NYTimes Climate Reporter Justin Gillis Compares Global-Warming Skeptics to Opponents of Evolution
New York Times environmental reporter Justin Gillis's interview with the Columbia Journalism Review put his unapologetic "climate change" activism on display, and compared climate-change skeptics to people who don't believe in evolution.
(Environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., who nominated Gillis's December 2011 piece accusing Republicans of blocking measures to document "climate change" as perhaps "the worst piece of reporting I've ever seen in the Times on climate change," says the interview unmasks Gillis as more advocate than journalist.)
Asked by CJR's Curtis Brainard how he got interested in climate change, Gillis credited science classes at MIT and Harvard: "But when I got there, no one could talk about anything but climate and energy. So I started taking classes and the more I learned, the more I thought to myself, 'This is the biggest problem we have – bigger than global poverty. Why am I not working on it?' From there, the question was, how do I get myself into a position to work on the problem? That ultimately led me to leave the Post and go to the Times because the Times is just better positioned cover the issue."
Gillis confessed his series on climate "was more or less a direct response to Climategate, which led to a lot of questions about the science." He saw no "scientific misconduct" in the trove of emails: "Points of contention exist within the science, as they should, but not about the basics of whether we have a problem."
Gillis even compared climate-change skeptics to opponents of evolution:
If one is covering evolution these days, one can afford to ignore the anti-evolutionists most of the time because they are completely scientifically discredited and, more importantly, sort of spent as a social force. Unfortunately, we just are not at that point with climate science.
However discredited the scientific case questioning climate science may be, it is influencing half the Congress and a substantial fraction of the population. So this is almost like if you’d been in Tennessee in 1925 getting ready to cover the Scopes Monkey Trial. The anti-evolutionists were already scientifically discredited by then, but as a journalist, you could not have avoided quoting them in order to put the whole thing in its political context. I’m sad to say that in 2012, that’s still where we are with climate science.
....
To me, it seems pretty clear which way the current is flowing, with the caveat that it’s important to bear in mind that the hour is late here. To head off the worst consequences of global warming, we needed to get started 20 years ago and we did not. So this will now be a pretty heavy lift to get to very low emissions by 2050. If we started today it would be hard, and we’re not starting today.
Gillis said it was a "scandal" that the media was failing to connect the dots between "weird weather" events and permanent climate change:
One thing I’m seeing – and I see it in our own paper as well as many other news outlets – is that people are covering the crazy weather we’re having and, more often than not, dodging the subject of whether there’s any relationship to climate change. TV weathermen are dodging that subject. Print reporters are dodging the subject....Reporters are not going to be able to be definitive, in real time, about whether this particular event was or wasn’t connected to climate change, but it’s a bit of a scandal that there’s not enough connecting the dots for people.
Pielke also read the CJR interview: "Rather than informing his readers Gillis is in the business of making an argument....Both advocacy and journalism are fundamental to a healthy democracy, but when they are mixed together, especially on the news pages of the NYT, neither is served particularly well. Please count me among those who prefers to get news from plain vanilla journalism, not the yellow kind."
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Comments
But the real question....
Submitted by c5then on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:22pm.
Assuming that the climate in actually changing...Why is THIS climate change different than all the other's in the past, and why would THIS climate change be caused by a completely different and new factor than any of the others?
This is where their "settled science" completely falls on it's face.
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
Climate Change Made Fear Mongering Neocons Out Of All Of Us.
Submitted by mememine69 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:26pm.
If climate change is really the "greatest threat to the planet" as science tells us, why are the millions of people in the global scientific community not marching with the dozens of climate change protesters and ACTING like it’s the end of the world? The millions in the world of science have doomed children as well!
Exaggerated science trumps any and all consensus science and REAL planet lovers are happy, not disappointed a crisis for Humanity wasn't real after all.
Today’s climate blame believer may well be tomorrow’s END OF THE WORLD freak for the history books but 26 years of CO2 death threats and needless panic made fear mongering neocons out of all of us. Climate change was Liberalism’s Iraq War and Bush laughs.
And the more we fear monger the swing voter's children with CO2 death threats, the longer we will stay out of power. Who votes for Liberal fear mongers?
Climate change was
Submitted by Dan The Man 2 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 9:26pm.
Climate change was Liberalism’s Iraq War and Bush laughs.
I see you dont understand Iraq was important.
Advocate vs. Journalist
Submitted by Iron Tigers Vet on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:25pm.
In a liberal sense... there is no difference.
When it comes to the MSM, they all carry the water, er um, kool-aide for GW/CC junk science. To sit there and say Climategate wasn't misconduct of science proves you are a flunky for the left and their lies towards GW/CC.
As far as evolution, their
Submitted by ForeverOnTheRight on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:45pm.
