WSJ Digs In Climate-Change-Denial Heels

Rupert Murdoch has a story and he is sticking to it. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page denied human responsibility for climate change, and Murdoch’s story continues.

“The Myth of the Climate Change 97%’” takes an official stance against claims that President Obama tweeted and NASA’s website has published, saying that, “Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.”

The editorial was written by Joseph Bast, president of the “PR pollution clearing” Heartland Institute, and Roy Spencer. According to The Guardian in an opposing response published Wednesday, Spencer formerly testified to US Congress in support of human-responsibility claims as part of the 97 percent, despite his research falling in the 3 percent peer-reviewed fringe minority work claiming the exact opposite.

Bast and Spencer argue that abstracts of the 97 percent’s studies don’t reflect the content accurately, that climate scientists don’t specifically claim global warming to be “dangerous,” and that “scores of articles by prominent [contrarian] scientists… who question the consensus, were excluded.”

Within the sources that Bast and Spencer do cite is a survey from the American Meteorological Society, where only 13 percent of participant members describe climate science as their area of expertise.

According to The Guardian, the editorial could be credited as a response to John Oliver’s global warming debate video, which has gone viral with over 3 million views. Either way, WSJ’s strident stance that climate change isn’t being impacted by human activity is prompting many to question their responsibility as a news leader.