New York Times has triggered intolerant deep greens across the USA, by hiring a columnist who is not completely certain we face inevitable eco-doom.
Climate of Complete Certainty
This is Bret Stephens’s first column.
When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God.
But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.
— An old Jew of Galicia
In the final stretch of last year’s presidential race, Hillary Clinton and her team thought they were, if not 100 percent right, then very close.
Right on the merits. Confident in their methods. Sure of their chances. When Bill Clinton suggested to his wife’s advisers that, considering Brexit, they might be underestimating the strength of the populist tide, the campaign manager, Robby Mook, had a bulletproof answer: The data run counter to your anecdotes.
That detail comes from “Shattered,” Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s compulsively readable account of Clinton’s 2016 train wreck. Mook belonged to a new breed of political technologists with little time for retail campaigning and limitless faith in the power of models and algorithms to minimize uncertainty and all but predict the future.
…
With me so far? Good. Let’s turn to climate change.
Last October, the Pew Research Center published a survey on the politics of climate change. Among its findings: Just 36 percent of Americans care “a great deal” about the subject. Despite 30 years of efforts by scientists, politicians and activists to raise the alarm, nearly two-thirds of Americans are either indifferent to or only somewhat bothered by the prospect of planetary calamity.
Why? The science is settled. The threat is clear. Isn’t this one instance, at least, where 100 percent of the truth resides on one side of the argument?
Well, not entirely. As Andrew Revkin wrote last year about his storied career as an environmental reporter at The Times, “I saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.” The science was generally scrupulous. The boosters who claimed its authority weren’t.
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html
To a normal person this article might seem harmless enough. But Stephens has trespassed on forbidden territory – he dares to question whether we should accept absolutely every pronouncement of imminent eco-doom at face value.
The overreaction from greens verges on comical. Consider the following from deSmogBlog;
Climate Scientists Cancelling Their New York Times Subscription Over Hiring of Climate Denialist Bret Stephens
By Graham Readfearn • Thursday, April 27, 2017 – 16:59
A 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 subscriptions.
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 subscriptions.
The NYT has hired former Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens as a writer and deputy editorial page editor.
Stephens wrote several columns while at the WSJ disparaging climate science and climate scientists, which he has collectively described as a “religion” while claiming rising temeperatures may be natural.
The NYT has been defending its decision publicly, saying that “millions of people” agree with Stephens on climate science and just because their readers don’t like his opinions, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be heard.
But the NYT defence has angered scientists.
…
Huffington Post has also joined the fun;
13 Better Things To Read Than Bret Stephens’ First New York Times Column
The Gray Lady’s newest hire used his debut column to defend his record of climate science denial.
29/04/2017 9:09 AM AEST
Alexander C. Kaufman Business & Environment Reporter, HuffPost
The New York Times took a lot of heat for hiring Bret Stephens, a former opinion writer at The Wall Street Journal, as its newest columnist. There was a lot to criticize. In his storied tenure on some of the most radically conservative pages in print journalism, Stephens accused Arabs of suffering a “disease of the mind,” railed against the Black Lives Matter movement and dismissed the rise of campus rape as an “imaginary enemy.”
But Stephens’ views on climate change ― namely that the jury is still out on whether burning fossil fuels is the chief cause ― drew the widest condemnation. ThinkProgressadmonished the Gray Lady for hiring an “extreme climate denier,” and famed climatologist Michael Mann backed them up in the critique. DeSmog Blog, a site whose tagline reads “clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science,” reported on a letter from climate scientists who are canceling their subscriptions to the newspaper over its latest hire. In These Times’ headline pointedly asked: “Why the Hell did the New York Times just hire a climate denier?”
Even the Times’ own reporters publicly questioned the hire.
…
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/bret-stephens-nyt_us_5903b95fe4b05c39767fa198
I look forward to Stephen’s second column.
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I stopped reading the New York Times when I saw them arranging the order of comments to match their opinions.
maybe too many readers are leaving –
“Last October, the Pew Research Center published a survey on the politics of climate change. Among its findings: Just 36 percent of Americans care “a great deal” about the subject”
hence the “lukewarmer columnist”
“Answering a survey just 36 percent of Americans care “a great deal” about the subject”
Virtue Signalling is not just something you do in front of others — it is also something you do to maintain your own high self-opinion about yourself.
But actions speak far louder than words. How many of that 36 percent — who supposedly greatly care about climate change — actually “act” on their supposed beliefs? Most are probably just small time versions of Al Gore who owns mansions and autos, a party time yacht and likes to fly around in private planes I have no doubt, human nature being what it is, that most of them put personal comfort first — and except when answering a survey don’t think much about climate change.and certainly don’t let it interfere with their ongoing lives.
