The rise of the internet allowed for an abundance of information to be readily available, any time, at our fingertips. While this allowed for literacy, knowledge, and education rates to skyrocket, many individuals and news outlets have taken this platform as a means of deliberately spreading their myths and propaganda. One of the subjects these fake articles commonly discuss is climate change skepticism, and whether its causes or severity are accurately depicted by scientists and mainstream media.
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Unfortunately, finding a climate change denial article was easy. The author, Elmer Beauregard, even went on to organize ‘scientific evidence’ in bullet points to support his ‘climate change is a hoax’ theory. His argument included record snow and record cold, which he believes ultimately proves that global warming is a hoax, since the Earth is not getting warmer, but colder. As many studies prove, climate change is not explicitly bound by global warming, but rather extreme temperatures in general. The Earth being extremely cold has as much of a detrimental effect as being extremely hot. Another argument he mentioned is that 99% of scientists don’t believe in man-made global warming. After tracing these statistics, I found that they were published on a political campaign website in Minnesota back in 2007.
While we had hoped that science would remain unfazed by this explosion of fake news, there has been a rise in the number of inaccurate publications ranging from fabricated data to improper analysis. Due to the difficulty and ethical complications of censoring the internet, it’s imperative that we take the responsibility of monitoring the credibility of our sources.
Rund Tawfiq (3)
Source:
Beauregard, E. (2015, January 23). Top ten reasons climate change is a hoax. Retrieved from: http://www.globalclimatescam.com/opinion/top-ten-reasons-climate-change-is-a-hoax/
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ReplyDeleteFundamentally in the nature of science is the value of thinking for yourself, not making assumptions, in order to better understand truth. It is so sad that the integrity of science is compromised by people who don't care about science, but care about something else. We might as well be talking about religion here. Some of the qualities that I hate so much in certain religious expression, where the money/materialism seem to be the foundation, you can clearly find in scientific articles. Hypocrisy reigns supreme.
ReplyDeleteI can elaborate if necessary!
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