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Over and over again, I am struck with the strange idea that most of the people writing these stories don't really know what they are talking about.

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect, created by author Michael Crichton:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward — reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

I've lost enough trust in journalism that I don't suffer from this amnesia effect... Which is why I always suggest going to the source material.

This is ESPECIALLY true in science reporting. Typical science goes like this:

• Scientist publishes a peer-reviewed paper discussing some very technical and previously unknown interaction. Often the actual article name will have some arcane and complex title like "Androgenetic alopecia: identification of four genetic risk loci and evidence for the contribution of WNT signaling to its etiology." It's full of greek math symbols and multi-syllable science words, so nobody outside of other scientists ever actually read it. 
• The journal it is published in pitches it in press releases discussing "Scientists find new genetic links to male-pattern baldness." The press release, already by nature dumbed-down, probably over-sells anything in the paper in order to get those journalists to notice it. As such, it probably already has introduced errors or other misrepresentations of the source material.
• Journalists [who don't understand and haven't read the paper] write about it based entirely on the press release, while probably interjecting their own errors and misrepresentations because they either didn't understand it or want to make the story more "sexy".
• Headline writers [not the journalist] create a headline that's even "sexier" than the story warrants in order to make you want to click on it, often times creating a headline that bears little resemblance to the meat of the story.
• Your average reader sees the headline and forms a judgement based on either the headline, or if [and this is rare IMHO] they clicked through, on the first paragraph of the story because they didn't read further.

But along the way, it's made a lot of money for the scientists [grants / tenure / academic positions], the journals [who charge an arm and a leg for subscriptions], the journalists [who suddenly are "respected science journalists" despite not studying science since 10th grade biology], and the media [who sell ads that don't give a crap if you read the story, just whether you click on it]. 

Hmmmm... I guess I'm definitely a cynic, huh?

I gave an interview to a Barron's reporter recently.  He was pretty well informed on this rather obscure practice in our financial services  marketplace. 

  While he certainly had a POV he demonstrated his skills as a quality reporter.    I've read his work before it's pretty solid. I'll be curious to see if he shoots this topic straight. 

Often, however, the mistakes made are on not having a proper background in the subject, making half assed assumptions based on bias.  It's very irritating to talk to reporters who operate this way.  They've already written the story before they source a single thing. 

I definitely just ignore news sites that I have read a bad story or two from. Generally, I tend to ignore the national sources that try to cover everything. The problem is that's what the average American reads / watches / listens to, and those sites / channels / radio stations tend to be particularly politicized.

I'll readily admit I don't know much about the science behind climate change, but the experts say it's happening, and from what I can tell, I think it is, too, with the rise of natural disasters throughout much of the world. Even if there isn't climate change, I'd argue it still makes sense (or will in the near future) on economics alone to transition to a primarily renewably powered grid and electrify (or otherwise decarbonize with alternative fuels like hydrogen) most sources of energy demand (transportation and heating in particular).

don't believe everything you read on Facebook

I'm not sure I would believe anything from Facebook at this point, though I only base that on what I've heard, since I quit it back around the time I graduated from college, and obviously it's gone downhill.... Even some of the stuff I see on LinkedIn is occasionally wrong or misleading at best.

NASA fudges data

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/07/the-magic-wand-of-fudging-produces-global-warming.php

The correlation with major weather events and climate change is a bit sketchy from what I can discern.  For example, the oft cited hurricane thing is contradicted by the ACE measurements year over year (Accumulated Cyclonic Energy), though hurricanes may be moving slower now and dropping more water over a specific area.  Strength and frequency are not up.

I can't make much of drought and flood information either.  We experience those "routinely", perhaps now it's more frequent, hard to tell.  Last year here was a fairly cool summer and this year has already been pretty hot, hotter than the highest T last year.  Does that mean anything?  It's weather.

We are about to need some rain.  

We often get a nice thunderstorm with 20 minutes of rain around 5 PM.  It has been not that humid of late so that has not happened.  Today is pretty hot and dry.  I went out by the pool just to walk around after visiting the gym.  Full sun, it's hot.

Things are not parched but they are starting to be dry.