Eugene WR Gallun
Well, the reality is that many of us care ‘a great deal’ about the subject, because we believe (pending our new administration actually DOING something, and not just TALKING about it), the train has been headed down the wrong track into the tunnel with the boulder on the rails at the far end.
So we care ‘a great deal’, but not in the manner the warmists would like.
Stephens misrepresented his sources because he cares more about propaganda than accuracy. It is a significant distortion of the Pew survey results to not mention 75% of Americans say they are “particularly concerned about helping the environment” as they go about daily living, 67% say “climate scientists should play a major role in policy decisions,” 61% say they “will make major changes to their way of life to address climate change,” 58% who believe the news media does a good job in covering issues about global climate change “follow the news very closely,” more than 80% support expanding solar panel and wind farms, more than 50% oppose offshore drilling, fracking, and coal mining. More than 60% are focused on living in ways that protect the environment say it bothers them a lot when they see other people leave lights and electronic devices on, or throw away things that could be recycled.
When Revkin said he “saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming,” he was referring to the context of the “1992 climate change treaty.” That was his view 25 years ago. Stephens writes Revkin “wrote [this] last year,” without mentioning it was referring to events 25 years ago. The anecdotal comment of what one person thought 25 years ago cannot be assumed to be representative then and cannot be extrapolated to now.
“It is a significant distortion of the Pew survey results to not mention …
That’s crazy talk, to me, David. Not mentioning things you want mentioned, is not distorting the survey, it’s just failing to please you.
@JohnKnight John, my point is Stephens misrepresented the Pew survey by only selecting the less than positive results. It may be “crazy talk” to you, but it is understood within science that if anyone is going to mention a study, there is an obligation to correctly represent it. What I meant to show was the Pew survey also contained positive results of majorities caring about climate change and the environment, in contrast the the one-sided picture presented by Stephens. Accuracy matters, and Stephens failed. Saying only 36% care “a great deal” fails to include 38% who care some, for a total of 74% who care. Look at the results for yourself: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/10/04/the-politics-of-climate/
I was wondering, of those who “care a great deal”, how many are alarmists and how many are skeptics?
David, as opposed to the entirely made up 97% meme?
What we are witnessing is a crack starting to spread in the dry concrete brains of the climate alarmists. When things like this start, they do not stop.
Pokin’ around the lefty blogs to check out the lefty-pukes’ reaction to this Brett Stephens story has been delicious treat. Apparently, Stephens’ first column was published without a “trigger warning”–a patent hive-taboo no!-no!–and so the shock of the whole deal on the psychologically-unprepared good-comrades sent them, one and all, on a rocket-assist propelled (metaphorically speaking, of course), faster-than-a-speeding-bullet (maybe-metaphorical, maybe-not), madcap, psychotic-break, shrieking dash for their nearest, respective, hive-bubble safe-space, where they are currently undergoing mass, “two minutes hate” therapy.
The best part of the whole deal being all those offended hive-bozos’ publicly-shared, fired-up, little, huff-n’-puff, shrill-and-cranky, frenzied dumb-kid, mouthy-spoiled-brat, snot-nosed, “front-row”-wanker, “I’ll tell my hive-mummy!”, gibbering-dork, I’m-gonna-“unlike”-you! zinger-boogers that they’ve oh! so self-importantly dispatched to the NYT demanding that their subscriptions be cancelled. Good stuff! And, for once, those absurd, little, creep-out, green-washed geek-balls have earned their participation trophies.
I liked what Brett vStephens wrote. I was more or less resigned to the Times being in the pcket of warmists when suddenly Stephens was appointed. A luke-warmist to me is someone on the fence who ought to climb down on my side because the other side is contaminated by pseudo-science. the It is unfortunate that warmists have insinuated their lies into all ,parts pf society, including many leaders of scientific societies. Such “leaders of science” reveal themselves as career politicians, not as scientists, when they took control of these societies. As a member of several scientific societies I expect to be consulted about my opinion. But these usurpers do not do that. It turns our that the Times apparently still has some thinking persons who realize that the anti-science doctrines of the global warming movement are a dead end. Let’s see if they will stand up to the political pressure of the warmist establishment to fire Stephens. Except for digging a hole for itself by always backing warmists they are still a decent source to orient yourself to the news. I am curious how this will play out in other parts of the paper.
mike — amusing selection of language. Liked it. — Eugene WR Gallun
Mike:
WOW!
Where’s the “like” button?
Shades of Sean Thomas-
‘ First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,
“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.” ‘
To paraphrase advice to lawyers, -If the facts are against you argue the science. If the science is against you attack the denier.
