News Corp embraces fantasy genre by turning climate crisis into ‘laughable’ science fiction

The National Climate Risk Assessment is attacked in the Daily Telegraph, while wind turbines became a frightening obstacle for firefighting planes and solar panels a source of mountains of landfill waste

On the front page of the Daily Telegraph, Australia’s first comprehensive assessment of the risks from climate change became “SCIENCE FICTION”.

In other leading stories, wind turbines became a frightening obstacle for firefighting planes and solar panels were a source of mountains of landfill waste.

Some might say there’s a pattern there that would not be out of character with News Corporation’s more than occasional animosity towards climate change science and renewable energy.

Was there any truth in all this? Let’s have a rummage.

Science fact not fiction

The National Climate Risk Assessment, released last month, found climate change would affect all aspects of Australian lives and the country’s economy.

“SCIENCE FICTION: Doomsday report out of this world: US expert” blared the Daily Telegraph’s headline, more than a week after the government released the assessment.

“Bowen’s climate doom ‘fiction’,” declared a headline on an inside page.

The front-page story, which was also page one news in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, was based entirely on the views of one US-based political scientist, Dr Roger Pielke Jr, who is loved among climate sceptics for his views that have downplayed the costs of climate change impacts.

Pielke Jr is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute – a conservative thinktank with a record of opposing climate action.

He argued the Australian Climate Service that coordinated the assessment had chosen a scenario of the future that was “from science fiction” and “doesn’t pass the laugh test”, suggesting it was a gross overestimate of population rise, temperature rise and the amount of coal that would be burned in the future.

“That’s a red herring,” said Dr Andrew Watkins, a research associate at Monash University, a lead author of the risk assessment and a former long-serving senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology.

“Maybe Roger doesn’t actually understand the purpose of the risk assessment?”

Despite the tabloids’ hanging an entire page one story off Pielke Jr’s claim, experts told Temperature Check his focus on scenarios was not relevant.

The risk assessment was based instead on the impacts in Australia from three different levels of global warming – 1.5C, 2C and 3C.

Watkins said any suggestion global heating would be “well below or well above these scenarios is the greater science fiction”.

“Lead authors, including [UN assessment] lead authors and those with professional lifetimes tackling the technical world of climate projections with some of the best climate minds in Australia, were involved in creating these datasets.

“Why would you ignore that brilliance?” Watkins asked. “That’s not journalism.”

Prof Christian Jakob, a climate modelling expert at Monash University who was not involved in the risk assessment, said Pielke Jr’s claim’s of “science fiction” were laughable.

Jakob said the prospects of global heating of 1.5C and 2C were “very real”.

“The [ACS] went to 3C of warming,” he said. “It would have been irresponsible not to assess the risks at that level of warming.”

The Daily Telegraph ran one sentence of a four-sentence response from the ACS, which said Pielke Jr had “incorrectly represented the methodology used”.

In some newsrooms, that might have been enough for editors to hit pause on a story.

Solar panel waste

“Solar rubbish piling up” was the headline on another Daily Telegraph story last month, which said millions of panels were being thrown away.

The Telegraph complained that this was happening while state and federal governments were “failing to implement a mandatory recycling scheme”.

A month before this story ran, state and federal environment ministers had met to discuss the need for a scheme to make panel suppliers responsible for the design, recycling and disposal of solar panels.

The New South Wales government is working with other states to report on the impacts of a scheme, and the commonwealth and NSW are also investigating how a scheme could work nationally.

So while it’s true a scheme hasn’t been implemented, it’s also true there is work going on behind the scenes. That includes new businesses opening up that are recycling panels.

The story said 59,340 tonnes of solar panel waste was likely to be generated this year – a figure that comes from University of NSW research. That sounds like a lot, but is it?

The estimated tonnage of solar panels being dumped right now is about 0.2% of the 26m tonnes of waste going to landfill in Australia.

Curiously, the Daily Telegraph reported how it had “uncovered advertisements” on reselling sites such as Gumtree of solar panels being sold for as little as $5 each. An example, apparently, of panels not going to landfill (let’s not dwell on how you “uncover” an advertisement).

Experts say 95% of solar panels can be recycled and, curiously again, the Telegraph spoke to one business owner who said it took “about a minute” to collect the aluminium, copper, silver and silicone that are in them.

‘Just fallacies’

This week the Daily Telegraph ran a page one story – “FANNING THE FLAMES” – on how aerial firefighting support pilots were refusing to fly near “giant net zero projects” for “fear of crashing into wind turbines”.

Cover photo:  The energy and climate change minister, Chris Bowen, right, and the assistant minister for climate change, Josh Wilson, discuss the National Climate Risk Assessment. Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA