Journalists need to stop being THE problem....

By Gordon Fulks, PhD

Hello Everyone,

When I first contacted The Oregonian regarding their coverage of Global Warming years ago, I was told by Managing Editor Therese Bottomly and her star reporter Michael Milstein that their support of climate alarmism was based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature. That made it easy for them to reject consideration of any data that I wanted to show them because it had not been published and tell me that I needed to get in line with the 57,000 member American Geophysical Union's official position on Global Warming. Bottomly had no idea that she was ignorant of how science works and how journalism is supposed to work. Today, Oregonian Editor Peter Bhatia at least pretends to be neutral about Global Warming.
The Oregonian carried an editorial today written by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times once again hawking their official position on Global Warming:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opinion/18kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof
But it made no pretense about "peer-review" and quoted for authority Joe Romm's propaganda web site that promotes itself as a "liberal" or "progressive" view of climate. In other words, it is pure propaganda:
http://climateprogress.org/
The Kristof Op-Ed uses the well-worn glacier argument for Global Warming, quoting hearsay evidence about Himalayan glaciers. He must be unaware of the UN IPCC controversy about such arguments. Then he topped it off with information from Romm that 2010 may be "the warmest on record." That is of course based on James Hansen's group at NASA GISS which is famous for doctored data.
In other words, here we have a columnist with no scientific credentials telling us what to believe about science, based on evidence from a propaganda web site that uses doctored data from the worst source on the planet for Global Temperatures. None of their recent data has been published in the scientific literature and would not be worth much even if it had because we now know that the peer-review process has been thoroughly corrupted. I suppose I should be happy that there was no claim of "peer-review."
Journalists need to stop being THE problem and start telling their readers something approaching the truth. They need to care enough to tell the truth.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD

Corbett, Oregon USA