Guardian is Eight Times More Climate Alarmist Than Other Newspapers, Study Finds

And it's getting everybody down

One of the most striking things about the climate wars is the preoccupation that the warriors in the seemingly dominant side have with ‘communication’. The green agenda has no doubt won over governments and the broader political establishment, but it is the public’s commitment that is required. All the promises of the ‘green economy’ are for nought when every household knows it is poorer and is facing higher prices. Climate warriors, on the wrong side of a massive democratic deficit, attempt to close the gap by rebalancing the equation: comparing the costs of ‘action’ against the costs of ‘inaction’. ‘What price saving the planet?’ they ask, rhetorically. But a growing number of researchers from within the green camp have asked whether this alarmism is really any more effective as a way of gaining consent for the agenda.

In one such study recently, ‘Exploring catastrophic language use in climate journalism: A corpus-based study of articles published by the Guardian‘ authors Declan Lloyd and Emil Hazelhurst suggest that alarmism is not helping anyone to save the planet. “Well-intended language choices by journalists and news providers,” explain the pair, may be contributing to “post-traumatic stress, depression or a sense of helplessness in the face of global environmental challenges.” No shit, professor Sherlock! So their study addresses “a lack of systematic research into the specific language choices employed in UK climate reporting”, by comparing Guardian climate articles to a broader body of work. And, to zero surprise whatsoever, they determine that “catastrophic language” appears more than eight times more often in Guardian articles than in average news media.