As far as evolution, their are many things in the theory that the believers in evolution take as fact, by faith. Their is a lack of a lot of imperical (sp?) science. As far as Global Warming, they take things by faith too, and ignore the fact that the earth has gone through cycles of warming and cooling. In the 70's we were going through a priod of cooling and they said we where gong to have another ice age. Now we are warmiong up and the chicken littles are telling us we are to blame. What will they say if in another 30 years we are cooling? It is the sun that has a big part to play in the warming and cooling of this earth. I doubt that we are to blame for the curent warming to the exctent they say we are. This is more PC crap.
When global warning "experts"
Submitted by Newsbusterbrown on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:03pm.
When global warning "experts" can creditably develop a man-made reason why it was warmer during a portion of the Middle Ages than anything we have seen since the Industrial Revolution began, then I might "warm up" to this "science."
“There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” - Ronald Reagan (1964 Republican Convention)
He's seriously comparing AGW to the Scopes Trial?
Submitted by drsamherman on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:10pm.
Justin and the other flying monkeys at the New York Times love pushing junk science down America's throat to further their agenda. It's no wonder that liberals like to see themselves embracing science, because they simply change the scientific method so the conclusions meet their agenda. Forget about that old, inconvenient thing called good research practices--there are agenda items to push!
Between the bastardization of scientific rigor for political purposes and the scientists who whore for research dollars, it makes me wonder just how soon we will see scientists turned into some kind of perverse clergy regurgitating irreproducible results?
No freaking way! More AGW?
Submitted by JLin on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:16pm.
The government cannot competently manage a pop stand, and the high priests of Gaia still want it to manage the weather? Enough already!
"What is just the right temperature Kenneth? What's the frequency?"
They do not study evolution themselves
Submitted by deadeyedan on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:15pm.
Here's a question for all those alarmist stuck-ups:
Knowing from DNA evidence that polar bears evolved from Kodiak bears (and they can even mate with each other and produce fertile offspring) about 250,000 years ago and that most species are considerably older than that, why did it take so long for them to emerge into their current niche?
The answer is that the earth has not been cold enough long enough for the trial-and-error machinations of genetics to justify their existence.
On the other hand, our hominid ancestors, according to the fossil record, were walking upright at least 4.4 million years ago, 17 times longer than polar bears have been around. And we are considered a threat to their existence?
Just check that "rock record" so often charmingly referred to by all the "scientists" of the left.
CLIMATEGATE (now I & II plus FAKEGATE) - the revelation that the pseudo-scientists at East Anglia University know just as much about the atmosphere as Harvard law professors know about the Constitution
neither is proven...
Submitted by vrwc13 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:38pm.
Both Global-Warming and Evolution have 'gaps' bigger than their facts.
Why believe either?
I must be one of those:
... anti-evolutionists... completely scientifically discredited and, more importantly, sort of spent as a social force.
...wow who knew I was that?
v
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne
I'm with you 13.
Submitted by almostacowboy on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 6:02pm.
.
Letter to editor
Submitted by Model850 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:45pm.
Here is a letter to the editor that appeared in my local paper today, a response to an editorial about regulating CO2 as a pollutant:
Re 'Limit pollutants to protect health' (editorial, April 3): The pollutant referred to as carbon dioxide happens to be essential for life. The EPA's recent endangerment finding arbitrarily ruled that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a hazard to human health without any scientific evidence or an EPA study, which is required by the Clean Air Act.
I am a scientist with expertise on the physiological and toxicological properties of carbon dioxide in humans, so I know that the atmosphere would need to contain 75 times more CO2 before it became a problem for human health. The highest CO2 levels in the history of Earth's atmosphere occurred 400 million years ago and were about 10 times today's levels, and there were no coal-fired power plants back then. Life on Earth thrived under those conditions, and the global temperature was only a few degrees centigrade warmer than it is today.
The CO2 levels did not prevent the development of human life, as has been predicted by the EPA. Climate change is predominantly caused by natural forces and will not go away if man goes away.
There is a lot of similarity
Submitted by Demonhunter on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 5:03pm.
There is a lot of similarity between the phony claims of anthroprogenic global warming and evolution. Check out Ben Stein's "Explelled" some time. Most modern evolutionists are unaware of the discoveries in microbiology that show such intricate engineering that it is unbelievable that this could have happened by accident over time. And, they have never even produced a rational explanation for the evolution of the eye.
The lack of evidence for evolution is monumental. Anyone who denies this is either ignorant or a liar.
who?
Submitted by Dr. Ron on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 5:45pm.
Oh, the Justin Gillis whose scientific chops/creds are a undergrad degree in Journalism. His credentials are a joke and it is worse to even cite this fraud.
He stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Submitted by drsamherman on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 7:35pm.
And he reads "Mother Jones", a well known, peer-reviewed journal. Okay--sarcasm off.
Anyone who believes life
Submitted by koorangkoo on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 6:30pm.
