The Washington Post editorial page is stepping forward to send a message: Climate change is real, the crisis is urgent, and it’s time to act. But we shouldn’t forget what the paper has done to make addressing climate change more difficult—by regularly publishing climate deniers.
Titled “A Climate for Change,” the Post series started in yesterday’s edition (8/25/14) with the paper making the point that the “national debate on climate change has devolved.” While there was at one point hope that politicians would accept the science and move towards some real solutions, “a faction that rejects the science of global warming dragged the GOP into irresponsible head-in-the-sand-ism.” All the while, the paper says, the “scientists’ warnings have become more dire.” So the Post explains:
The shape of the climate debate now and through the 2016 election is important. In the coming days we aim to contribute to that debate with a brief series of editorials.
The piece in today’s print edition (8/26/14) includes the subhead, “The Science Is Clear: Humans Have Caused Climate Change.” It tells readers that political leaders “remain divided on the need to curb greenhouse emissions,” which is simply “mind-boggling” to “mainstream scientists.”
The Post explains what exactly is clear—the planet is indeed warming, and the climate crisis is caused by human activity—and says that “most reasonable climate skeptics accept these findings.”
The Washington Post has done its part for climate discussion devolution (cc photo: David Shankman)
Except for some of the people the Post pays to write columns.
Some of the most high-profile media climate deniers—George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Robert Samuelson–are all Post columnists who have done their part to contribute to the “shape of the climate debate.” Krauthammer most recently (2/20/14) mocked the idea that the science of climate change was “settled,” and wrote that scientists who warn of the disastrous effects of climate change are “white-coated propagandists.” Krauthammer went on TV this year to mock climate change science as “superstition.”
Will has a long record of distorting climate science; in 2009 he wrote that warming was “allegedly occurring,” and in a 2012 TV appearance scoffed that people were confusing warming for a hot summer: “Get over it.”
Samuelson used to pooh-pooh climate change: “It’s politically incorrect to question whether this is a serious problem that serious people ought to take seriously,” he wrote in the 1990s (7/9/97), and he praised George W. Bush for rejecting the Kyoto accords (6/21/01). Lately (5/11/14) he seems more equivocal: “There’s enormous uncertainty about how much warming will occur, what changes (for good or ill) it will bring and how easily (or not) we can adapt. (He seems to have become one of those “reasonable climate skeptics” the Post editorialists were referring to.)
In 2009 (12/9/09), the paper’s op-ed page rather famously turned to noted climate expert Sarah Palin for a piece about how “we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes.”
So if this series is a sign that the Washington Post has truly shifted on climate change, that’s a good thing. But if we’re to take them seriously about “the shape of the climate debate,” perhaps they would like to offer some thoughts about what their paper’s columnists have done to warp that discussion. Whatever the case, the Post isn’t going to stop running anti-science op-eds. As editorial page editor Fred Hiatt told Joe Strupp of Media Matters (8/26/14), “I’m more inclined to take op-eds that challenge our editorials than just kind of join the chorus.”
Perahaps they were channeling the spirit of Edward Teller; I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”…..
Just incredibly irresponsible. What else is new?
Fred Hiatt’s position, “I’m more inclined to take op-eds that challenge our editorials than just kind of join the chorus,” is very defensible and promotes public discourse. However, as a publishing scientist, I would suggest that any op-ed piece that is contrary to an established scientific consensus be accompanied by an invited op-ed piece from mainstream scientists. Otherwise, how is the public to put the dissenting op-ed piece into context?
Scientific debates take place in peer-reviewed journals and in legitimate scientific conferences, fora with which the public has no direct experience. Yet the publication of an op-ed piece in a major newspaper that conflicts with mainstream science gives the appearance of a legitimate scientific debate that does not exist in scholarly venues.
The most prominent American climate change denier is George Will, who has railed against it for years in Newsweek, in his WAPO column, on NBC’s Meet the Press, and on Fox News.
