Climate Editors Have a Meltdown - WSJ

Climate Editors Have a Meltdown - WSJ:
"How did science reporting get so detached from the underlying science?
...a trip down memory lane seems called for.
In the 1980s, when climate alarms were first being widely sounded, reporters understood the speculative basis of computer models.
We all said to ourselves:
Well, in 30 years we’ll certainly have the data to know for sure which model forecasts are valid.
Thirty years later, the data haven’t answered the question. 
The 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, voice of climate orthodoxy, is cited for its claim, with 95% confidence, that humans are responsible for at least half the warming between 1951 and 2010.
Look closely. 
This is an estimate of the reliability of an estimate. 
It lacks the most important conjunction in science: “because”—as in “We believe X because of Y.”
Not that the IPCC fails to offer a “because” in footnotes.
It turns out this estimate is largely an estimate of how much man-made warming should have taken place if the models used to forecast future warming are broadly correct.
...“If our models are reliable, then X is true” is a perfectly valid scientific statement.
Only leaving out the prefix, as the media routinely does, makes it deceptive.
...The job has passed into hands of reporters who don’t even bother to feign interest in science—who think the magic word “consensus” is all the support they need for any climate claim they care to make..."