Most of the earth’s glaciers are in Antarctica, which has grown in size 33% since the ’70s.Distrust of media has hit an all-time high, with many Americans turning over TV newscasts and cancelling subscriptions to newspapers, according to the Pew Research Center.
The center found that many are switching to fringe websites to feed their hunger for news.
The group’s research concluded 65 per cent of Americans believe the “national news media have a negative effect on our country”.
A separate recent Gallup poll said six in 10 of the US public now have “little or no confidence in the national media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly”.
The main bugbear appears to be that they see news as opinion columns in disguise, particularly when it comes to the climate change debate.
Rep Lamar Smith is a Republican who has represented Texas’s 21st district since 1987.
He said: “If the story does not fit the liberal worldview, then facts are ignored, dissent is silenced, and Americans are told what to think.
“Perhaps one of the worst examples of one-sided, biased reporting involves global warming.”
He claimed people who “reject the liberal viewpoint that climate change is the greatest threat to our country are ridiculed and ignored”.
He said: “For example, the Associated Press recently amended its style book to recommend that those who question the science behind global warming be called climate change ‘doubters’ instead of ‘skeptics’.
“But this is inaccurate, since many “skeptics” don’t doubt that climate change has occurred.”
He believes a widely reported figure that 97 per cent of all scientists agree that human-caused global warming is real are false and mislead the public.
He said: “The source of this ’97 per cent’ myth is a discredited study that attempted to categorize scholarly articles on climate change by the position the papers took on the issue.
“But most of the papers never took a position on climate change at all.
“This has not stopped the liberal national media from touting this illegitimate statistic.
“Silencing debate is contrary to the scientific method. If these groups were confident about their arguments, they would welcome more debate to test their theories.
“However, some media outlets, such as the Los Angeles Times, have changed their policies and no longer accept letters to the editor from those who question human-made climate change. That this would happen in a democracy where free speech is enshrined in the Constitution is unbelievable.”
