Farmers have good cause to feel persecuted with our media bias on display at Stuff.
I laid a complaint against an article by Henry Cooke of Stuff for inaccurately stating that livestock methane emissions make up roughly half of the warming that NZ’s emissions contribute to global climate change when in fact it is nowhere near that.
Henry Cooke responded to my complaint by ignoring most of it and claiming that The Greenhouse Gas Inventory using the standard measure of CO2 equivalents, which according to him “specifically focuses on warming effect” shows methane a bit below half of the country’s emissions profile.
In my complaint I had explained that if he was referring to emissions of CO2 equivalents or carbon, livestock methane contributes just 34.1% not half as he had stated. I also explained that in any case ‘carbon’ was not an accurate way to determine the impact of an emission because carbon is not a credible unit to determine warming and I quoted Andy Reisinger who said of the carbon unit it “does not measure the actual warming caused by emissions and ignores the fact that methane does not accumulate in the atmosphere in the same way as CO2”. You don’t get much more discredited than that.
So despite being provided with the scientific evidence that CO2 equivalents do not measure warming he a reporter insists it does. Talk about science deniers. Cooke then unbelievably restates his claim that methane emissions contribute “roughly half’ or as he now says ‘a bit below half’ of our carbon emissions, despite me providing the evidence that it is 34.1%..
You would have to be pretty biased against farmers and have scant regard to the truth to call 34.1% ‘roughly half’ or as he does in his response, ‘a bit below half’. Initially I thought Henry had just made a mistake of forgetting that the 42 % of carbon sourced from methane also includes non-agricultural methane or that he forgot that the 48% of carbon sourced from livestock also includes nitrous oxide, but his response indicates his complete bias and lack of objectivity in trying to argue that 34.1% is roughly half.
It is this total disregard for the truth, lack of objectivity and bias that farmers are up against in what was once a reputable media outlet. These bastards are so intent on pushing the barrow that global warming is about to bring an end to civilization and farmers are doing immense harm, that they forget they are dealing with real people with real feelings. There is no place in our media for the disdain for farmers that must be driving journalists like Henry Cooke and his editor to firstly publish a lie like that and then in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, double down and try to defend their lie. Stuff are no longer an objective media on the topic of global warming, they are just another alarmist advocacy group and as such is typically anti-farmer.
The complaint is ongoing with the Media Council set to review it next month, unless Stuff respond to my response to Cooke’s response.