WSJ Publishes Op-Ed From 16 Climate Deniers, Refused Letter From 255 Top Scientists

[xchrom]

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/01/30/414277/wsj-publishes-op-ed-from-16-climate-deniers-refused-letter-from-255-top-scientists/

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, sixteen prominent global warming deniers with scientific backgrounds — such as tobacco apologist Richard Lindzen of MIT and ExxonMobil executive Roger Cohen — concede that manmade carbon dioxide emissions have a warming effect on the planet, but argue that the effect is “small” and nothing to “panic” about. All the other scientists in the world who believe the science are part of a conspiracy to intimidate people like themselves, they write, just as Soviet biologists who believed in genes were “sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.”

As climate scientist Peter Gleick reports at his Forbes.com blog, those other scientists include 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences who wrote a letter about the scientific threat of climate change for the Wall Street Journal — but were turned down:

The most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal with respect to manmade climate change is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a scientifically accurate essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because 16 so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.

The NAS letter was eventually published by Science magazine.

[steven johnson]

1. Record January high temperatures and the climate ludites are in denial

A weaker sun over the next 90 years is not likely to significantly delay a rise in global temperature caused by greenhouse gases, a report said Monday.

The study, by Britain's Meteorological Office and the university of Reading, found that the Sun's output would decrease up until 2100 but this would only lead to a fall in global temperatures of 0.08 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have warned that more extreme weather is likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms.

The world is expected to heat up by over 2 degrees Celsius this century due to increased greenhouse gas emissions.


[link:http://news.yahoo.com/weaker-sun-not-delay-global-warming-study-214152757.html|

[xchrom]

2. +1

[BeyondGeography]

3. It's January in NY and I'm going to catch some rays today

Biggest non-winter ever. I'm starting to take it for granted; I think I'll curl into a fetal position if it snows.