Media Failure: How Bad Journalism Created the “Mini Ice Age”

The media screwed up again.

First, the facts: global temperatures are rising, and research shows that while the Sun may soon slow that rise, climate change remains a reality — and a threat. But you wouldn’t learn that by reading recent news coverage.

Here’s a sample of actual headlines from the past few days:

• “’Mini ice age’ coming in next fifteen years, new model of the Sun’s cycle shows.”
• “Earth heading for ‘mini ice age’ within 15 years.”
• “Is a mini ICE AGE on the way? Scientists warn the sun will ‘go to sleep’ in 2030 and could cause temperatures to plummet.”

Holy ice age, Batman! Will we soon have to drill through glaciers to get out of the driveway each morning? Have scientists been fibbing about this climate change thing? No, no, no, no, no. Put simply, these headlines aren’t true (more on that below).

Of course, climate deniers have jumped on this story:

You’ll find similar sentiments from everyday people in comments sections on these articles. But this new study doesn’t prove climate science wrong. It doesn’t even prove that we’re nearing a mini ice age.

The real failure isn’t with science — it’s with the media.

Not every news outlet failed, but enough — ranging from British tabloids to ostensibly science-focused sites — did. Offenders include The Telegraph, the Daily Mail (of course), Haaretz, MarketWatch, I Fucking Love Science, ScienceAlert, and Wired. That’s a hefty enough list to make the Internet rounds and confuse tons of people.

But how, exactly, did the media fail?

Start from step one. These articles cover a presentation by Dr. Valentina Zharkova on her research team’s latest project: a new model of the Sun’s solar cycle. The model predicts that by 2030, the Sun’s magnetic waves will align like they did during the Maunder Minimum, a time several hundred years ago when solar activity was low and sunspots were rare.

Cool. No issue so far. The problem, though, is simple: these news articles proclaim a coming “mini ice age” when the research they’re covering simply doesn’t say that. Zharkova’s study predicts solar change, not climate change.

These articles forecast a “mini ice age” when the research they’re covering simply doesn’t predict that.

Yes, during the Maunder Minimum, Earth got colder. England’s River Thames froze over. Arctic sea ice crawled south. But this mini ice age had many causes: given where other climate variables stood, a drop in solar activity chilled parts of the world.

Those other variables (volcanic eruptions, carbon emissions, etc.) matter. If they change, then falling solar activity — even a decrease on par with the Maunder Minimum — won’t necessarily result in another mini ice age. If I drop an ice cube in a glass of lukewarm water, the water might cool. If I plop that same ice cube in a pot of boiling water, the cube won’t have any effect — spoiler alert: it will melt — because the other variables will have changed.

Solar cycles alone can’t predict temperature. To do that, scientists must estimate how predicted solar activity will interact with other parts of the climate. But, according to Zharkova, the researchers “didn’t do that estimation.”

That’s the problem: If the researchers didn’t do that estimation, then journalists have no basis to claim that we’re headed for a new ice age. Reporters made stuff up. The media failed.

Zharkova’s study predicts solar change, not climate change.

It gets worse.

These journalists didn’t just make stuff up. They made stuff up that directly contradicts work that scientists have already done on this question — work that many reporters wrote about just three weeks ago. A paper in Nature Communications analyzed how climate will likely respond if solar activity falls to Maunder Minimum levels. So, can I order fries to go with the new ice age?

Nope. It won’t happen. A big solar minimum would pull temps down by around 0.13°C from where they’d otherwise be, the Nature Communications study explains. That’s tiny compared to the expected 2°C to 6°C global temperature rise — a rise caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

The study states that “this offsets or delays the global warming trend by ~2 years.” A mere two years. No ice age: global warming will briefly, barely stumble — then charge ahead again.

Bad media coverage of climate studies constitutes libel against humanity’s future.

Why should we care that prominent news outlets got Dr. Zharkova’s solar cycle study so wrong? Because — besides the truth that journalists ought to tell the truth — climate misinformation actively harms public discourse, further hindering efforts to address climate change.

People are already confused enough about climate change, and falsely forecasting a mini ice age will only confuse folks further, in turn bolstering anti-science activists who claim that climate change is fake. Experts agree that climate change is happening and that it’s dangerous, so it’s no stretch to say that bad media coverage of Zharkova’s study constitutes libel against humanity’s future.

These reporters should go back to Journalism 101 — now. Two basic steps could have prevented this widespread failure:

1. Put the piece in context. Claims of an impending ice age seem to contradict predictions of global warming, and since global warming has long been a big story, journalists covering Zharkova’s paper should have investigated (by talking to Real Scientists™) how the two phenomena might interact — you know, dig around to get to the bottom of the story, an odd activity once called “reporting.” Reporters owe readers the full story.
2. INTERVIEW A SCIENTIST WHO WASN’T INVOLVED IN THE STUDY. Science journalism without second opinions is like plumbing without a wrench. (I’ll even throw in an unsolicited tip for shoddy journalists looking to rewrite their “mini ice age” articles: since you want to write about the climate implications of Zharkova’s study, you might consider interviewing a scientist who studies climate.)

To be fair to an ambiguous term like “the media,” not everyone ran atrocious stories on this. The Washington Post and Slate both did an excellent job — it’s a pleasure to read such solid reporting (the HotWhopper blog also posted good analysis).

Bad climate news coverage plagues our public discussion of climate change, and long has. In the 70s, most scientists and scientific studies predicted global warming. But the media often focused on sensationalist “coming ice age” stories, a worst practice that left many people confused to this day.

tl;dr The media outlets that ran these sensationalist stories can have the “Abjectly Terrible Reporting” award that I just made up (that award is just as real as the “mini ice age”).

There’s no excuse for adults to do their job this poorly.