My apologies to the moderators. I used the ‘D’ word and got sent to the principals office. It needed a sarc tag.
I think if EVERYONE cancelled their subscription to the NYT, that would be just ducky. Our collective IQ would rise by an order of magnitude, and there would be SO much less whining.
And stopped buying it to line the budgie’s cage . . . .
Auto
On Tuesday morning, after marches for “Science” over the weekend
and marches for the “workers” on Monday, the following bubbled up
as a link on excite.com news… leading to a Fox news item:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/02/conservative-columnist-under-siege-after-n-y-times-debut-on-climate-change.html
In addition to the text there’s video which I did not review. You’ll
probably see adverts that my system blocks, but there’s no denying
that the discussion continues.
I only hope this is the beginning of a trend.
Little chinks of light appearing everywhere. The UK government is beginning to take a hammering over the Climate Change Act, and it seems the PM is not entirely unsympathetic.
She must have changed her mind since she wrote this when the Climate Change Act was passed by Parliament
@Sandy In Limousin
Not like a politician to change their mind. 🙂
If you read Stephens piece carefully, you see him invoking Revkin in order to open up some daylight between scrupulous science and exaggerations by boosters. Lindzen made the same point in his Prager video. The blowback is coming from those who bought into the boosterism, and do not want to open the climate file for a fresh look.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/nyt-opens-climate-can-of-worms/
Take it from me. There is no man made global warming. We can read the NYT again. Hurray.
Ah good old scaremongerer Stefan, who frightened the Dutch with a 1.5 m sea level rise by the end of this century because he has a science fiction model where half of the Antarctic icecap slumps in to the ocean. So he now thinks the NYT isn’t alarmistic enough anymore. LOL
The New York Times
—————————————-
Thank you for participating on NYTimes.com.
Your published submission can be found at this link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html?comments#permid=22307439
How about a reasonable conversation on what to do about out warming planet?
Celebrate
Steve Case — Wish I had said that — Eugene WR Gallun
I live in Minnesota- what’s not to love about global warming ?
Gang Green is more than a meme.
Their actions identify them beautifully.
When accused of unreasoning over certainty… they respond with…irrational anger.
Given it’s from CO2, it’s the worst kind — Gas Gang Green!
“… climatologist Michael Mann …”
ROFLOL!
I feel a Streisand effect coming on with this coverage 🙂
Good one I’m going to see If I can subscribe to his ruminations.
If Little fraudulent Mickey Mann is against him he must be good.
Such hysteria demonstrates that climatism *is* a rabid religion.
There you go. Other than this being the NYT we are not surprised. Stephens quote about those claiming certainty framed the issue perfectly. Green lemmings jumped right in.
Interesting decision by NYT. I wonder if they are afraid of been on the wrong side of history on climate change. Something big must have made them change their minds. Have they received information of a forthcoming serious blow to the climate fascist movement ?
I just think they are finally starting to actually look at the data.
Climate Change has lost its political value. The Democratic Party is learning that the activists who support it give bad press and actually hurt the party. The NYT is the voice of the Democratic Party.
Eugene WR Gallun
“In 2016, evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as Fox Broadcast Co.’s Fox News Sunday, collectively decreased their total coverage of climate change by 66 percent compared to 2015”
The next 4 years are going to be hard on the Climate Faithful. 2020 was an end point for many predictions of climate doom. The closer we get to that year, the more obvious it becomes that nothing they predicted is true.
Add to that how many governments are starting to lean away from climate based legislation, how poorly the renewables have done, and how little of the $100 Billions a year Climate Cash gravy train will actually be funded, and it becomes obvious that the CAGW free ride is coming to an end.
And most polititions and media pushers know they don’t want to be the ones holding the tiller when it runs aground. People tend to think you’re to blame then.
Perhaps they’ve been lurking here and determined that they can no longer ignore the broken methods, manipulated data, political bias, conflicts of interest and unsupported claims of the warmists that have defined climate science since the formation of the IPCC. I suspect the unsupportable vitriol coming from the green left complaining about Stephens will lend further support to their decision. Sure, a squeaky wheel gets the grease, but a broken bearing needs to be replaced.
Kneejerk, NYT is getting hammered after the debacle of the elections and leaks. You have youtubers who smash NYT readership let alone subscriptions.
Survival
As I said some time ago, the story of the Vicar of Bray is instructive in this context.
Okay; had to go look that one up.
Liked it a lot, especially the Red Queen.
Is the “Vicar of Bray” connected to the Democratic mascot? Or is he an avatar of the windmill-tilting Donkey O’Tay?
