As you may have seen, stuff.co.nz, the online portal for the Fairfax conglomerate of papers, has launched a science section. I would like to think one of the largest news websites in the country increasing their focus on science could only be a force for good. I’m afraid the initial offerings have lurched from underwhelming to utterly ridiculous.
The thousands of viewers who found themselves reading the front page of stuff this afternoon would have been met by a giant graphic of a blue sun and a headline claiming
‘Solar minimum’ could trigger Ice Age
The world could be heading for a new ‘solar minimum’ period, possibly plummeting the planet into an Ice Age, scientists say.
That’s a nice result, but how does it relate to “ice ages” (presumably meaning glacial periods that last for tens of thousands of years and cover most of the globe in ice, not the regional pattern lasting 200 years studied here) let alone an imminent one? Even if the sun were to enter a prolonged solar minimum, Martin-Puertas et al. are explicit in their paper, and the press release that got someone at the Fairfax office excited, that the results they report can’t be directly used to predict future events. From the paper:
However, a direct comparison to the Homeric minimum, which was a very deep and persistent minimum with very different orbital parameters when compared with recent solar minima and probably a larger climate response, is not possible
And the press release
Albeit those findings cannot be directly transferred to future projections because the current climate is additionally affected by anthropogenic forcing.
The language in the original version of the article (now edited, but recorded by from the morgue) gives away the motivation of the article’s author:
The period would see a cooling of the planet, refuting predictions of global-warming alarmists.
You can decide if the author of this article is in a place to call anyone else an alarmist.
The comments that followed the article are a perfect illustration of why it’s worth getting upset about this sort of reporting. The vast majority of them are from people who don’t believe the evidence that recent global warming is the result of our burning of fossil fuels, the rest are from people just generally being confused or disappointed by the lack of clarity on climate change in the media. I’ve plucked a commentator calling himself James as an example:
Global warming, global cooling, another ice age ? Let’s face it, there is “evidence” to support all of these theories. There was also good evidence to support the theory that the world was flat. Science is simply the opinion of a group of intellectuals at any given moment. The mix of the group changes with each new piece of “evidence”. Everyone, including the intellectuals should understand that science and their own theories are just that, not indisputable facts.
James is wrong, the evidence that emitting greenhouse gases makes the world warmer is overwhelming and in no way comparable to the idea there will be a new glacial period any time soon. But can we blame him for being wrong when the major sources of news in this country are so willing to publish such rubbish?
As much as I love science blogs and specialist magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American it’s important to realise that for that the people that get their science news from these sources are science fans. For most people, mainstream sources like stuff, the Herald and TV news are going to be the main source of scientific information, and when it’s as bad as this article is it any wonder that large sections of our society are left behind by science?
*How amazing is geography – you can reconstruct the windiness of a site 3 000 years ago!
You probably haven’t worked in a newsroom before. It isn’t intentionally bad. The sad part is that Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything should be required reading for any reporter entering the science field.