HARROW: Recently ended year was one of the hottest on record. NSW was the one hottest land, Victoria on second number and Australia on third.
The measure is compiled by the Bureau of Meteorology. It dates back to 1910. A separate global reading prepared by the World Meteorological Organisation has 2014 the hottest year since international records began in 1880. Not a single year since 1985 has been below average and every one of the 10 hottest years has been since 1998.
That it’s getting hotter is what economists call an empirical question – a matter of fact not worth arguing about, although it is certainly worth arguing about the reasons for the increase and what we may do about it.
But that’s not the way many Australians see it. I posted the Bureau of Meteorology’s findings on Twitter on Tuesday and was told: “Not really”. Apparently, “climate-wise we are in pretty good shape”.
If the bureau had been displaying measures of the temperature on a specific day or a cricket commentator had been displaying the cricket score, there would be no quibbling. The discussion would centre about the reasons for the result and its implications.
But when it comes to the slowly rising temperature some of us won’t even accept the readings. And that says something about us, or at least about those of us who won’t accept what’s in front of our faces.
I am not prepared to believe that these people are anti-science. Some of them are engineers, some mining company company executives. Like all of us, they depend on science in their everyday lives.
Nor am I prepared to believe they’ve led sheltered lives, although it’s a popular theory. In the United States a survey of six months of coverage on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel found that 37 of its 40 mentions of climate change were misleading.
The misleading coverage included “broad dismissals of human-caused climate change, disparaging comments about individual scientists, rejections of climate science as a body of knowledge, and cherry-picking of data”.
Fox News called global warming a “fraud”, a “hoax” and “pseudo science”.Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal fared little better. 39 of its 48 references were misleading.
In Australia it’s not as bad. Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian gives more space to climate change than any other newspaper. Its articles are 47 per cent negative, 44 per cent neutral and 9 per cent positive, according to the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
It’s impossible to read The Australian’s articles without feeling at least a bit curious about climate change.
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