Careerist whores and propagandists

Is this not the greatest opening paragraph ever penned in the blogosphere?

I loathe journalism as a profession: a claque of careerist whores, half-educated back-slappers and propagandists for the oligarchical lizard people who are ruining civilization. I loathe “science journalism” particularly, as they’re generally talking about something I know about, and so their numerous impostures are more obvious.

You had me at "claque of careerist whores, half-educated back-slappers and propagandists for the oligarchical lizard people who are ruining civilization".

This is a magnificent takedown of junk science journalism.  Everything is there: journalists misunderstanding the material,  journalists misattributing the authors as "NASA Scientists", journalists not understanding the difference between "NASA Scientists" and grad students studying "public policy", and journalists refusing to actually correct their hack of an article.  Yum!

I guess when someone Discovers you are a shoddy journalist, the accepted thing to do these days is doltishly double down on your error. Ahmed, of course, works for some preposterous save-the-world outfit, which apparently means he can pretend he is a journalist and doesn’t have to tell the truth about anything.

You had me at "pretend he is a journalist and doesn’t have to tell the truth about anything".  Locklin then goes on to dissect how the study developed the model that gave the sensational (and nonsensical) results.  It's detailed and damning and great fun to read.

Go read the whole delicious thing.