Fox News Stokes the Climate Change Denial Machine
Fox News continues promoting anti-science rubbish to the rubes, with an article about Eight Botched Environmental Forecasts.
What do you notice about these “botched forecasts?” The most recent one they could find dates back to 2000, and all the others are much older. Here are the dates of these 8 “mistaken” predictions (all of which are among the constantly repeated talking points of climate change deniers):
2000
1990
1972
1989
1970
1970
1971
1970
The fact that Fox News writer Maxim Lott couldn’t find anything more recent than ten years ago for this hackneyed list (and had to reach back 40 years for 5 of his examples) strongly suggests that climate scientists’ predictions are improving — which is, after all, how science is supposed to work. In fact, improving climate predictions is a major priority among scientists, and a subject of serious study. (Not that anyone at Fox News understands or cares about that.)
Lott is trying to denigrate the reliability of climate science, a typical denier’s tactic; but the real lesson of his list of “botched forecasts” is that climate predictions are becoming increasingly accurate as scientific knowledge accrues, and techniques and models are refined.
This deceptive crap is a big hit with right wing blogs, of course.
Frank says: