I’m pretty fascinated that WSJ published an opinion piece from sixteen scientists (in various fields, including metereology and atmospheric science) slamming the scientific establishment for its failure to include dissenting voices in the debate and for its inaccurate models and alarmism.
There’s already a thread on AGW skepticism in general, so let’s not go there. I’m more interested in what happened journalistically here. To the best of my knowledge, it’s not every day that a mainstream news outlet (at least not one as respected as the WSJ) comes right out and takes a dangerously controversial stance like this.
On one hand, ballsy move by the WSJ, one that gives the skeptics a sheen of respectability they’ve rarely had before. How many other big papers would dare publish a letter like this?
On the other hand, the actual letter itself is full of rhetoric but short on science. It’s signed by sixteen scientists arguing without data; few of them have directly worked in the field.
Is the Wall Street Journal doing a public service by giving the “other side” a voice and advocating for science without bias, or is it irresponsibly propagating an extremist viewpoint refuted and shunned by the majority of scientists?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t newspapers get to choose which opinion pieces they publish? This goes a bit beyond “letters to the editor from all sorts of madmen”, more like “here’s an editorial piece that we, as a paper, agree with”. That’s a pretty strong stance to take for a business that supposedly thrives on objective news reporting.
Has it? How has it worsened? (I genuinely don’t know)
The WSJ Opinon page gives these guys all the opportunity they want to write opinion pieces. Richard Lindzen in particular has written or signed on to about a dozen of them, all equally vague and science-free.
On the other hand, they don’t give any space to the views of the vast majority. It’s not science, it’s pure partisan politics, which is what the WSJ Opinion Page has been for the last three or four years.
In essence, the letter says “We (all sixteen of us) aren’t convinced, so let’s just wait 50 years and pick up the subject again then. If we’re wrong, things will probably be better for us then anyway.”
Well, for values of “us” comprising of northern hemisphere industrialized nations with ample land away from the coast.
Yes, you are wrong. All opinion pieces, in all op-ed pages of all newspapers, are not not meant to be objective, they are meant to advocate a position. It is the very reason newspapers have opinion pages - to keep them at arms length from news reporting (which the Wall Street Journal continues to do very well.)
I understand that. What I meant is that in allowing this op-ed to run, they’re taking the stance that they as a newspaper agree with this position… right? In general, the op-ed pieces I’ve seen from papers are usually well-argued, suggesting they don’t allow just anyone to write about anything (as opposed to the run-of-the-mill “letters to the editor” crap). Meaning they exercise editorial control, even if it’s “just opinion”, and try to maintain at least a baseline level of quality and credibility.
If THAT is correct, this seems like a remarkable opinion for a mainstream paper to express because they’re basically saying "screw the consensus of hundreds of scientists, we’d rather listen to these 16 instead’ – leading me, for one, to question their scientific reliability.
I don’t feel like reading that other thread, so I’ll throw this out:
There is no need to panic about global warming. I can’t think of any situation where panic is useful. I don’t know of any scientific principle that determines when it is time to panic.
Now I understand this is the WSJ, and they are biased. But in terms of real journalism, there is plenty of room for dissent on this subject outside of the area of the actual science, which shows there is global climate change. What to do about it is a political issue, and it doesn’t matter how many scientists hold the same opinion on that subject, dissenting views are welcome, and necessary.
I’m more interested in what economists have to say. Even non-scientists know that the climate changes, and that’s there’s very little we can do about it, whether human-induced or not.
Panic is a financial/economic position, not a scientific one.
I did not read it. For purposes of this thread it irrelevant if you agree with the piece or not. Since it ran in the papers oped section I suppose it can be construed as the papers position. However it was not written by the editors. It is not an every day occurrence but it is not unheard of to have guest editorials in major newspapers. I stand by the fact that this is not journalism its opinion and does not effect the journalistic standing of the rest of the newspaper. The rest of the paper is supposed to be dry fact. On the Oped section the will endorse candidates. It’s opinion. Many may argue that endorsing a candidate would compromise their journalistic integrity but it’s the way newspapers do things.
Another anti-reality lie from the denialists. Op-ed or not, the dittoheads are treating this as if NOAA published it. My conservative FB friends have posted this all over the place. “See, no issue here, no need to worry about those greedy scientists.” (Greedy? You could fund all of climate research on the coins one big oil company has in its couch cushions.)
Ya know, we can stick our heads in the sand like cartoon ostriches and wait for Topeka to be an ocean-front town, or we can start to do something about this and have an economy where people have the capacity to do business in the coming decades. We’ve been talking about climate change for years now. The denialists finally admitted that climate change is real, and some are coming around to it being caused by humans - LIKE THE EVIDENCE SAYS. But they don’t want to do anything about it because it might cost a nickel. (Not enough :rolleyes: in the entire atmosphere.)
If the climate change advocates are wrong, we will have taken action to improve our environment and sustainability. Where’s the harm in that? Many market opportunities in that work, by the way. If the denialists are wrong, our kids are screwed, but they (particularly the people who wrote that op-ed), are already dead from old age.
BTW here is another opinion piece published by the WSJ back in October which states why you should believe in Global Warming by a scientist who was trying to disprove it.
What does that do to your opinion of their journalism?
This was going to be my point. The idea of an op-ed page is to provide a wide range of opinions, including those that the editor may not agree with. Though there is a tendency to publish more opinions that do match.
So you cite another opinion piece from another publication. Thats the point, its opinion not journalism. I already cited an opinion article published in the WSJ which was written by a global warming skeptic scientist who became convinced after his own study. If they were pushing an agenda that hard then that article would not have published that one. Bottom line, the true measure of journalism is not on the opinion page its in the rest of the paper. The opinion page is for opinion and has never been held to the same standard.
FYI, here is the opinion piece referred to in the OP. And also note that the Op-ed page is not where a newspaper displays its own editorials. The house editorials go on the opinion page and represent the view of the newspaper’s editorial board. The Op-ed page (for opposite the editorial page) is where the paper prints opinion pieces by in-house columnists, syndicated columnists and members of the public who have submitted pieces to the paper. The newspaper doesn’t endorse these opinion pieces, except that by running them, they are suggesting that they are worthy of the reader’s attention.