New York Times‘ graphic of the record global heat of 2014.
Last year was the hottest in recorded history, the New York Times (1/16/15) reported. A vitally important story, to be sure–but how was it reported?
The first quote in reporter Justin Gillis’ story comes from Stefan Rahmstorf, the head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany:
Obviously, a single year, even if it is a record, cannot tell us much about climate trends…. However, the fact that the warmest years on record are 2014, 2010 and 2005 clearly indicates that global warming has not “stopped in 1998,” as some like to falsely claim.
That’s followed by Gillis’ observation that “such claims are unlikely to go away, though”–his segue to a passage that discusses the views of climate denier John R. Christy, “known for his skepticism about the seriousness of global warming.” He “pointed out in an interview that 2014 had surpassed the other record-warm years by only a few hundredths of a degree, well within the error margin of global temperature measurements,” Gillis reported, quoting Christy:
Since the end of the 20th century, the temperature hasn’t done much…. It’s on this kind of warmish plateau.
There’s one more quote in the piece, from Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who says:
Why do we keep getting so many record-warm years?… It’s because the planet is warming. The basic issue is the long-term trend, and it is not going away.
Is this the right way or the wrong way to cover the news of the record heat? That depends. Is the purpose of an article like this to convey how open-minded the New York Times is? If so, then the piece is a success, managing to give one-third of its quotes to a proponent of a fringe theory without giving any indication that his eccentric views are virtually absent from peer-reviewed science.
If, on the other hand, the goal of a piece like this is to convey the reality of a global crisis with devastating consequences for life on Earth, I’d say it’s a failure.
When you know the Titanic is sinking, you tell everyone you meet to get into the lifeboats. You don’t spend a third of your time telling people about the crank in the bar who has a theory that the ship is unsinkable or that icebergs are never found at this latitude.