“Something big must have made them change their minds.”
Stephens has been ragging on Trump since well before the election. He’s been in full despot mode for over a year. I’m guessing his “hire” by the NYTimes was more of a “fire” by the WSJ, as in “Go find someplace else to spew, Brett.”
The WSJ isn’t particularly kind to Trump, even on its editorial pages, but Stephens was way, way, over the top, probably something that appealed to the NYTimes editors.
Trump supporters remind me of warmistas when it comes to their reaction to any criticism of their chosen gods.
The gang green outrage makes you even more famous and interesting Brett Stephens.
Web traffic is in decline, that’s why.
https://widget.similarweb.com/traffic/nytimes.com
One has to wonder how much extra web traffic they get on the strength of favored search engine priority rather than actual loyal readers.
Interestingly enough, google news seems to prefer BBC.
The NYT has been quite partisan and preachy this election cycle, even given their baseline partisan bias. They have tried more conservative columnists in the past, who are either fired or become part of the Borg.
Political “Scientist” Michael Mann Prefers Censorship, Slander and Punitive Action Over Debate
When the New York Times announced a few weeks ago that it had hired Bret Stephens, a former Wall Street Journal columnist, the climate cult went insane.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/political-scientist-michael-mann-prefers-censorship-slander-and-punitive-action-over-debate/
The winning strategy isn’t arguing the “science,” the winning strategy is arguing that the benefits don’t justify the costs. The benefits of fighting climate change are estimated to be measured in a fraction of a Degree C change in global temperature a hundred or more years in the future. The cost of preventing that highly speculative Degree C increase in global temperature is measured in percentages of world GDP. The speculative benefits simply don’t justify the costs.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/the-winning-climate-change-strategy-isnt-debating-science-it-is-arguing-politics/
co2islife
I’ll stipulate you’re sincere about “…the winning strategy is arguing that the benefits don’t justify the costs…”, but I doubt there’s more than 10 sentient beings on the planet who accepts any public estimate of costs.
After estimates for Obamacare, Olympics, Jerry Brown train-to-nowhere, repairs to Orville dam, USAF F-35, benefit of Raider’s move to Las Vegas, Banca Monte dei Paschi’s 5th taxpayer bail-out, nobody believes this stuff any more.
There just isn’t any such thing as a “government estimate of costs”; hell, there’s barely any such thing as “government accounting of costs”.
That only makes the arguement stronger. There are no benefits, and spending more for nothing is even worse.
That isn’t an immutable law of government because it isn’t like that in my country. That is something broken that you guys need to fix.
The most likely issue is that if only 36% of the population thinks climate change is an issue, the NYT finally realised that by pushing the climate meme so strongly for the last 30 years they are alienating 68% of the population. Remember, they are losing money, as is much of the original journalism industry. Also, despite the boost to the media provided by the division and controversy over Trump, recent polls and statistics show that Fox News is more popular than many left wing outlets. Same message: if I’m not catering to right / centre people, I am alienating a large chunk of the population, and potential customers.
Sorry, make that 64% of the population alienated
[Is that 64% alienated by the NYTimes? Or is that alienated against the NYTimes? .mod]
Normally you wouldn’t say people were alienated against the NYT. You would say they were alienated from the NYT.
Having said the above, it is possible that a third person could cause the alienation between two people. link So, it’s not redundant to observe that the NYT, itself, had caused the alienation of its own readers.
Maybe my imagination, or just wishful thinking, but it seems as if the political earthquakes in the US and UK have caused some of the habitually left-aligned media to start to consider the risks of not be with the in crowd. Not a very sensible way to form opinions but after all they are really just in the business of selling advertising.
To borrow a phrase from pro-wrestling, they need to put butts in their seats.
Here is a part of what I had to say about this a few days ago on my little blog site:
What triggered the Times to make this change and hire a skeptical climate columnist? I think I know. After a life time of working in the media I know the sort of things that gets the attention of media managers. I think it was the resignation of
Judith Curry from her Professorship at Georgia Tech. When a respected female Professor could no longer live in the Algorian climate science world and spoke out so clearly and reasonably as she walked away from her position, media manager types would take notice and examine her position a bit. The result, they discovered that climate change skeptics are not the same as flying saucer wackos and the chemtrails crowd. We are scientists who know that our science has been greatly distorted and politicized.
So now a skeptic is going to write a column for The New York Times. It is my hope he will write reasonable, solid articles and avoid some of the extremes that have been in some of former pieces.
By hiring Bret Stephens, the Times is making a move that will be strongly attacked by other media.
The times has a new ad campaign on the importance of truth. I think this move backs up that ad campaign. Others will scream no, no no. To them I say, it is your turn. We have been screaming and crying for years.
