The press’ reaction to The Wall Street Journal’s blockbuster weekend report that the US Department of Energy has concluded the COVID pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, is another highly revealing instance of deep media bias.
Mainstream media outlets were quick to highlight that the department itself rated its conclusion “low confidence,” which was clearly meant to cast doubt on the credibility and significance of the report.
Question: How often do the major media ever mention the “low confidence” ratings attached to many findings in climate science? Almost never.
Yet anyone who takes the time to read through the climate-science reports the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues every few years will find that many of the most crucial factors behind the catastrophic climate-change claims and forecasts are rated “low confidence” by the scientists who produce them.
In the most recent IPCC science report, for example, issued in 2021, the term “low confidence” appears 48 times in the key 131-page chapter on climate sensitivity; “uncertain” or “uncertainty” appears 248 times.
In the latest IPCC science report, the term “low confidence” appears 48 times in the key 131-page chapter on climate sensitivity.Getty Images
While the media breathlessly report that every tropical storm, tornado, hurricane and forest fire are caused by climate change, the UN scientists are much more restrained, saying they have “low confidence” the computer models or climate-history studies justify such statements. Ditto for predictions of large sea-level rise, Antarctic sea-ice melting, ocean-surface temperatures, regional climate impacts and North Atlantic storm tracks.
The IPCC’s estimates for the largest single cause of future temperature change — the various forms of water vapor in the atmosphere (in other words, clouds) — remain highly uncertain.