Columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal detects a shift in news media coverage of climate change, after decades:
“I can’t help but wonder how events might have been different if climate news coverage over these many decades had not veered into moronic nonsense, from which it is only fitfully starting to emerge.”
The new tone appears in the New York Times. Jenkins quotes the Times’ writer David Wallace-Wells: “Just a few years ago climate projections of this century looked quite apocalyptic.” But now, says Wallace-Wells, the consensus is that future warming will be (in Jenkins’ words) “less than half the forecast of, say the 2018 U. S. National Climate Assessment.”
Jenkins identifies a couple of other examples of “the conversation shifting to from climate certitudes to climate uncertainties.” That doesn’t mean the media are getting off the climate-change bandwagon, but they are switching to “discussion of low-probability, high-consequence tipping points and doom loops.” So the story isn’t over.
Jenkins’ article is behind a paywall, but the Times’ article can be found here.