CNN.com Gaslights Readers on Failed Ocean Predictions – Now Claims Opposite

Just one year after climate activists and their media allies spread fear with claims that global warming is causing the world’s ocean currents to speed up, CNN.com is now claiming the opposite – and claiming scientists predicted a slowing of ocean currents all along. CNN’s attempt at “Gaslighting” (a term derived from the 1944 movie Gaslight, in which a man attempts to convince his wife that she cannot believe her own memory) reveals the lack of honesty and lack of scientific basis for alarmist climate claims.

CNN published an article this morning titled, “The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate.” In the course of claiming all sorts of existential threats caused by slow ocean currents – including stronger hurricanes, heat waves, and sea-level rise – CNN asserted, “The slowdown of ocean circulation is directly caused by warming global temperatures and has been predicted by climate scientists.”

Except that “climate scientists” and the activist media were telling us exactly the opposite just one year ago.

On February 6, 2020, NASA published an article titled, “Arctic Ice Melt Is Changing Ocean Currents.” The article claimed global warming is speeding up ocean currents. According to the article, “A major ocean current in the Arctic is faster and more turbulent as a result of rapid sea ice melt, a new study from NASA shows. The current is part of a delicate Arctic environment that is now flooded with fresh water, an effect of human-caused climate change.”

On February 6, 2020, Scientific American published an article titled, “Ocean Currents Are Speeding Up, Driven by Faster Winds.” The article claims, “Climate change may in part be spurring the acceleration, which could change how heat and nutrients are pushed around the oceans.”

On February 5, 2020, Science magazine published an article titled, “Global warming is speeding up Earth’s massive ocean currents.” Quoting a scientist reviewing data on ocean-current speeds derived from instruments on Argo robotic floats, Science reported, “The evidence in the Argo data is absolutely astonishing,”

On February 6, 2020, the website Live Science published an article titled, “Ocean currents are getting faster.” The article claimed, “The change is driven by global warming and wind.”

To ensure the public was sufficiently aware and sufficiently alarmed about accelerating ocean currents, Washington Post climate change reporter Chris Mooney published a February 5, 2020, article titled, “World’s oceans are speeding up – another mega-scale consequence of climate change.” According to the article, “It’s the latest dramatic finding about the stark transformation of the global ocean — joining revelations about massive coral die-offs, upheaval to fisheries, ocean-driven melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, increasingly intense ocean heat waves and accelerating sea level rise. … This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show.”

On February 11, 2020, NBC News published an article titled, “Climate change models predicted ocean currents would speed up – but not this soon.” According to the article, “Climate models had predicted that ocean circulation would accelerate with unmitigated climate change, but the changes had not been expected until much later this century … The disparity suggests that some climate models may underestimate the effects of global warming.”

Now, quickly and completely forget everything you just read. New data are destroying all those claims of climate change speeding up ocean currents. As CNN reports this morning, ocean currents now appear to be slowing down, not speeding up, due to global warming. And, remember, as CNN tells us, climate scientists predicted this all along.

[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CNN_Center_newsroom1.jpg] 

James Taylor
James Taylor
James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland's Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy. Taylor is the former managing editor (2001-2014) of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism.

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5 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent article! Thank you for having so many articles about last year’s nonsense.
    I have been following the climate fraudsters for years now. They never quit spreading their nonsense (such a perfect word!). I believe Roy Spencer had a cover on one of his books: a little man carrying a large sign saying, “ THE WORLD IS NOT ENDING”. Climate changes, and we are blessed to live in warmth and not an ice age!

  2. What was the peer reviewed scientific source of these incorrect reports? Where did this incorrect information come from?

    • Peer review is a corrupt process just like “Fact Checkers.” The process has been corrupted for decades. The Faceless Cultural Elite have corrupted the former and built the latter in order to validate their disinformation and misinformation; all the while defending against facts that expose their dishonest agenda i.e. Central Authoritarian Control over the misinformed masses.

      The information in both cases is incorrect. It is Science Fiction and manufactured by government funded purveyors of doom and gloom. Government Grant supported Dr Frankenstein’s creating Hobgoblins to frighten the unsuspecting so that CNN has fodder to scare the children, encouraging them to turn to Uncle Joe, the sex offender (but you won’t hear that on CNN Thanks to their “factcheckers”), for salvation.

      A very astute observer of human nature and politics, newsman H.L. Mencken, wrote over a century ago:
      “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
      He also observed:
      “Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.”
      Ted Turner can spread the most malicious lies with impunity. You and I, not so much.

  3. Surely an organization with an impeccable reputation for honesty and integrity, such as the Communist News Network, wouldn’t lie about climate warming.

  4. The Intergovernmental Panel was founded –
    Not a scientific body, please note –
    Whose reports were a foregone conclusion
    For which responsible nations could vote.
    ‘This gas must become a pollutant!’
    The task for the Panel was clear:
    ‘Feed Apocalypse Now to your models
    And print off the profile of Fear!’
    This ploy has proved grossly successful
    To give credit where credit is due:
    Respectable, Earth-loving persons
    Now feel bad about CO₂.
    You, too?
    Feel bad about CO₂?

    Every heat-wave is proof of the pudding,
    Every tidal-wave out on the sea;
    Whether ice-sheets are waxing or waning,
    We’re the cause of it all, you’ll agree.
    Each trip in the car burns our conscience,
    Each flight to the sun fans the flame,
    Each step that we take leaves a footprint
    Each breath that we breathe whispers, “Shame!”
    So tax, ban and bury your carbon!
    Let the wind and the sun set you free!
    The growth-rate will slow to a standstill
    Spelt s-u-s-t-a-i-n-a-b-i-l-i-t-y.’
    After me:
    Su- stai- na- bi- li- ty.

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