In the same approach to journalistic irresponsibility that helped lead us into a costly and unnecessary war in Iraq, the NYT is now repeating it's embarrassing performance by parroting right wing propaganda aimed at the IPCC report on global climate change. Only this time, the consequences will be much, much, worse.
The last thing our nation needs now is a News media, that once took it's responsibility as the fourth estate seriously, now capitulating to the creed of being "fair and balanced" by giving equal weight to minority opinions that have been repeatedly discredited. We need facts, we need informed and credible opinions, we need researched stories; we don't need opinions that have failed to stand up to even the most basic rules of reason and truthfulness.
Like the "aluminum tubes", the "mushroom clouds", the "chemical weapons" of the lead up to the Iraq war, the NYT is now repeating baseless accusations by the Global Warming denialists. In this article:
U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege
The NYT goes after the head of the IPCC, Dr. Pachauri, for receiving speaking fees. The irresponsible implication is that because the lead of the IPCC received these fees, that a report that was produced by input from more than 130 countries, more than 2500 scientific reviewers, and more than 450 lead authors, was biased and incorrect.
It goes on to nit pick a FOUR VOLUME report for errors that denialists have found. Can ANYONE produce 4 volumes of science from 450 different authors without having errors? The biggest error was misreporting the rate of Himalayan glacier melt. The IPCC has apologized for the error.
The NYT does not report that the denialists they quote are free to publish real, quality data backed science that disputes the findings of the IPCC report, but they haven't, because they CAN'T! The pseudoscience quoted by the denialists is nothing more than loudly shouting that THE EARTH IS FLAT!
Scientists are human like the rest of us. They have big egos, they make mistakes, and they can be highly critical of their colleagues. But the scientific method is designed to counter these human flaws and to provide a path that will lead to the facts and to reasonable conclusions based on those facts.
By publishing personal attacks on one of hundreds who had input to the report, and by publishing an error or two out of many hundreds of pages of findings, the NYT is repeating the nonsense reporting it did that helped convince the public we had to fight a senseless war. A misinformed general public who has little to no knowledge of how science works, or what is real science compared to pseudoscience, will be left with the impression that Global Warming is a "theory" like evolution and we should not take any action until the theory is "proven", whatever the hell proven means in the minds of the general public.
The NYT should be embarrassed at this tabloid journalism and should either retract the story, or publish a story about all the extremely strong science backed by an overwhelming amount of quality data and professional opinion, that led to the civilization threatening conclusions of the IPCC 2007 report.
UPDATE: this is the point where I say thanks for the recommends, but I'll also take the opportunity to ask you to email the times at letters@nytimes.com and ask them to do some investigative journalism and write an article how global warming denialists are using false accusations, pseudoscience, and manipulation of the media, to misinform the public about a critical problem.