{"id":15334,"date":"2017-04-29T08:20:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-29T12:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15334"},"modified":"2017-04-29T08:20:59","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T12:20:59","slug":"top-stories-in-his-debut-as-a-times-op-ed-columnist-bret-stephens-says-reasonable-people-can-be-skeptical-about-the-dangers-of-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/top-stories-in-his-debut-as-a-times-op-ed-columnist-bret-stephens-says-reasonable-people-can-be-skeptical-about-the-dangers-of-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"TOP STORIES “In his debut as a Times Op-Ed columnist, Bret Stephens says reasonable people can be skeptical about the dangers of climate change”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

… oh well,\u00a0I guess that’s true and I can verify it by the fact that there are reasonable people who believe that white people are more intelligent than other people, that the earth is or was at some time flat, that the place of women is in the kitchen because they are obviously less intelligent than men, that Darwin was obviously wrong as man cannot descend from a monkey, that he was also probably a crypto-communist, oh yes many reasonable people have reasonably believed any or all of this, and, as Nicole hearing me loudly respond in these terms to the headline in\u00a0the NYT (that is now the title of this little rant-post), Nicole adds yes, and of course many reasonable people believe in\u00a0god.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as obviously unreasonable people, we believe that the New York Times aka the “newspaper of record” made a grave mistake (or maybe just revealed its true color) by hiring yet another snide white male (just check the list of the “opinion” writers at the Times), and this time a reactionary racist climate-change denier, and acting on this reasonable analysis probably seen as an unreasonable belief by some, we cancelled our subscription.<\/p>\n

And it looks like we are not the only ones to have done so, as reported in this article on DesmogBlog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Climate Scientists Cancelling Their New York Times Subscription Over Hiring of Climate Denialist Bret Stephens<\/h3>\n
\n
\n

By Graham Readfearn<\/a><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<\/article>\n

\u00a0A New York Times defence of its hiring of a climate science denialist as a leading columnist is pushing high-profile climate scientists to cancel their\u00a0subscriptions.<\/p>\n

Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, is the latest scientist to write publicly to the New York Times detailing his reasons for cancelling their\u00a0subscriptions.<\/p>\n

The NYT<\/span> has hired former Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens<\/a> as a writer and deputy editorial page\u00a0editor.<\/p>\n

Stephens wrote several columns while at the WSJ<\/span> disparaging climate science and climate scientists, which he has collectively described as a \u201creligion\u201d while claiming rising temeperatures may be\u00a0natural.<\/p>\n

The NYT<\/span> has been defending its decision publicly<\/a>, saying that \u201cmillions of people\u201d agree with Stephens on climate science and just because their readers don\u2019t like his opinions, that doesn\u2019t mean they shouldn\u2019t be\u00a0heard.<\/p>\n

But the NYT<\/span> defence has angered\u00a0scientists.<\/p>\n

In his letter, published in full below, Rahmstorf accused the NYT<\/span> of \u201cunbearable hypocrisy\u201d for its hiring of Stephens while running a marketing campaign based on \u201ctruth\u201d. Rahmstorf has said he will be giving his money to ClimateFeedback<\/a>, an online project where climate scientists check and rate the scientific credibility of media\u00a0articles.<\/p>\n

Wrote Rahmstorf: \u201cThe Times has denounced the critics of its decision as \u201cleft-leaning\u201d. This is an insult to me and was the final straw to cancel my subscription. There is no left-leaning or right-leaning climate science, just as there is no republican or democrat theory of gravity. I have several good climate scientist friends who have been lifelong republicans. Their understanding of climate change does not differ from mine, because it is informed by the\u00a0evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rahmstorf said Stephens was guilty of repeating falsehoods spread by fossil-fuel funded\u00a0groups.<\/p>\n

Stephens has also been defending his position, telling Vox<\/a> that he was \u201cnot a climate denier\u201d but he still had doubts about whether a warming trend would\u00a0continue.<\/p>\n

After learning of the hiring of Stephens, climate scientist Professor Michael Mann, of Penn State University, had initially given the New York Times some breathing\u00a0space.<\/p>\n

But he later took to Twitter<\/a> to say that the NYT<\/span>\u2019s subsequent defence of the controversial hire had pushed him to cancel his\u00a0subscription.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>The @NYT<\/span>imes hiring of climate denier didn’t lead me to cancel subscription. Public editor’s offensive response did,\u201d wrote\u00a0Mann.<\/p>\n

Professor Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institute for Science, was one of the first to publicly cancelled his NYT<\/span> subscription<\/a>, saying it was a \u201csad day for the Gray Lady\u201d when it decided to give away valuable column inches to a writer who had shown a \u201cwanton disregard for the\u00a0truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others have been using a Twitter hashtag #showyourcancellation to show they have pulled their subscription money from the NYT<\/span>, although the newspaper has claimed only a few people had actually\u00a0cancelled.<\/p>\n

An online petition calling for the NYT<\/span> to rescind its offer to hire Stephens<\/a> has now gained almost 25,000 signatures in the last seven\u00a0days.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Please join us in calling on The New York Times to rescind its offer to Bret Stephens and in his place hire a columnist committed to advancing his political position without using lies to support his argument,\u201d says the\u00a0petition.<\/p>\n