His Newsweek column of October 13, 2007, dismissed global warming scientists as “zealots” promulgating “loopiness” and “climate porn,” and as scientific evidence of global warming has grown, he has not changed his view.
On an April 27, 2014, segment of The Daily Caller, he said “Global warming is socialism by the back door. I mean, the whole point of global warming is it is a rationalization for progressives to do what progressives want to do, which is concentrate more and more power in Washington, more and more Washington power in the executive branch, more and more executive branch power in independent czars and agencies, to micromanage the lives of the American people.”
On a Fox News Panel of May 6, 2014, Will questioned a study stating that 97.1 percent of scientific papers taking a position on anthropogenic climate change had endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming, saying: “Where did that figure come from? They pluck these things from the ether. I do not.”
That’s because Will never provides scientific evidence. His statements on global warming are invariably ad hominem attacks on those who have studied the subject and have knowledge of it. His writing on the subject is a measure of how much the Washington Post has degenerated in recent years.
I think the word “devolve” is being used incorrectly. Devolve has nothing to do with evolution; the word “evolution” does not have an antonym.
Mirriam-Webster says that “devolve” means to “transfer or delegate (power) to a lower level, especially from central government to local or regional administration.”
The WP could easily put a warning label above George (rape is a coveted status) Will’s columns.
“The following global warming denying editorial is being published only as an example of the kind of crap these fiends come up with”
There was an incident a year ago with the Chinese Science Academy. They published an example of Heartland Institutes global warming denier crap, and to this day Heartland over objects from the Academy still is trying to say the Academy agreed with them by publishing it.
padremellyrn, I think you have Teller confused with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was the person who quoted the Bhagavad Gita after the Trinity A-bomb test.
Confusing Oppenheimer with Teller is quite extraordinary.
Oppenheimer was terrified by the prospects of atomic war.
Teller want to use nukes to blow out a warm water harbor near Point Hope, in the Chukchi Sea. “The Firecracker Boys” by Dan O’Neill documented that extremely well.
That Will would publish on the Daily Caller site speaks to his lack of integrity. It’s the equivalent of Stormfront, without the overt white supremacism. It was the odious outlet for the fake “Dominican prostitute” attacks on Robert Menendez two years ago.
Heartland is the Koch brothers’ “Denial central,” part of their 100 or so propaganda factories in their State Policy Network. They all manufacture bullshit and shame on the papers that run it. As with the Chinese Academy, the producers of this nonsense then use the publication to claim legitimacy.
She doesn’t know that weather is not the same as climate.
The American Heritage Dictionary gives “to degenerate or deteriorate gradually” as a second definition for the intransitive form of “devolve.”
The quote came from Oppenheimer, but he should have attributed it to the avatar Krishna rather than Vishnu.
American Heritage Dictionary does seem to include popular word usage, yes. It was my favorite dictionary growing up, easy to use and rather complete, with examples, and thesaurus (IIRC).
However, M-W is the more traditional, authoritative source. I guess it just depends on which school of thought one adheres to.
Ah the celebrated American journalistic principle of objectivity: always two sides to a story, even one with only a right, a truthful side. George Will is a kook, a liar, or a propagandist. He knows as well as anyone who pays the slightest attention that power is and forever will be on Wall Street. To suggest the Washington power elite does the bidding of progressives and other democrats, small d, is absurd to the point of being unmentionable. Will ought to know that it is better to intuit where one does not have to deduce. Isn’t hypothesis the beginning of science? Will isn’t worth taking serious except that his ilk are propelling all of us toward apocalypse.
If you really are for truth in journalism then why are you complaining about both sides being able to speak?
As ascientist I have reviewed the evidence. THat is the only way to work out what is going on
Science is never ‘settled’ and nor can it ever be
What if humans have made a mistake?
To understand what drives the climate (Clue, its something to do with the sun and solar system) then watch the documentary by Prof Svensmark. If you are really interested in the truth then try to understand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMTPF1blpQ
The Cloud Mystery