Anyone who believes life "evolved" from non-life (something came nothing), or believes a worm can "evolve" into a human given enough time, can easily believe in man-made global warming. Evolution is a creation fable without a Creator, in which "nothing" created everything. (h/t to Ray Comfort). Ask an evolutionist scientist to "evolve" something in his laboratory (that is, to create life or to turn one species into another species) and he can't do it, even with all of his modern technology and equipment. Yet he wants you to believe that "nature" or "evolution", acting randomly, blindly and with no intelligence, produced an organism as complex as a human being. The bottom line -- nature and blind chance are more "intelligent" than evolutionists, by their own admission!
Randomly, blindly and with no
Submitted by rickster0130 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 6:49pm.
Randomly, blindly and with no intelligence....sure sounds like a promoter of the AGW myth to me! These so-called "enlightened" folks have become blind to everything but their own fixed ideas, one of which appears to be "when the facts don't fit, make 'em up!" Another is, "anyone who disagrees with you is, by definition, WRONG!" In short, the author of this peculiar article actually did make a point; just not the one he intended.
Do you have an email address?
Submitted by buttercup815 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 6:58pm.
You know, this Creator guy. The invisble guy who can create everything out of nothing, who knows all and sees all. If you have his address, let me know..I'd like to chat, because things are really messed up down here.
The "Creator's guy's" email address
Submitted by koorangkoo on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 7:22pm.
Thanks for your post, buttercup815. You don't need an email address for the "Creator guy". The Creator guy is right next to you and waiting for you to make contact with Him. Try something bold and say -- "Hey, Creator guy, if you're real, show me." And see what happens. What do you have to lose?
Good evening Bittercup
Submitted by cocodrie on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 7:23pm.
Someday you'll meet Him at the end of the road of life. Say all you can now because when You meet Him, He will do all the talking.
Jesus Loves You so much He died for you
Fine
Submitted by buttercup815 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 7:43pm.
I was trying to make a point that both sides are equally unprovable.
(Gosh, I hope that arguement works when I meet Him??)
I agree, Buttercup815
Submitted by koorangkoo on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 9:46pm.
Buttercup85, you hit the nail right on the head! You are right that both sides are unprovable, but it is the evolutionists who are claiming that evolution is a scientific fact and are teaching evolution as a scientific fact to impressionable students in elementary, middle, and high school. I would be satisfied if the evolutionists themselves admitted their theory is unprovable. Although you cannot prove the existence of God to another person, you can still personally experience God and know that He exists.
Scientific Existence of a Higher Intelligence
Submitted by frank_andrini on Fri, 04/06/2012 - 9:22pm.
See Robert A. Herrmann, Ph.D. Mathematics Department, U. S. Naval Academy, 572 Holloway Rd., Annapolis, Md 21402-5002 "The Scientific Existence of a Higher Intelligence" http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/30/30_4a.html then perhaps we can discuss it- perhaps not.
I dont believe in macro
Submitted by Dan The Man 2 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 9:27pm.
I dont believe in macro evolution where we grew up from primordial slime, otherwise evolution is the study of change and adaptation.
And the answer is....
Submitted by Q R Riter on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 11:30pm.
How is it, the only way to solve this man-made global warming is to raise taxes? And the only people who need to have their taxes raised is middle class Americans? And why is it, these jokers aren't rode out of town on a rail?
Opposing Evolution v.s. Global Warming
Submitted by frank_andrini on Sat, 04/07/2012 - 12:28pm.
Why bother to oppose a theory that cannort be proven as it is scientifically impossible- evolution that is. See Robert A. Herrmann, Ph.D. Mathematics Department, U. S. Naval Academy, 572 Holloway Rd., Annapolis, Md 21402-5002 "The Scientific Existence of a Higher Intelligence" http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/30/30_4a.html click on "Selected Articles" for more information. Some of this stuff is pretty deep but I've got time how about you?Science is not advocacy.
Submitted by tadchem on Thu, 04/05/2012 - 8:04am.
Science is a method of investigating the world around us.
It differs from older, 'traditional' methods such as religion and philosophy by demanding empirical evidence ('measurements') from experiments and observations that any independent observer can repeatibly perform.
Numbers regurgitated by computer programs are not empirical evidence.
We have empirical evidence for natural selection and for the origin of new species (like Rhagoletis pomonella and several species of influenza).
We do not have empirical evidence for any change in the climate produced *solely* by the results of human activities.
We do know about the Urban Heat Island effect, which has 'contaminated' temperature records with local heating effects. These same temperature records, mostly gathered close to cities, were recklessly used to extrapolate to 'global' climate.
Evolution is statistically impossible
Submitted by frank_andrini on Fri, 04/06/2012 - 9:10pm.
Regarding your statement "We have empirical evidence for natural selection and for the origin of new species (like Rhagoletis pomonella and several species of influenza)" kindly elaborate. To say that the world as we know it is the result of an evolutionary process over the course of billions of years is scientific nonsense and statistically impossible.