Papers should run accurate articles about climate change. Photo: Getty

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16 December 2014

The danger of ideology-based newspaper coverage of climate change

A warning against the publication of columns promoting climate change denial.

Last week, The Times provided further evidence that its coverage of climate change is being dictated by dogmatic ideology.

On Monday, it published a column by Matt Ridley, under the headline "Scientists must not put policy before proof", accusing the Royal Society and the World Meteorological Organisation of “poor scientific practice” because of its recent announcements about the impact of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

First, he complained that the World Meteorological Organisation should not have released a preliminary analysis showing that “the year 2014 is on track to be the warmest, or one of the warmest years on record”.

Ridley argued that instead the WMO should have noted that “this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005”.

What he neglected to admit was that 2005 and 2010 are the two warmest years ever recorded, and that 13 of the 14 hottest years have occurred from 2000 onwards, providing clear evidence of global warming.

He also criticised the WMO’s decision to make the figures public on 3 December as policy-makers from around the world assembled in Lima, Peru, for the United Nations climate change summit.

Yet, Ridley’s article coincided with the final week of negotiations over a new international agreement on climate change, and was no doubt intended to undermine the confidence of the UK Government in the scientific evidence.

His column also criticised a Royal Society report about "Resilience to extreme weather", which was published last month.

He claimed that the Society had decided to “cherry-pick” information for the report, and “could find room for not a single graph to show recent trends in extreme weather”.

This was utter nonsense. The report includes a table summarising changes in extreme events that have been observed since 1950, based on a comprehensive assessment of the scientific evidence by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Among the conclusions highlighted by the Royal Society report were “medium confidence that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at a global scale”, and “medium confidence that anthropogenic influence has contributed to some observed changes in drought patterns”.

The use of the term “medium confidence” reflects the fact that it is difficult to detect statistically significant trends in extreme weather, which, by definition, are rare events.

Writing in the Foreword to the report, Sir Paul Nurse, the President of the Royal Society, indicated that “by presenting evidence of trends in extreme weather and the different ways resilience can be built to it, we hope this report will galvanise action by local and national governments, the international community, scientific bodies, the private sector, and affected communities”.

Finally, Ridley dredged up false allegations about “the hiding of inconvenient data” by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

This was based on e-mails that were distributed on the web in November 2009 by climate change "sceptics" to try to undermine efforts to agree a new international treaty in Copenhagen.

An independent inquiry into the content of the so-called Climategate e-mails concluded that, “on the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt”.

But Ridley ignored this inconvenient fact and instead ranted that “the scientific establishment closed ranks”.

Yet he made no criticism of the hackers who illegally obtained the e-mails, or of the police investigation which failed to bring the criminals to justice.

Readers of The Times may be shocked to learn that the newspaper would publish an article that was riddled with so many inaccurate and misleading statements.

However, the number of errors is perhaps no surprise, given that Ridley, a hereditary Conservative peer, has a PhD in pheasant breeding, but no qualifications in climate science.

What may be of even more concern to readers is that The Times chose not to disclose that Ridley is a member of the all-male Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The Foundation was set up by Nigel Lawson in 2009 to lobby against government climate policies.

Earlier this year, the Charity Commission concluded that the Foundation had violated its rules because, “it promoted a particular position on global warming”.

The Times seems to be heavily promoting the views of climate change "sceptics". Earlier this year, there was controversy when an article by the newspaper’s science editor, Hannah Devlin, was altered to put a "sceptical" spin on climate change research. Devlin has since announced that she is leaving The Times to join the Guardian.

Given the apparent increasingly ideological approach of The Times to its coverage of climate change, it may not be long before many more of its readers follow Devlin’s example.

Bob Ward is a Fellow of the Geological Society and policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Bob Ward is policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The Staggers

19 November 2016

Can International Men's Day ever be a force for good?

Those worried about toxic masculinity try to distinguish themselves from anti-feminists.

Saturday 19 November is International Men’s Day. Its organisers claim their aims are to promote men’s physical and mental wellbeing, as well as work to improving gender relations. However, the idea of a day concentrating on men has proven divisive, with many of its supporters using it as an opportunity to fight feminism. Some victims of sexism joke that every day is International Men's Day.

So is the concept fundamentally misguided, or is it a question of interpretation? Journalist, writer, and activist, Ally Fogg, is part of the organising committee for UK International Men’s Day. We spoke over the phone on 9 November, the day, as it would turn out, Americans voted for a man who boasted about groping women to become their next President.

One problem with a lack of debate, Fogg argued, is that International Men’s Day is about more than just raising awareness of individual issues. “You can’t talk about men’s suicide rates, without talking about the higher rates of alcoholism," he said. "Without talking about men being more reluctant to seek help from the NHS." None of this exists in isolation of a culture of violence, which is exacerbated by the criminal justice system.

He is keen to stress that International Men’s Day isn't purely about celebrating men. “We live in a patriarchal society that systematically empowers men over women. But what happens to men who fall through the cracks?” he asked. “How do we address the fact that the majority of victims of sexual violence are women without ignoring that many victims are men?”

To illustrate his argument, he gave the example of a friend, who reported being a victim of child sexual abuse to the authorities, and was offered support. However, the independent adviser couldn’t use her own office, as it was a women-only space. Instead, Fogg’s friend was expected to recount his trauma in a public coffee shop.

To Fogg, this was not to suggest women-only spaces should be removed, but to illustrate the gaps in support.

Nevertheless, talking about men as victims seems impossible without also acknowledging that men commit most violent crimes. Fogg said: “If we can do something about making men less violent, the number one beneficiaries of that are men and boys”. His believes that curing men of toxic masculinity is a worthwhile end in itself.

International Men’s Day UK also focuses on the intersection of gender with race, sexuality, and poverty. “Look at the appalling coverage of the migrant crisis in Calais," Fogg said. He believes newspapers played on the fact many in Calais were male, Muslim, and had dark skin. Had they been Muslim women or white, Christian men, it would have been harder to portray them as menacing. “We are now seeing the same thing with Donald Trump and Mexicans," he added.

But while focusing on a particular demography always brings new perspectives, International Men's Day is not just about refugees in Calais. One of the most prominent political backers is the Conservative MP for Shipley, Philip Davies, a man who has voted against equality legislation, attacked what he called "militant feminists" and bombarded the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission with questions such as "why is it so offensive to black up your face?" He once said disabled people don't need to earn the minimum wage.

With Davies leading the debate, it sends a message that men’s issues matter, but not if the man is disabled, gay, Muslim, BAME, or trans. This is vitally important because these are the groups of men who suffer from the highest rates of suicide, violence, and discrimination – with the least support available.

I pressed Fogg to name someone he’d prefer, who hasn’t offended just about every minority and at-risk community. He avoided an answer, but suggested there there has been a growth in conversations about masculinity itself. “Grayson Perry’s work has great for this," he said. "More and more people are asking how to be a man in the 21st century, but what they don’t do is acknowledge that these are political issues. We can’t just say we want more boys to read and go to university. Men and boys can’t reinvent ourselves without policy being involved”. The cycle of toxic masculinity won’t end itself.