Where should you look for reliable information?

Climate change impact near where I live These red stringybark trees have been defoliated by increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfall related to climate change. For more information see Climate change in the Clare Valley Your own first-hand observation is one of the most reliable sources of information. What information sources are unreliable? Don't accept at face value anything in Vimeo, Twitter, Facebook or any other platform where anybody can write anything, although these platforms can be useful sources so long as you carefully consider the source and/or do some checking. Be careful about believing things you read in newspapers, particularly those produced by the Murdoch/News Limited empire; Andrew Bolt is notorious for his dishonesty. Take what you hear on commercial radio and commercial TV with a pinch of salt, they often have hidden agendas, and they chase sensationalism as much as truth. (Adelaide radio station 5AA's David Penberthy has been particularly careless in reporting.) Popular commentators on commercial radio, often known as Shock Jocks, such as Alan Jones (in Australia) are highly unreliable. Anything produced by a commercial business, corporation or company, without necessarily being false, will probably be heavily biased to make that organisation look good. Statements coming from politicians belonging to the major Australian political parties, and to several of the minor parties too (Connie Bonaros of SA Best has shamelessly tried to mislead the South Australian parliament for example), are highly unreliable. Take great care of organisations that are, or may be, aligned to a particular lobby group; in Australia anything coming from the Institute of Public Affairs will be biased toward the fossil fuel industries and the right wing of politics. Beware of misleading names such as: Australian Energy Forum and the Australian Environment Foundation. Both of these are dishonest advocates for fossil fuels and both oppose much needed action on climate change. Home Top Index What information sources are reliable? Respected peer-reviewed science journals The most reliable sources are the respected peer-reviewed science journals, but these can be difficult for the layman to understand. Google Scholar can be used to search for scholarly articles. Almost as reliable and easier to understand are the respected national and international science organisations: Internationally... IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Publications produced by the United Nations WHO (World Health Organisation) In Australia... Australian Academy of Science BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) CSIRO (Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation) In the USA... NASA (National Aeronautic and Space Administration) NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) The respected popular science magazines Also reliable are popular science magazines such as Cosmos (Australia), Scientific American (USA), and New Scientist (UK). The national broadcasters of Australia and the UK Such as the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) and BBC (British Broadcasting Commission) are generally reliable. ABC TV's Media Watch exposes poor media practice in Australia, including some in the ABC itself. The Drum on ABC TV provides generally well informed opinions and discussion on the current hot topics; it includes a lot of opinion, some of it dubious. Energy RenewEconomy can help to keep you up to date with developments in energy, renewable energy in particular. Health On anything relating to health, the AMA (Australian Medical Association), Climate and Health Alliance and Doctors for the Environment are reliable. General information In Australia, and increasingly internationally, The Conversation is a very reliable source of information on a great many subjects. It is written by academics who have a strong incentive to be careful to stick to the truth. Perhaps surprisingly, since anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, I have found Wikipedia to be remarkable reliable. Of the commercial newspapers I've found the local papers to be generally reliable and among the nationals The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald seem to be as reliable as any in Australia. Checking may be required. Google news alerts are very useful in keeping track of particular subjects; checking veracity of the items that turn up is required. I have found The Australia Institute to be reliable. Of Australian politicians I've found independent Andrew Wilkie to be honest and courageous. Several other independents are honest and useful sources. The Australian Greens are more likely to be speaking truth than members of any other Australian political party. I have found Australian federal Centre Alliance MPs Rebekha Sharkie and Rex Patrick to be reliable. Domain name As explained in an article by Renee Morrison dated 2020/02/12 in The Conversation: Teaching students to choose websites based on domain name extensions can also help ensure they are in charge, not the search engine. The easily purchasable “.com”, for example, denotes a commercial site while information on websites with a “.gov”(government) or “.edu” (education) domain name extension better assure quality information. Home Top Index Checking the reliability of sources SourceWatch; run by The Center for Media and Democracy can be used to check the reliability of a great many sites on the internet. Desmog: 'Clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science' is useful for exposing the lies of the fossil fuel industry and their supporters on the internet. Many other of the organisations that I've listed under the reliable information sources, above, can be useful for checking. General comments While random postings on the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo cannot be trusted in themselves I find a great many postings from Facebook friends (also Twitter, but I don't use Twitter much) to be very valuable sources of information. Veracity checking can be required. I try to keep my own Web pages, comagecontra, as accurate and reliable as possible. I'd appreciate being informed of any errors (with supporting evidence). Home Top Index   This section added 2021/11/10 Search engines I have recently (mid to late 2021) found that Google Search misses many of my Internet pages; if it is incapable of finding my pages, even those that have been in place for a number of months, how many other pages does Google Search fail to find? Yandex has performed much better than Google Search in the tests I have done. I have written more on this question on another page on this site.