Industry "think" tank cherry-picks to prove point

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Here is a great example of spin, this time by the oil-money backed Media Research Centre and it’s affiliated group “NewsBusters.” The goal of the intrepid team at Newsbusters is to “expose and combat liberal media bias.” Well, here’s a little bias from News Busters themselves.

According to a recent UK Telegraph story, an upcoming report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will claim that “mankind has less of an affect on global warming than previously supposed.” A leading UK climate scientist explains that this downgrade is a refinement simply “due to better data on how the climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.”

The Telegraph story then goes on at length, here are some of the quotes:

“The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future.”

“… the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.

“It [the new report] warns that carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past five years by three per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent a year average of the previous two decades.”

“Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London.”

“The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels.”

Sound pretty grim? Not to Newsbusters , the battlers of “bias.” They cherry-pick the “downgrade” quote, ignore the rest of the article and then use it as some strange vindication for climate change “skeptics” like Senator James “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe. Maybe when NewsBusters means “combating bias,” they really meant to say “confusing bias.” Here’s Inhofe’s news release on the Telegraph story that pretty much follows the same tact.

Watch for more and more so-called “skeptics” to pop up and tout the Telegraph article as vindication for their fringe science beliefs.

ThinkProgress takes a cut at this story as well.  

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmogBlog.

He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning.

Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks.

Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder.

Prior to DeSmogBlog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health.

In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.

Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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