Why the Hell Did the New York Times Just Hire a Climate Denier?

[n2doc]

In late March, the New York Times’ editorial board called President Trump’s move to dismantle Obama-era climate protections “deeply dismaying,” citing “the rock-solid scientific consensus that without swift action the consequences of climate change—rising seas, more devastating droughts, widespread species extinction—are likely to get steadily worse.” Today the paper announced it has hired a climate denier as an op-ed columnist.

Bret Stephens, currently the Wall Street Journal’s deputy editorial page editor, has won a Pulitzer Prize. He has also written multiple pieces casting doubt on what in 2014 he called “the purported threat of global warming.” In 2010, following a hyped-up pseudo-controversy over a climate researcher’s emails, he cheerfully announced that the “secular panic” of “global warming is dead, nailed into its coffin one devastating disclosure, defection and re-evaluation at a time.”

“Herewith, then, I propose a readers' contest to invent the next panic,” he urged. “It must involve something ubiquitous, invisible to the naked eye and preferably mass-produced.”

To be fair, the New York Times opinion page could use a few fresh voices. And while it may have been nice not to go with yet another Gen X, middle-aged and/or old white man, contrarian (read: conservative) views do have a place in the national debate.

But whether climate change exists is no longer a debate. False equivalence has been a fatal flaw in much mainstream climate coverage: Offering equal space to two sides of a controversy that doesn’t exist, and has been fueled to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by fossil fuel-funded disinformation campaigns.

more
http://inthesetimes.com/article/20062/why-the-hell-did-the-new-york-times-just-hire-climate-denier-bret-stephens

[Stargazer99]

1. Because they are gutless, they do as they are told by money