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93% of WSJ Opinion Pieces Misreport Climate Change

Scott Mandia, a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College at Long Island, N.Y. has done a topline analysis (on Climate Progress) of Wall Street Journal Editorial and Op-Ed (the “Opposite Editorial” Opinion Page) coverage of climate change and finds that the paper tells the truth seven per cent of the time.

The WSJ’s defence for this performance would undoubtedly be twofold. First, the pages Mandia analysed are for opinion, not news. Second, there really ARE a couple of deluded “experts” out there who challenge the majority view on climate change: the Journal has a right and responsibility to give voice to those views.

Fair enough. But a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that the proponderance of climate scientists who are worried about global warming is 97 per cent - not seven per cent, so the Journal is a bit off the mark. And while the paper is entitled to its opinions, it is beyond irresponsible to be setting its wishful thinking forth as fact. Bullshit is still bullshit, even if it’s in an editorial.

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Last night, the president gave a speech that never directly mentioned the most pressing science-based issue of our time—global warming, climate change. I don’t like being so right in my prediction: Even I thought he’d say it once or twice at least.

At the same time, however, he announced a new national love affair with science, innovation, and clean energy, using a playbook that seems right out of the National Academy of Sciences’ now famous 2005 Rising Above the Gathering Storm report. And he capped it all off with a line of almost mythic potential: “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.”

Could it really be? And can this approach—save the climate, the country, the economy, and pretty much everything through technological innovation—deliver on its own?

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The reliably unreliable Dr. S. Fred Singer has gone from manipulating statistics for the purposes of disinformation to merely making stuff up - claiming, on the basis of no evidence whatever, that 40% of Scientists Doubt Manmade Global Warming.

Absent anything beyond Singer’s self-serving guess, this must be dismissed as hogwash. A University of Illinois survey conducted a year ago put the number of scientists convinced of humankind’s effect on global warming at between 82 and 90 per cent. A National Academy of Sciences survey reported last summer that it was closer to 97 per cent.

Singer’s egregious misrepresentation is made yet worse by being promoted by a libertarian front group called the National Association of Scholars. This name, by strange coincidence, results in the same acronym (NAS) as the National Academy of Sciences, raising the possibility that unsuspecting readers might mistake Singer’s latest craziness for an actual, credible scientific survey.

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SolveClimate’s David Sassoon reports on the EPA’s finding that climate deniers are full of hot air:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today denied 10 petitions challenging its 2009 endangerment finding which said that climate change is real, is occurring due to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, and threatens human health and the environment.

EPA found no evidence to support the claims of the petitions which assert that a conspiracy invalidates the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. On the contrary, EPA’s review of the petitions found that climate science is credible, compelling, and growing stronger.

“The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the U.S. and around the world. These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

“Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security.”

Head over to SolveClimate for the rest of this story.

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255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates, have penned a letter in Science slamming the disinformation campaign orchestrated by a small network of climate deniers that has confused the public about the real danger of climate disruption.

The scientists’ letter, published in the May 7th issue of the journal Science (subscription req’d), says:

“We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular.”

The scientists note that the fundamental science of climate change is sound, despite the extensive campaign by deniers and skeptics to confuse politicians and the general public:
 
“There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.”