Environmental Reporting in a Post Truth World

Abstract

The science publication Nature Climate Change this year published a study demonstrating Earth this century warmed substantially less than computer-generated climate models predict. Unfortunately for public knowledge, such findings don’t appear in the news. Sea levels too have not been obeying the ‘grand transnational narrative’ of catastrophic global warming. Sea levels around Australia 2011–2012 were measured with the most significant drops in sea levels since measurements began. This phenomenon was due to rainfall over Central Australia, which filled vast inland lakes. It was not predicted in the models, nor was it reported in the news. The 2015–2016 El-Niño, a natural phenomenon, drove sea levels around Indonesia to low levels such that coral reefs were bleaching. The echo chamber of news repeatedly fails to report such phenomena and yet many studies continue to contradict mainstream news discourse. Whistle-blower Dr. John Bates exposed the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) when it manipulated data to meet politically predetermined conclusions for the 2015 Paris (Climate) Agreement. This was not reported. Observational scientific analyses and their data sets continue to disagree with much of climate science modelling, and are beginning to suggest that some natural phenomena, which cause variability, may never be identified.

Theorising post-truth in the COVID era

“…These points have been borne out in the last decade in Australia by way of successive Federal governments from across the political spectrum adopting an inertia-driven approach to climate change (Beeson, 2021 ; Blackall, 2017 ; Connor, 2014 ; Grafton, 2020 ; Speck, 2010 ), challenging and directly interfering with the independence of academic research grants (Bradby, 2018 ; Walsh, 2022 ), as well as defunding of the arts, public journalism, and sciences where they could be construed as undermining a political party’s attempts to continue institutional legacies of their political predecessors (Tingle, 2014 , 2016 , 2019 ). According to John Keane, these developments have underpinned a global phenomenon of ‘new populism,’ which begins as ‘post-truth games’ being deployed by populist politicians that sow disillusionment with democratic institutions, as well as dismissing or ignoring public concerns if they did not align with their political agenda.…”