by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
RightNetwork.com<\/p>\n
One of the pleasures of reading the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0is spotting the myriad ways liberal ideology shapes stories and presents as fact what is a debatable supposition. Global warming, for example, is a \u201ccrisis\u201d about which the\u00a0Times<\/em>has already made up its mind. Rather than a contested theory rife with qualifications, reservations, and counter-evidence, for the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0the notion that rising global temperatures are caused by increases in human-generated CO2 is settled science brooking no dissent.<\/p>\n A recent\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0article about the late Charles Keeling, the scientist who developed a technique for measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, illustrates how the way stories are written reinforces a narrative that owes as much to politics and ideology as it does to science. A perfect example of this phenomenon is the following paragraph from the Keeling profile:<\/p>\n But as action [to reduce CO2 emissions] began to seem more likely, the political debate intensified, with fossil-fuel industries mobilizing to fight emission-curbing measures. Climate-change contrarians increased their attack on the science, taking advantage of the Internet to distribute their views outside the usual scientific channels.<\/p>\n <\/em>Notice the biased narrative lurking within this paragraph. First, challenges to the notion that human-generated CO2 increases account for global warming aren\u2019t the result of scientists doing their job and pointing out weaknesses in a theory, or exercising prudence when making predictions about a phenomenon as complex and intricate as global climate. No, like in some Hollywood B-Movie, greedy \u201cfossil-fuel industries,\u201d putting profits ahead of people and the planet, started generating junk-science \u201cattacks\u201d in order to befuddle the scientifically illiterate masses.<\/p>\n Next, those researchers who challenge the dominant narrative are identified not as scientists but as \u201ccontrarians,\u201d a word that suggests cranks who for attention or other sinister motives reflexively oppose a consensus no matter how dangerous for the rest of us. The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter here repeats a characterization used by uber-liberal\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0columnist Paul Krugman, who in a blog posting last year spoke of \u201ccontrarianism without consequences\u201d while scolding Stephen Dubner and Stephen Levitt\u2019s\u00a0SuperFreakonomics<\/em>, a few pages of which raised some mild questions about global warming orthodoxy. Such global-warming \u201ccontrarians,\u201d moreover, rely on the unregulated Internet to promulgate their views \u201coutside the usual scientific channels.\u201d The implication is that those \u201cchannels\u201d with their lofty vetting standards and Olympian objectivity would sniff out the bad science and willful errors that go viral on the lawless web, home of \u201cpseudo-science and conspiracy theory blogs,\u201d as\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0reporter Scott Pelley put it when asked why he didn\u2019t interview global warming skeptics.<\/p>\n So according to this paragraph from the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0story, a scientific fact as unquestioned as the spherical earth orbiting the sun is attacked by evil corporations that manipulate credentially challenged contrarians who take to the Internet and bewitch the oafish public into doubting that obvious fact. Or as Al Gore put it, \u201cFifteen percent of the people believe the moon landing was staged on some movie lot and a somewhat smaller number still believe the Earth is flat. They all get together on a Saturday night and party with the global warming deniers.\u201d Now we know why, as the article frets, \u201cPolls indicate that the public has grown more doubtful about that science\u201d establishing the \u201cfact\u201d that humans are causing global warming.<\/p>\n Of course, two can play at that\u00a0ad hominem<\/em>\u00a0game. If oil-company money automatically makes global-warming skeptics suspect, how about the billions of dollars \u2014 nearly $2 billion a year just in the US \u2014 that flow to global-warming catastrophists, who also have the resources of the United Nations\u2019 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Or what about the great \u201cclean energy\u201d boondoggle, $30 billion worth in the 2009 stimulus bill? This lucre wouldn\u2019t be flowing to Gore & Co. without the apocalyptic scenarios generated by the global warming industry.<\/p>\n The worst offense of this article, however, is the suggestion that those scientists who raise questions about the climate-change consensus are \u201ccontrarians\u201d with dubious credentials. But that consensus depends on certain assumptions with vulnerabilities that should be the job of scientists to probe. For example, the bedrock assumption behind the theory of human-generated global warming is the recorded increases in CO2 over the last two centuries. And how do we know CO2 has increased? \u201cBubbles of ancient air,\u201d the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0explains, \u201ctrapped by glaciers and ice sheets have been tested, and they show that over the past 800,000 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air oscillated between roughly 200 and 300 parts per million. Just before the Industrial Revolution, the level was about 280 parts per million and had been there for several thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n That seems like a straightforward fact \u2014 unless you ask how long CO2 remains in the atmosphere, or whether the volume of CO2 trapped in ice has remained stable all those millennia and so can provide an accurate baseline.<\/p>\n As for the first question, according to Dr. Tom Segalstad, abundant research evidence suggests that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for at most 12 years. If that is true, then humans cannot possibly have pumped CO2 into the atmosphere fast enough to account for the alleged increases caused by humans. Either something other than humans is increasing CO2, or the way the gas is measured is flawed.