Michael Mann-child defends IPCC report by calling skeptics names — ‘serial disinformer’, ‘discredited,’ ‘apologist’

Michael Mann-child writes in the Guardian:

This time, however, climate change deniers seem divided in their preferred contrarian narrative. Some would have us believe that the IPCC has downgraded the strength of the evidence and the degree of threat. Career fossil fuel-industry apologist Bjorn Lomborg, in Rupert Murdoch’s the Australian, wrote on 16 September:

— UN’s mild climate change message will be lost in alarmist translation.

On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry, in a commentary for the same outlet five days later, announced:

— Consensus distorts the climate picture.

So, make up your mind, critics: is it a “mild message” or a “distorted picture”? Consistency, they might well respond, is simply the “hobgoblin of little minds”, after all – but in reality, that’s only if you ignore the foolishness.

Indeed, claims that members of the IPCC have downgraded their scientific confidence have been plentiful among the usual purveyors of climate change misinformation: Fox News, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and various conservative tabloids in the United States, Canada, Germany and Australia. Fox News even sought to mislead its viewers with a bait-and-switch, focusing attention instead on a deceptive, similarly named report that calls itself the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which simply regurgitates standard shopworn denialist myths and erroneous talking points. That non-peer-reviewed report was published by the discredited industry front group known as the Heartland Institute in the lead-up to the publication of the actual IPCC report, presumably to divert attention from the actual scientific evidence.

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