil and gas, at least not for very long, as this is a finite resource. This is what “climate change” is really all about. ——–Control of the world’s wealth and resources. It has been decided at UN level that the wealthy west has used up more than it’s fair share of the coal oil and gas in the ground to become prosperous and must stop doing that. To get away with that you need a very good or at least a plausible excuse for your citizens and that excuse is “climate change”. The west can afford to dabble in niche technologies like wind and sun and fob it’s people of with expensive unreliable energy, because it is all for the greater good of “saving the planet”. So over the last 50 years up has grown the Climate Industrial Complex. All apparently based on “science”. But as someone once pointed out ” One cannot rigorously rule out global warming due to an increase in greenhouse gasses. It nonetheless seems peculiar to base policy on something for which there is no evidence”. —Atmospheric Physicist Richard Lindzen.———- So if there is no evidence for something how is a problem? How is it a crisis? That is where the politics comes in. The politics of “Sustainable Development”. All environmental scares whether global cooling, global warming, storms, floods, droughts, and any extreme weather you can think of require the same response. Bigger government, more central planning, more and more regulations, more taxes, and less freedom. CO2 that is allegedly responsible for all the rising seas, melting ice and a climate apocalypse is indeed classed as a greenhouse gas. But it is also something else. It is the one gas that can be tied to Industrial capitalism. All human activity involves the release of some CO2 so what better way to control all human activity than by regulating it? CO2 is the socialist bureaucrats dream gas. Without global warming as the excuse, the whole Sustainable Development politics of controlling all human activity collapses. Which is why we see a bought and paid for mainstream media make such an issue of presenting the climate emergency as “fact” and ridiculing anyone daring to question any aspect of it. They are condemned as “deniers”, which surely has to be one of the most infantile terms imaginable if what is being discussed is supposed to be “science”. In science you question everything, and the fact that no dissent from orthodoxy can be allowed only reveals one thing. ——It is and never was about science in the first place. It is indeed a manufactured crisis for political purposes. It is “Official Science” not “science”, where truth is to be decided by a show of hands from government funded data adjusters.

Last edited 2 years ago by varmint
27
0
Corky Ringspot
Corky Ringspot
2 years ago

All very believable ammunition, but for a journalist at Reuters not very well written.

2
-8
Rowland P
Rowland P
2 years ago

There is an outfit called “Covering Climate Now” which provides “guidance” to the media and all types of business on how to push the climate change narrative. So we now get it shoved down our throat not only in News items but also in advertisements. This is blatant propagandising with that great word they all love – disinformation!

12
0
RTSC
RTSC
2 years ago

I too worked at Reuters many years ago when it was still based in Fleet Street.

Its decline from a source of trusted, unbiased news, to a partisan arm of the Climate Change Propagandists is sad to witness.

14
0
VAX FREE IanC
VAX FREE IanC
2 years ago

Again I feel the urge to post this image, once used in junior / infant school science classes.. ‘Visuals’ can also be useful to educate the intellectually challenged and miopic minded, helping to demonstrate the effects of sunlight, water,and Co2 with plants here on planet earth.. Is this truly beyond the understanding of modern journalists and MSM? (rhetorical)
Problem is, many of the afforementioned appear to be living on a completely different planet. Away with the faeries so to speak.

elementary carbon science.jpg
8
0
sskinner
sskinner
2 years ago
Reply to  VAX FREE IanC

Nice. A picture paints a thousand carbon credits.

0
0
Covid-1984
Covid-1984
2 years ago

Why even put the phrase “Rising Temperatures” in the heading?. Giving succour to the harbingers of doom. Who caused the ice age 10000 years ago….Fred Flintstone?

10
0
Smudger
Smudger
2 years ago

“Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom”.
Did the author practice what he preaches whilst in secure employment with Reuters?
The best protection against MSM propaganda is for more people to never buy their products and support any movements that call to break up these modern day robber barons.

5
0
Kornea112
Kornea112
2 years ago

The simple fact that the climate catastrophes are organized and want to shut down any opposing debate should be enough to convince any questioning mind that something is not right with their message.

8
0
GMO
GMO
2 years ago

Some are getting rich and powerful in the the ‘humanity caused climate change’ industry.

They won’t give up their wealth and power without a fight.

Be prepared for it.

5
0
GMO
GMO
2 years ago

To convince people that humanity is a significant factor in the earth’s changing climate is for the ‘humanity caused climate change’ advocates to follow the scientific method.

Make a hypothesis and then proof it.

They should make a detailed accurate prediction of the erath’s climate for each small section of the earth in the near future (2025), not some very distant date 50 years in the future.

If they actually know how the earth’s atmosphere work, and know how and why the earth’s climate is changing, then it should not be difficult.

Then we can see if their hypothesis is correct or not.

4
0

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