OK. All together. Whooo-Haaaa
Well, halfway-skeptical, but considering the NYT that’s just a mite short of revolutionary.
This is spreading rapidly in the climate change fear industry .. the knowledge that bullying and exaggeration has failed ..and backfired ..Here ,they point fingers ,not at skeptics ..but, each other !
–
“UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, pleading with scientists to use everyday language to help counter growing public mistrust.”
–
Soul-searching scientists struggle to get message across
Mariëtte Le Roux
AFPApril 28, 2017
“Scientists have to go back to basics — thorough vetting and peer review to limit research mistakes and fraud, and resisting the temptation to exaggerate findings in a quest for prestige or funding.
–
“It’s important for the science community to be responsible in the way they communicate the science, so as not to sensationalise their own findings and not to try and just go for a headline rather than a much more… sober and factual presentation of findings, the EGU’s Bamber told AFP.”
–
https://www.yahoo.com/news/soul-searching-scientists-struggle-message-across-033018416.html
From the Stephens article:
“while the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming”
And lastly:
“None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences.”
The gist of Stephens’ column is to knock off the green attacks if you want to raise the 36% of citizen concern on “climate change”, i.e., global warming.
Stephens is not a lukewarmer, he’s more like room temperature.
Just goes to show how little it takes to bring-out “denier” attacks. How divsive and intolerant the left is.
Stephens is a sanctimonious jerk who will fit in perfectly with the Times … he is hardly a realist (my label for skeptic) and really not a lukewarmer …
Hopefully contributors are right and the NYT is finally beginning to realize that the science is not as settled as they have been misled into believing. Here in the UK the Guardian newspaper which was once a superb, informed, critical on world issues, newspaper and long ago sold its now miserable soul to the crooks, chancers and swindlers who now exploit the gullibility of the scientifically innumerate editors and reporters to sell lies about the threats of unrestrained global heat death, is itself facing its own demise as readership deserts it in droves. A well deserved demise as it has betrayed the poor it claims to care for who now face ruinous energy costs in the most regressive form of taxation devised by man – paying excessive green subsidies for heating and lighting. The Guardian is secretly thinking of relocating to its original home in Manchester to try and stem the money loss. I think Ulan Bator would be better, but then their smug correspondents would have longer flights to their weekend holiday homes in France and Italy while extolling the struggling to turn their lights off and crush their cars.
I hope he realizes the trouble he is going to be in. He can take comfort from the new friends he also finds.
The green over-reaction exemplifies the issue Bret called attention to.
Added below to the comments:
“The certainty of imminent (decades) catastrophe from AGW is a socially enforced consensus, which hence has nothing to do with science. This same certainty is pushed by presidents, prime minsters and governments world-wide and is the primary narrative that drives policy. Whether ACO2 is good, bad, or indifferent regarding the real physical climate, in the social domain this cultural narrative of certainty hugely dominates. The problem with this is that no cultural narrative in history has ever been true. It’s a fairy story, like religions. Cultural narratives have been net very +ve for humanity on evolutionary timescales, which is why we’re sensitized to them. Yet they can go very wrong too. The promotion of critical urgency short-circuits due consideration, so leading to massive misfires like European diesel policy or bio-fuel debacles. More generally, it seems likely that connecting world economies to a fairy tale is a high risk option (despite indeed we’ve done this with different fairy tales in the past). Few scientists speak to the wide disparity between an immature science and a narrative of certainty; those that do are typically demonized. This is part of social bias and enforcement, mechanisms that sustain strong cultures throughout history.
Regarding ‘100% right’, this may cause rejection due to long-evolved mechanisms. Yet the rejection may be either apt or inapt. See the section ‘The entanglement of science’ in the link below.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/20/innate-skepticism/ “
‘Cultural narratives have been net very +ve for humanity on evolutionary timescales, which is why we’re sensitized to them. ‘
This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the AGW and other narratives. In the West the 20C was filled with particularly egregious narratives jostling to take over from earlier certitudes. Maybe, at long last, we are seeing a shakedown of those narratives that are ineffective. Perhaps Islam is providing us with some kind of ‘other’ to focus on while we regroup along a softened classical liberal / small state line. If so, we are in for a period of extraordinary unleashing of energy, wealth creation, and change.
Perhaps Islam is providing us with some kind of ‘other’ to focus on while we regroup along a softened classical liberal / small state line.
I wish I could share your optimism. I’m afraid it’s actually providing a distraction from and counter to consideration of the necessity of drastically reducing the power and scope of the State: Them muzzies is gonna kill us if we don’t got a Big State to protect us!