<\/p>\n Which brings us to those \u201cbubbles of ancient\u201d air that are used to establish how much CO2 was in the atmosphere before humans started burning fossil fuels. Many scientists, including Zbigniew Jaworoski, have challenged this assumption that ice cores accurately record CO2 concentrations in ancient air. Jaworoski\u2019s research suggests that the ice is not a closed system that preserves air bubbles unchanged and keeps gas concentrations stable. Because of ice liquefying, the different solubility levels of gasses in cold water, cracks in the ice, and extreme pressure that crystallizes CO2 into a solid, CO2 in ice can be reduced. Thus the baseline alluded to in the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0article that establishes the notion of dangerously increasing CO2 is put in doubt.<\/p>\n But aren\u2019t Segalstad and Jaworoski \u201ccontrarians\u201d with suspect credentials, cranks who rely on the Internet to publicize their junk science? Segalstad is past head of the Geological Museum in the University of Oslo\u2019s Natural History Museums, an associate professor of resource and environmental geology at the University of Oslo, and was an expert reviewer for the UN\u2019s IPCC, the Nostradamus of the climate catastrophists. Jaworoski, the author of four books and nearly 300 scholarly articles, is the senior scientific advisor of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Poland. Like the other legitimate scientists profiled in Lawrence Solomon\u2019sThe Deniers<\/em>, these are serious researchers doing what scientists are supposed to do \u2014 put theories to the test before granting assent.<\/p>\n The point is not that Segalstad or Jaworoski are necessarily right. Rather, their legitimate criticisms should be taken seriously and refuted with evidence and argument, not ignored or dismissed out of hand as the \u201cjunk science\u201d of contrarians or oil-company hirelings.<\/p>\n As for the\u00a0Times<\/em>, like much of the mainstream media our presumed newspaper of record is not impartially investigating all sides of an issue in order to report the truth. If it were, it would not ignore or mischaracterize challenges to the \u201cconsensus,\u201d itself a suspicious notion in science. After all, the geocentric universe was once the \u201cconsensus\u201d challenged by \u201ccontrarians\u201d like Galileo. Rather, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u2019 reporting too often serves a political ideology, which obscures the truth by \u201cretaining only facts favorable to the thesis one is defending, even, if necessary, inventing them, and denying, omitting, or forgetting others to keep them from becoming known,\u201d as Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Revel put it. Whatever you call it, it isn\u2019t journalism.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com One of the pleasures of reading the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0is spotting the myriad ways liberal ideology shapes stories and presents as fact what is a debatable supposition. Global warming, for example, is a \u201ccrisis\u201d about which the\u00a0Timeshas already made up its mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,145],"tags":[217,291,1044,1054,527],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-14l","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/flat-earth-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":4113,"position":0},"title":"Flat-Earth Democrats","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The victims of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma had not even been counted when Democrat politicians made fools of themselves by trying to link the disaster to global warming and Republicans. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, \u201cThis is climate change. We were warned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":519,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/time-for-liberals-and-progressives-to-get-new-labels\/","url_meta":{"origin":4113,"position":1},"title":"Time for ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ to Get New Labels","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine We need to find a new label for the ideology espoused by leftist Democrats. \u201cLiberal\u201d doesn\u2019t accurately describe the party of blinkered intolerance, fanatical certainty, and an eagerness to destroy freedom in order to achieve some dubious utopia. \u201cProgressive\u201d is more historically accurate for ideas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2854,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/another-times-blowhard\/","url_meta":{"origin":4113,"position":2},"title":"Another Times Blowhard","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPageMagazine.com Every so often\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0runs an op-ed by the appropriately named Charles M. Blow. Blow\u2019s shtick is to dig up some statistical nugget and then draw all manner of portentous conclusions this data supposedly support. As one could expect, the conclusions invariably reinforce some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-brief-history-of-media-bias\/","url_meta":{"origin":4113,"position":3},"title":"A Brief History of Media Bias","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Who said that newspapers are supposed to report the news in an objective and fact-based way? by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas The revelation that the Department of Justice acquired and read the phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters does not change the obvious fact that the mainstream\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nobel-nobel\/","url_meta":{"origin":4113,"position":4},"title":"Nobel Nobel?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Al Gore's evangelical liberalism reconsidered. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Al Gore embodies a type that usually turns up in high school or university faculties, what we can call the evangelical liberal. These folks believe they have received the revealed truth about everything, and so are entitled to hector\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5461,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-passions-of-the-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":4113,"position":5},"title":"The Passions of the Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"CIA's new revelations fans the flames of \"progressive\" myths of our past by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The publication of the CIA\u2019s \u201cfamily jewels\u201d \u2014 the record of its domestic spying, hare-brained plots against Castro, and mind-control experiments, among other oddities \u2014 is sure to add fuel to that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4114,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions\/4114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}