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发帖数: 9503 | 1 Wall Street Journal
Our Changing News Climate : Why even New York Times readers may resist the
faith.
Just exactly how much has the climate changed in recent decades? Longtime
New York Times readers can be forgiven if they are now thoroughly confused
on the matter.
Last month this column noted that the actions of the New York Times suggest
that the people who put out the newspaper don’t think burning carbon is as
dangerous as one would think from reading their product. How else to explain
their marketing effort to persuade well-heeled readers to increase
emissions by travelling the globe aboard a barely-filled Boeing ? And now,
one particularly industrious Times reader submits evidence of another reason
to resist the paper’s climate faith. In this case the skepticism about
global warming comes not from refusing to take the paper seriously but from
taking it too seriously.
Anyone old enough to have been a Times reader in the late 1980s may recall a
series of stories that helped educate the public on how cool our planet
used to be. Here’s one report from March of 1988:
"One of the scientists, Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration’s Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said he
used the 30-year period 1950-1980, when the average global temperature was
59 degrees Fahrenheit, as a base to determine temperature variations."
The paper returned to the topic in June of that year, and reminded readers
of the planet’s colder past:
"Dr. Hansen, who records temperatures from readings at monitoring stations
around the world, had previously reported that four of the hottest years on
record occurred in the 1980’s. Compared with a 30-year base period from
1950 to 1980, when the global temperature averaged 59 degrees Fahrenheit,
the temperature was one-third of a degree higher last year."
The following year, the paper reported a new record high in global
temperatures and affirmed its climate history, which seemed to be the
consensus view—at least among scientists quoted by the Times:
"The British readings showed that the average global temperature in 1988 was
0.612 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average for the period
1950 through 1979, which is a base for comparing global temperatures. The
average worldwide temperature for that 30-year period is roughly 59 degrees
Fahrenheit, the British researchers said."
In 1991, the Times reported yet another record high, and published yet
another reminder of how cool the planet used to be:
"The Goddard group found that the record average surface temperature for the
globe was eight-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit above the 1951-1980 average
of 59 degrees. The British group found it seventh-tenths of a degree higher
than the 1951-80 average."
By that point a reasonable consumer might have been ardently hoping to
return to that magical era in which global temperatures averaged just 59
degrees. But in the ensuing years it must have been difficult for Times
readers to stay hopeful. As the years and then the decades rolled by, The
Times routinely reported record or near-record highs as global temperatures
appeared to march ever higher.
In January of this year, the newspaper published a feature entitled, “How
2016 Became Earth’s Hottest Year on Record.” The Times noted the
disturbing news that “2016 was the first time that the hottest year on
record occurred three times in a row.” And things could be about to get
much worse. “We expect records to continue to be broken as global warming
proceeds,” climate enthusiast Michael Mann told the Times.
Is there any way to return to the salad days of 59 degrees? Well, it turns
out to be easier than you might think. In January, as the government’s
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was reporting the third
consecutive year of record highs, it noted that the average global
temperature in 2016 had surged to a sizzling... 58.69 degrees.
Over the years researchers seem to have concluded that the planet was not as
hot as they thought. Oops.
The most important facts in the climate debate are subject to frequent
revisions. This doesn’t mean the global warming thesis is wrong, but it
argues for skepticism. The Journal’s Holman Jenkins noted in 2015:
"By the count of researcher Marcia Wyatt in a widely circulated presentation
, the U.S. government’s published temperature data for the years 1880 to
2010 has been tinkered with 16 times in the past three years."
While waiting for the science to settle, this column’s advice to Times
readers is to go ahead and fly around the world on the newspaper’s
luxurious jet—if you don’t mind the company. |
