The piece, written by the AP's Ben Fox, announced its intent with the headline "Leaders Say Momentum Building on Climate Change." Readers were then treated to 570 words exclusively about these political leaders and their claims.
This idea of momentum was not about growing public support, or any increase in likelihood that local governments would enforce a global treaty. Proof of this building momentum? The fact that more politicians like President Obama have suddenly decided to attend Copenhagen in spite of public skepticism at home:
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, making rare appearances at a Commonwealth meeting to help drive the climate discussion, portrayed the joint declaration as further evidence of the growing momentum for next month's summit.
"I will leave Trinidad fully convinced that it will be possible to reach an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen," Loekke Rasmussen told reporters after the Commonwealth leaders issued their statement following a private meeting.
Some 90 countries have agreed to attend the summit in Denmark.
The AP gave no thought to the very strong possibility that many of these leaders are attending for show while knowing a treaty would never be accepted back home. Australia's ABC News outlet reported last week that Senators are resigning there in protest over climate legislation. Here in the States, moderate Democrats have stalled cap and trade for fear of public backlash, leaving more doubt that they would be willing to ratify a global treaty.
Thus the true story was that politicians gave in to pressure from the left and agreed to attend a meeting while knowing full well it would be a waste of time to the voters back home. That was what the AP saw as momentum for a global climate plan.
Also not mentioned was the growing call for investigation into the science behind supposed climate change. James Delingpole from the UK Telegraph revealed recent fighting in the ranks at the IPCC over allowing discredited scientists to still have influence in the political discussion. Worse yet,
NewsBusters reported Saturday that Penn State University agreed to investigate Michael Mann for his role in the e-mail scandal, a major development that has thus far been ignored by the AGW-believing media.
Predictably, the AP went on reporting climate change as if it were fact:
The leaders said a deal should be adopted no later than next year and the support money should be available simultaneously, providing up to $10 billion a year starting in 2012.
At least 10 percent of the fund should be dedicated to small island and low-lying coastal nations that are at risk of catastrophic changes from global warming, the group said.
"Climate change is the predominant global challenge," the Commonwealth leaders said in a joint declaration. "For some of us, it is an existential threat."
This is a stunning case of media malpractice. In the face of actual investigations of the very science around global warming, politicians continued insisting that the threat was real, and the AP repeated the quote with zero attempts at rebuttal.
Unfortunately, as Copenhagen approaches, we can expect more of this kind of journalism to keep the myth of a consensus alive and stonewall information about discredited science.
