Of Course Climate Sceptics Are Winning the Media War: The Facts Don't Lie

Net Zero critical newspaper editorials in majority for first time

According to Carbon Brief (CB), climate sceptics are winning the argument against Net Zero fanatics such as itself, the Guardian and Ed Miliband. The “analysis” from the amply funded Green Blob lobbying outfit shows that ‘UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time‘. The tipping point has been reached. The poles have flipped. And now those who were charged with sustaining green propaganda – and who drew excellent salaries for doing so – are left none the wiser as to how this happened.

CB’s “analysis” is a story in two parts. The first is the measurement of UK newspaper editorials. CB maintains a database of all major UK publications’ commentary on climate policy going back to 2009 (though the data are sparse until later the following decade). And this is in itself very revealing of the Green Blob’s strategy in the climate war: it’s a very odd thing to measure.

One of the most enduring characteristics of environmentalism is its adherents’ intransigence. And that’s for a very simple reason. Deference to the putative ‘consensus’ on climate change is equivalent to eschewing independent thought. If you do not believe that people should be free to dissent from something (an idea, principle, agenda, etc.), then their assent is also meaningless; it was obedience that was being sought, not alignment through persuasion.

And that is why so much of the Green Blob’s interventions, epitomised by Guardian editorials, are so clearly organised around censure rather than intellectual depth. Rather than assembling argument to properly counter sceptics’ claims, Green Blobbers prefer intellectual blackmail such as ‘98% of scientists believe…’, or moral blackmail such as holding ‘deniers’ to account for the alleged consequences of climate change – polar bear extinction, storms and floods, droughts and wildfires, and so on. It was the fault of ‘Right wing think tanks’, probably funded by ‘big oil’: whose side you are on, and whose interests you serve if you dare disagree. In this way, social conditioning accounts for the Green Blob’s main strategic offensive in the public sphere.