Via Climate Progress (3/16/10), Scientific American guest blogger John Horgan (3/16/10) makes a disturbing claim:
Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity.
Now, reviews of climate research literature show universal support for the notion that human-caused climate change is happening (Nature, 12/3/04), and surveys of climate scientists find the same unanimity (Science Daily, 1/19/09). Major scientific organizations around the world have endorsed the consensus of the climate research field, and have expressed alarm at the dangers to humanity posed by climate change.
So if a majority of the staff of Science Times nonetheless doubts that human-caused climate change is a real danger, that means one of two things: Either the journalists at one of the nation’s most visible sources of science news consider scientists to be a dubious lot who may well not know what they’re talking about, or those journalists have not been paying attention to what the scientists are saying. Either way, it’s troubling.
And the response by the New York Times science editor Laura Chang in the comments section was hardly reassuring:
I must say your sentence about the science staff doesn’t make sense. There are more than 20 people on the Science Desk of the Times, and no one has ever taken a poll of their positions on human-induced global warming. As far as I know, everyone here who covers climate–including our neighbors in the environment pod, who provide the bulk of this coverage these days–keeps an open mind about the evidence.
If “keeps an open mind” means what it usually does, then the people who cover climate for the New York Times think the jury is still out on whether climate scientists should be believed when they say humans are causing a global climate disaster. Talk about your serious threats to humanity.
Isn’t it interesting what the NYT, and the corpress in general, choose to “keep an open mind” on?
Doubts about scientifically proven climate change?
Check.
The moral necessity of opposing war, poverty, prejudice and oppression?
Not so much.
Just wait–soon, because of the recent victories of the Texas Board of Education and their ilk, the Some-Science Times boys and girls will be “keeping an open mind” on evolution by natural selection as well. The corpress is a rather primitive amoeba-like organism with chemical sensors that allow it to move towards the aromas of money and power, which it interprets as “access”–and away from anything that’s “controversial” within the Beltway and corporate elites. It is becoming politically inconvenient to defend good climate science because of the frothing rage of the fossil-fuel industry, so all of a sudden the little journaloid invertebrates at the Times become climate skeptics.
Can the NY Times please publish the names and the credentials (education) of their people on the Science Desk.
Including Laura Chang.
Also, and especially their political affiliations (R or D or ??) ( My bet is that the great majority of the ’20’ and especially Laura Chang are conservative republicans and protectors of energy establishment)…
and, of course, never to be revealed. their investments in the fossil fuel and gas industries.
Keeping an ‘open mind’ ??? Let’s open up the facts of economic and political bias. Let’s have Laura Chang, the scientific editor ‘open up’ about her politics and her economic affiliations.
It is horrific to me that people, for their current economic and political advantage, will take stands and spread information or NOT spread information that may create an infernal world for their offspring or other human beings in generations to come. How can one keep an ‘open mind’ about such potential dangers? If we are wrong in our ‘open mind’ about climate change, what are the costs to future generations including our own offspring? If we are Wrong about ‘hyping climate change’ what are the costs – a few million bucks lost to carbon coal producers and oil companies – and less ‘positive regard’ the NYT ‘scientific editor and the 20 scientists -from their corporate benefactors???
Which is the better ‘wrong position’ to be in? Of course, it must be to protect one’s reputation with the energy company benefactors. Not so , Laura Chang???
Perhaps their position, aside from protecting the fossil industries’ profits, comes from being let in on the plain-sight secret of “Unilateral Geoengineering” as the Council on Foreign Relations calls it. The premise is that it’s too expensive to update our energy systems to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It would be much cheaper (and possibly effective) to spew sunlight-scattering aerosols from jets, as proposed by Edward Teller, to cool the planet. Quick fix-the world the American way. Like shorcuts to justice, it’s not about morality but expedience (and profit). Lying to the public, cashing in on reputations, that’s what the modern economy is about.
The weather is already screwy. But if it doesn’t seem to get much warmer soon, they will say they are right.
See how serious these guys are: http://www.cfr.org/project/1364/geoengineering.html
If the Paper of Record doesn’t say it’s happening, it isn’t. You can take that to the bank. Do not look up!
Yes they are skeptical, of Evolution, the age of the earth, global climate change and even that helping everyone is good. How can they be trusted in something so important? It is like saying that Evolution isn’t 100% proven so we wait till it is so. Of course science doesn’t work that way, only religion does. So they wait while they continue their destructive ways, making a fortune as the planet dies some more. Oh joy! Unfortunately we are all being dragged down with them. But the propaganda must go on or people would find out what is true and want something done about it before it is too late. It may just be but we can still fix ourselves on it & keep it from getting any worse can’t we?
I was once accused of not having an open mind after exposing (once again) the inanity of creationism to a fundamentalist Christian. In response, I provided him with a very specific set of empirical and logical conditions under which I would abandon my commitment to contemporary evolutionary theory. Then I asked him for a similar set of empirical and logical conditions that would lead him to give up his belief in God. He indicated that there were and could be no such set of conditions.
It might be interesting to ask the NYT experts on contemporary meteorology the empirical and explanatory conditions under which they would accept the notion that human behavior is contributing to climate change. This exercise might shed light on what the HYT counts as having an â┚¬Ã…“open mind.â┚¬Ã‚ Might the community of NYT doubters and their corporate handlers be concerned where a general acceptance of the evidence of humanities contribution to climate change might lead? Might people to begin wondering about why it is happening at all? Might people begin to understand that the devastation of the planets ecology is a direct result of need of the capitalist system to expand without bound?
I’ll bet the NYT’s Science Times section has only three staff members: the conservative boss, the independent hothead and the kissass.
Deniers and skeptics in general have trouble answering the question of what it would take to change their minds. On the other hand, it takes very little to convince most of them that the climate scientists are in a conspiracy, although the nature of the conspiracy can be anything from scientists trying to get more funding for their work to conspiring with the U.N. to take over the world and subjugate the population. This points to bias, of course, not open-mindedness.
It is also very telling that for an issue that has nothing to do with politics, the more conservative a person is, the more likely he is to think global warming is a hoax. If the NYT people are truly open minded, that is a good thing. But if they are using this as an excuse to “balance” good science with political propaganda, which is usually what news organizations mean by open mindedness these days, it is despicable. This issue is so important that to distort the scientific truth in this way is inexcusable.
Looks like plenty of open minds here.
That’s a REAL problem! A Chekist political officer should be placed in the NYT editorial offices to ensure the ideological purity of its reporting!