Read Professor Stefan Rahmstorf\u2019s letter to the New York\u00a0Times.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

To the executive editor, The New York\u00a0Times<\/p>\n

27 April 2017, via\u00a0email<\/p>\n

Dear\u00a0editor,<\/p>\n

I am a climate researcher, professor for physics of the oceans and have worked for eight years as advisor to the German government on global change issues. I regret to have to tell you that hereby I cancel my subscription to the New York Times in the wake of you hiring columnist Bret Stephens. Let me explain my\u00a0reasons.<\/p>\n

When Stephens was hired I wrote to you in protest about his spreading of untruths about climate change, saying \u201cI enjoy reading different opinions from my own, but this is not a matter of different opinions.\u201d I did not cancel then but decided to wait and\u00a0see.<\/p>\n

However, the subsequent public defense by the New York Times of the hiring of Stephens has convinced me that the problem at the Times goes much deeper than a single error of judgement. It concerns its attitude towards seeking the\u00a0truth.<\/p>\n

The Times argued that \u201cmillions agree with Stephens\u201d. It made me wonder what\u2019s next \u2013 when are you hiring a columnist claiming that the sun and the stars revolve around the Earth, because millions agree with\u00a0that?<\/p>\n

My heroes are Copernicus, Galilei and Kepler, who sought the scientific truth based on observational evidence and defended it against the powerful authority of the church in Rome, at great personal\u00a0cost.<\/p>\n

Had the New York Times existed then \u2013 would you have seen it as part of your mission to insult and denigrate these scientists, as Stephens has done with climate\u00a0scientists?<\/p>\n

The Times has denounced the critics of its decision as \u201cleft-leaning\u201d. This is an insult to me and was the final straw to cancel my subscription. There is no left-leaning or right-leaning climate science, just as there is no republican or democrat theory of gravity. I have several good climate scientist friends who have been lifelong republicans. Their understanding of climate change does not differ from mine, because it is informed by the\u00a0evidence.<\/p>\n

Quite unlike Stephens\u2019 views on climate change, which run counter to all evidence. He is simply repeating falsehoods spread by various \u201cthink tanks\u201d funded by the fossil fuel\u00a0industry.<\/p>\n

In December 2015, Stephens called global warming \u201cimperceptible\u201d and the Paris climate summit a \u201cmeeting to combat a notional enemy in the same place where a real enemy just inflicted so much mortal damage\u201d. My colleagues and I have analysed 150,000 temperature time series from around the world, finding that monthly heat records occur five times more often now as a result of global warming than in an unchanging climate (Coumou et al, published in Climatic Change\u00a02013).<\/p>\n

One of those record-hot months was August 2003 in western Europe. 70,000 people died due to this heat wave. Was global warming \u201cimperceptible\u201d to these people and the ones they left behind? On 15 August 2003, the New York Times reported: \u201cSo many bodies were delivered in recent weeks to the Paris morgue that refrigerated tents had to be erected outside the city to accommodate them all.\u201d Was that just a \u201cnotional\u201d\u00a0problem?<\/p>\n

Stephens doubts that global warming will continue, claiming that in hundred years \u201ctemperatures will be about the same\u201d. That is a shockingly ignorant statement, ignoring over a century of climate science. Our emissions increase the level of CO2<\/span> in the atmosphere, it is higher now than in at least 3 million years. CO2<\/span> is a greenhouse gas, as demonstrated first in the year 1859 by physicist John Tyndall. CO2<\/span> traps heat \u2013 more CO2<\/span> means a warmer climate. That is basic physics, borne out by the history of climate. Denying these well-established facts is about as smart as claiming the Earth is flat, and best left to cranks, ideologues and fossil fuel\u00a0lobbyists.<\/p>\n

Stephens has claimed that \u201cin the 1970s we were supposed to believe in global cooling.\u201d That\u2019s an age-old climate denier myth. It would have cost Stephens just 60 seconds with Google to find out it is wrong. (Try and google \u201cDid scientists predict an ice age in the 1970s\u201d.) But Stephens is clearly not interested in evidence or seeking the truth about\u00a0matters.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, you sent me an email with the subject: \u201cThe truth is more important now than ever.\u201d It made me cringe seeing this in my inbox. It said \u201cthank you for supporting news without fear or favor.\u201d The hypocrisy of that is unbearable, and I will support your newspaper no more. Instead, I will give the money to\u00a0ClimateFeedback.org<\/a>, a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage. It is much better invested\u00a0there.<\/p>\n

Best\u00a0regards,<\/p>\n

Prof. Stefan\u00a0Rahmstorf<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… oh well,\u00a0I guess that’s true and I can verify it by the fact that there are reasonable people who believe that white people are more intelligent than other people, that the earth is...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,31,61],"tags":[1926,1928,706],"class_list":["post-15334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-pollution","category-climate-change","category-journalism","tag-bret-stephens","tag-stefan-rahmstorf","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15334"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15341,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15334\/revisions\/15341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}