Back in September I wrote a blog post about some record cold weather in Australia, and how it was largely overlooked by news media obsessed with global warming stories (see If Global Warming Worsens We Could Freeze). A perfect example of this media bias popped up today.

WeatherZone News published a story titled “Global warming may be behind hot NT weather“, which began:

The Bureau of Meteorology says high temperatures recorded across the Northern Territory this month may be indicative of global warming.
Average daily temperatures were 1.75 degrees above the mean for October.

As before, I’m not commenting on the validity of global warming, just the lack of balance in reporting on it. Record, or near-record, cases of below-average temperatures are happening all the time. If they get reported at all, they are treated as natural variations which don’t mean anything, and without any links being made to climate change.

Nobody suggested that temperatures up to 2 or 3 degrees below average in much of Australia in August indicated global cooling. But when we get a similar variation on the warm side of normal, affecting one state in one month, our weather agency tells us it “may be indicative of global warming”.

Some people, including many scientists, believe the global warming issue is a hoax or conspiracy, at least in part. I’m undecided, but the blatant media imbalance is enough to make me wonder if there could be a hidden agenda … and the more one-sided news stories I see, the more I wonder.