Remember when we predicted that the Wall Street Journal would give valuable op-ed space to bore its readers with an op-ed they’ve seen six times before? Specifically, something by fossil-fueled Robert Bryce that uses eagle deaths as an excuse to attack wind power? Well, we were right.
Even though it’s something he’s written about six times before, it still seems to have taken a couple of weeks for Bryce to produce the piece we foresaw. The fine folks at Media Matters even noticed our prescience, and gave us a nice shout-out!
Since we’ve brought the issue up, here are two new facts: A 2015 study found that a new wind farm “did not affect the trends of the birds populations” and a 2013 study found that fossil fuel plants kill birds orders of magnitude more birds than wind farms, even when calculating deaths per gigwatt-hour of electricity produced. So Bryce’s fear of wind is in no way justified, unless he’s similarly concerned about fossil fuel’s impacts. Since he’s not, it’s apparent this is nothing more than an attempt to break wind’s popular public perception.
[Continued after the jump]
In other news of just how hilariously sad the Journal’s opinion page is, they ran two letters yesterday that may set some sort of record for packing the most wrong into the fewest words (under 200.) In the first, Michael Cheuvront of San Antonio is confused as to why NY AG Schneiderman can ask Exxon for "its data refuting global warming", when congressman Lamar Smith can’t “compel the EPA to reveal its data allegedly supporting global warming.” As if this page didn’t exist on the EPA’s site.
But the fact is the Exxon investigation is centered on the revelation that its own data supported global warming and then the company acted like it didn’t. Not that Exxon has data refuting warming that it’s hiding and AGs are looking for. If Exxon actually did have that data there wouldn’t be a potential fraud to investigate, since its PR campaigns would’ve been based on said data instead of myths.
The second letter, by Ken Nelson of Chicago, asks if NY AG will “also be prosecuting Prof. Michael Mann’s misleading 20th-century 'hockey stick' graph of global warming or the U.N. saying temperatures have increased in the last 17 years, when they have not?” He’s both wrong about the graph being misleading (it’s not) and wrong about temperatures not increasing (they are).
Read that sentence again though, slowly and carefully, and see if you can spot the more entertaining error.
Do you see it? Apparently Nelson wants the hockey stick itself prosecuted! Which would certainly be an interesting new denier strategy, attacking the science itself instead of the scientists.
Between Bryce’s attempt to break wind’s popularity and these letters attempting to break wrongness records, we’re imagining the WSJ is going to produce a Scopes Monkey Trial sequel, Breakin’ Science 2: Hockey Stick Boogaloo.
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