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Claim:
unadjusted data suggests that temperatures in Australia have only increased by 0.3 degrees over the past century, not the 1 degree usually claimed
This article in The New York Times serves as a primer by briefly answering seventeen basic questions about the cause and consequences of—and possible solutions to—climate change. Ten scientists reviewed the article, and generally found the answers to be highly accurate distillations of the research on that topic.
Claim:
climate models have overestimated the amount of global warming and failed to predict what climatologists call the warming ‘hiatus’
“The article selectively quotes from interviews and scientific papers to create the false perception that climate models significantly overestimate the rate of warming. The article also falsely implies that the cited paper is about the so called “hiatus” while the paper is actually about the carbon budget for the 1.5 ºC target.”
The diagram below shows that the articles mostly rely heavily on each other—like in an echo chamber—with very few outside sources included in the reporting. A first wave of “reporting” appeared in The Spectator, The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and Breitbart, which were then largely copied and pasted in a second wave of posts with larger audiences…
“The article provides an excellent summary of how rising air temperatures are leading to drier conditions and more fire activity among forests in parts of the western United States. The article is strengthened by including multiple interviews with scientists who have produced seminal studies of fire-climate interactions in this region.”
Claim:
Most of the recent warming could be natural
Claim:
[climate scientists] say that aspects of the case of Hurricane Harvey suggest global warming is making a bad situation worse.
“A well written article that captures the essence of our understanding that under climate change storms will likely bring more rainfall. In the case of Harvey, all we can say is that it is consistent with those ideas. But we cannot say that it is the direct consequence of climate change.”
“The article is accurate in its descriptions of the physical and ecological processes that are behind permafrost changes. It also does a good job of getting across the nature of the work of actual scientists working in the field, what they are doing and why they are doing it.”