Do we need to “stop calling people who do not buy premature ‘consensus’ deniers and stop accusing them of spreading misinformation and bias?” That’s what Warren Warren published last week in ScienceAdvances, with an editorial headlined “Earning the public’s trust.”
Warren2 is concerned about media hyperbole exaggerating or misrepresenting science, because a paper on face masks he co-authored in 2020 was not received the way he had intended. He then goes on to relate that to climate change, dredging up the ridiculous RCP8.5 faux-conspiracy, and justifying it by linking to a scientific study he, ironically, misrepresented.
And we know Warren didn’t understand the paper, because one of the co-authors told him! “You clearly have not understood the citations,” NASA’s Gavin Schmidt tweeted, as they “have nothing to do with use or misuse of RCP8.5.”
Whoopsies! Man who complains about the media misrepresenting science, misrepresented science in the media!
And it gets worse! Responding to other criticisms about the total lack of citations for the “dozens of decades-old failed apocalyptic predictions about climate change” that Warren Warren wrote about, he claimed to have been “limited in the number of references I could use” and provided two additionally examples. And they are not compelling, to say the least.
Because one was a link to a 2004 story from the UK’s Observer, which has been making the rounds in disinfo circles for years as it claims the Pentagon was warning of massive climate catastrophe. As we pointed out in 2020, when Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal misrepresented it, and as Schmidt tweeted, this report was a “worst-of-the-worst scenario planning” that the Pentagon commissioned, not any sort of climate science prediction.
The other was a link to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, not exactly known for its science coverage, and even then it was an editorial, not an actual reported piece. And that editorial? It’s a list of misrepresented predictions that they credit Bjorn Lomborg for putting together.
As you may remember, a month and a day ago, we pointed out that Bjorn Lomborg plagiarized his NYPost oped in another oped in CityAM, about a supposed 50 years of failed climate predictions. Those identical op-eds were, in turn, based on a list compiled by professional climate disinfo spreaders, which was in turn based on a list conspiracy theorist Tony Heller first assembled.
Warren, who has a taste for climate disinfo, consumed the end result of a Sandy Hook Truther and Obama Birther’s list of things someone said once — as passed through professionals who spread disinfo on behalf of the tobacco industry before doing it for fossil fuels — published by a rightwing tabloid picking up on a self-plaigarising professional denier.
It’s the steaming pile from the end a human centipede of disinfo, and Warren loved it.
In his ScienceAdvances editorial, Warren complained in his editorial that “some reporters who cover science issues have little science background.”
So what’s his excuse?