Sadly I think most of the reporting done by your average journalist on climate change
can be put under the 'bad science' tag, as defined by Ben Goldacre. They have bad habits of

1.only making a major headline out of anything which is controversial or sensational - I only had to Google 'bad science' and found this on the front page of this guy's blog.
2. oversimplifying everything -
The biggest problem with reporting climate change, admittedly, is the sheer complexity of the problem. You can't, in your average newspaper article, go into detail about how elevated levels of CO₂ will reduce the amount of longwave radiation escaping to space, with the knock-on effect of increasing evaporation of water vapour, which in turn traps more radiation, and will go on to affect the salinity of the oceans and god-knows-what responses their vast, slow overturning cycles will have to that, with surplus heat having funny effects on your Hadley cells, NAOs, QBOs, etc, etc, etc.

However, to say "Carbon dioxide is destroying the planet" is an unbelievable oversimplification, as well as being incredibly misleading.

Similarly, to then grab one lone paper such as the one linked above and say "Oh, we're alright then, it was just one big sham" is just as much of an oversimplification, as if all the climate scientists would take a read of that publication, mop their brows and say, "Phew! That was a close one. Oh, well, looks like we can go home early. Pub, anyone?"
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 16:41, Reply)