An Example of Media Hype Around the Phrase: “Scientists say.”

from here

September 9, 2013 by Jason Petersen Leave a Comment

Have you heard someone say that a certain fact is true because scientists say it’s true? Most of the general public are unaware that even though a scientist says something has been shown in a study, it actually doesn’t mean that the fact they are espousing is true. Science is a study of the natural world, and there are a multitude of scientific models that have been discarded in favor of new ones. The fact of the matter is, hypotheses and theories are shown to be incorrect more often than not. This is the nature of science, it does not set out to prove things. Science is also not truth, so there is nothing in science that is certain. One example of this phenomenon is shown below.
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The ice cap in the Arctic is 60 percent bigger than this time last year, scientists say. A new era of cooling may be underway.
I hereby again establish the term “Scientists Say” as a category of media hype that keeps the credulous public in a state of constant and unnecessary alarm. Why? “Because,” as folks used to say, “it sells papers.”
Nonetheless, the climate change community (née, global warming community) is in a dither, according to the London Telegraph. Documents leaked to another British paper, the Daily Mail, from the UN International Panel on Climate indicate that governments that finance the UN studies are demanding 1,500 changes in the preliminary report.
Only a couple of weeks ago an earlier leak from different sources (presumably) anticipated a UNIPCC report that confirmed human-caused global warming.
Now we have some scientists predicting a decade or more of cooling. Therefore earlier reported IPCC assertions of growing confidence levels in a warming trend (95%, no less) are looking as mushy as a melting snowman.
Reports the Telegraph:

US climate expert Professor Judith Curry has questioned how this (the originally leaked IPCC estimates) can be true as that rather than increasing in confidence, ‘uncertainty is getting bigger’ within the academic community. Long-term cycles in ocean temperature, she said, suggest the world may be approaching a period similar to that from 1965 to 1975, when there was a clear cooling trend.
At the time some scientists forecast an imminent ice age.

So when groups like the National Center for Science Education (NSCE) demand that educators promote human-caused climate change as “settled science,” and Al Gore creates a plume of pollution as he jets around demanding more government-financed windmills, what is the citizen to do? “Scientists Say” one thing one day and other “Scientists Say” another the next.

- See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/09/scientists_say_1076321.html#sthash.tvjUj41O.dpuf