Stop the presses. Summon the fact-checkers. Alert Greta’s yacht. Because, dear reader, the climate heretics have pounced again.
Yes, that’s the headline this week from the stenographers over at E&E News, a Politico-adjacent publication that reads like the employee newsletter for the Church of Saint Carbon Credit. The story begins in the key of outrage: “Climate critics try to discredit IPCC author for linking disasters to global warming.”
Translation from Journo-speak: “Someone noticed the emperor’s new lab coat is made of recycled grant money.”
Apparently, Roger Pielke Jr. — a political scientist with the unfortunate habit of reading data instead of chanting slogans — wrote an op-ed questioning whether Dr. Friederike Otto, an activist who co-founded World Weather Attribution, might not be the most neutral person to help lead the next United Nations climate report. Otto’s research, you see, keeps showing up in lawsuits against the oil and gas industry. Big ones. The kind of lawsuits where the legal fees could buy an entire Tesla fleet and still leave room for a virtue-signaling dinner at Davos.
Now, any normal reporter might think, Hmm, that sounds like a potential conflict of interest worth exploring. But we’re not dealing with normal reporters here. We’re dealing with the High Clergy of the Narrative. So instead of “UN installs activist whose work is fueling climate lawsuits,” we get, “Fossil fuel industry allies attack a scientist.”
Because in modern media theology, questioning the priest is a greater sin than whatever the priest did.
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