John Cushman has done it again. Late last year, this reporter for The New York Times wrote an extraordinarily bad “news” article speculating about the causes of childhood cancer. In a burst of altruism, I sent Mr. Cushman a letter suggesting ways to improve his writing about environmental issues. He never answered.
Alas, Mr. Cushman has written another horrible article, this time on global warming. My second letter to Mr. Cushman follows.
Dear Mr. Cushman:
I’m sure you didn’t do it intentionally, but your April 26th front-page story, “Industrial Group Plans to Fight Climate Treaty,” probably misled some readers as to the true state of scientific and political debate over global warming. By calling your attention to those statements that probably caused the most confusion, I hope to help you avoid them in the future.
There Are No Liberals Here
Early in your article you suggest that only “conservative” policy research organizations, big oil companies, and a few dissenting scientists oppose the global warming agreement reached by the Clinton administration in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997.
While you were willing to assign an ideological label to those who oppose the protocol, you did not label as “liberal” the groups and individuals who favor it. Surely you knew that the National Environmental Trust, the organization that “leaked” the memo that was the basis of your article, and its principal funder, the Pew Charitable Trusts, take left-of-center positions on issues ranging from abortion and health care to taxes and food safety. Perhaps that deserved to be mentioned.
Vice President Al Gore, who ordered U.S. negotiators to capitulate on key elements of the agreement, is so far to the left on environmental issues that the Unabomber kept a heavily annotated copy of Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, in his tarpaper shed. Maybe you could have mentioned that?
Some of the strongest opposition to the treaty is coming from “liberals” at the AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and United Mine Workers of America. They know that the energy taxes or emissions caps required by the treaty will cause millions of jobs to move overseas. Their motivation for opposing the protocol may be self interest, but it is still inaccurate to call them “conservatives” or “people working for big oil companies.”
Missing: 15,000 Scientists
I am sure many readers were puzzled by your vague references to “the most recent effort to drum up support among skeptical scientists.” Things would have been a little more clear if you had reported that nearly 15,000 scientists have now signed the petition; that fully two-thirds of the signors hold advanced degrees in the natural sciences; that the organization circulating the petition receives no funding from energy companies, trade associations, or even “conservative” public policy research organizations; and finally, that the petition reads in part:
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.
I know editors impose tough word limits on their reporters, and this requires choosing what to keep in and what to leave out. You chose to keep in comments about two individuals prominently identified with the petition effort–Dr. Fred Singer and Dr. Frederick Seitz.
Singer you call “a physicist noted for opposing the mainstream view of climate science.” That must not be accurate, since nearly 17,000 scientists have announced, by signing the petition, that they agree with Dr. Singer. More importantly, Singer is worth noting for reasons you don’t mention: he designed the first satellite instrument for measuring atmospheric ozone, he was the first director of the National Weather Satellite Service, and he now heads an international network of 300 scientists called the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Your description of Dr. Seitz as “a physicist who was president of the [National Academy of Sciences] in the 1960s” might also appear, to the casual reader, to be more dismissive than accurate. Dr. Seitz, after all, is a recipient of the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest award in science; he is President Emeritus of Rockefeller University; and he served as chairman of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on Science and Technology for Development.
Misreading the Science
Late in your article, you give a two-sentence summary of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This “large group of scientists,” you write, “has published the most authoritative peer-reviewed scientific assessments of global warming.”
Perhaps because you were running out of room, you left out some details that would have helped readers place the IPCC’s public statements in context. You failed to mention that very few of the members of that panel are climate scientists; those who are by and large admit that existing climate models do not allow for predictions of future climate changes; and IPCC members were never polled as to their agreement with the policy-makers summary of the group’s latest study.
You also might have reported that many of the scientists who participated in the peer review process publicly disagree with the panel’s most widely publicized “findings,” and yet the Clinton administration and other treaty advocates insist on including them in the “consensus” of scientific opinion. Indeed, no less than the chairman of the IPCC has said the group’s latest report is being misrepresented by treaty advocates.
Investing in Public Opinion
You report that the oil industry tentatively plans to spend $5 million over two years to publicize scientific views consistent with their own. I guess the implication is that this is a large amount of money and a nefarious plot to mislead the public. But how is the reader to judge this effort if you don’t also report how much is being spent by groups on the other side of the debate?
Perhaps you could have mentioned that a single liberal environmental group, the aforementioned National Environmental Trust, received $3 million last year for the sole purpose of publicizing the view that global warming is a catastrophic threat. Or that the Pew Charitable Trusts gave liberal environmental groups a total of $35 million in 1993.
Dozens of other foundations give millions more each year to the liberal environmental group. Government funding of climate change research now runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, virtually all of it devoted to “proving” that a threat exists.
Given this context, the oil industry’s $5 million plan seems . . . inadequate.
A Treaty Not Yet Rejected
Your article contained two other statements that might have unintentionally misled your readers. You wrote “the U.S. Senate has not yet agreed to that treaty provision,” suggesting that agreement is on the horizon. But of course we know it is not: the Senate passed by a 95-to-0 vote last July a resolution saying it would refuse to approve any treaty that fails to safeguard U.S. interests by requiring participation by third-world countries. As you know, the proposed agreement fails to do so.
At the end of your article, you say the oil industry’s plan “suggests that . . . the treaty remains popular partly because environmentalists are winning the debate on the science.” I’m sure you meant that to be a joke, since such respected publications as Science and Journal of Geophysical Research have been reporting the wholesale retreat of the scientific community from the global warming predictions of the recent past. Unfortunately, I don’t think many people reading your article also read Science and Journal of Geophysical Research, and therefore are unlikely to realize you were joking.
I hope these comments are helpful. Please don’t hesitate to call me if I can be of further assistance.
