Rise of Distorted News Puts Climate Scientists on Their Guard
Wary of misleading coverage, some climate researchers are avoiding publicizing results. Others prepare countermeasures to anticipate and combat skewed media reports.
By Gabriel Popkin 2 October 2017
Last fall, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory ecosystem scientist Trevor Keenan had the kind of high-profile, global-scale research results that scientists dream of: He found that plants had absorbed more carbon dioxide than expected between 2002 and 2014.
Some blogs cited his paper while falsely implying that climate change had slowed or stopped.
Keenan was generally pleased with the media coverage his Nature Communications paper got, most of which conveyed his caveat that increased carbon uptake by plants will not stave off long-term climate change. But he also noticed that some blogs and media outlets cited his paper while falsely implying that climate change had slowed or stopped. The popular U.S. right-wing website Breitbart embellished upon the unexpected nature of the results by describing Keenan and his colleagues as “amazed” [Williams, 2016].
https://eos.org/features/rise-of-distorted-news-puts-climate-scientists-on-their-guard
