Month 11, Day 10: We’re Going To Do A Medley of Our Hit

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune runs the same Neela Banerjee piece on the intrepid climatologists who’re jumping into the fray. I used it here as the hook for a more or less generic “false equivalence” screed.

The scientists who’ll soon be joining the fight against misinterpretations and misrepresentations of the facts of climate change have their work cut out for them. Not only are climate denialists ideologically wedded to an extreme anti-science position, the media’s adherence to the doctrine of false equivalence ensures equal amounts of air time or column inches to both parties in an argument, regardless of their reliability. Faced with a choice between, for example, a “professor of thermal engineering” from a Midwestern university and a “research associate in energy policy” from the Foundation for American Freedoms, how is a television viewer to distinguish between an actual climatologist and a mendacious shill from an oil industry-funded think tank? When it comes to the gravest threat humanity has ever faced, our print and broadcast journalists have abdicated their responsibility to the public. Good luck to these brave climate experts; they’ll need it.

Warren Senders