Warming Is Unequivocal - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 238

extreme weather: droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, and the like? Why, to
pick one example from a multitude, in July 2012 were 3,673 U.S. records for the
warmest nighttime temperature broken or tied, compared with only 325 records for
the lowest nighttime temperature, more than a tenfold difference?
Another often heard claim, which many politicians and members of the public
accept, is that scientists disagree about whether human activities are warming the
Earth. If scientists do disagree, the peer-reviewed literature of science would re-
flect the dispute. Instead, an analysis of peer-reviewed papers on global warming
published between 1991 and November 2011 finds that only about one scientific
article in a thousand disputes global warming. 17
Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air
Why, in spite of the undeniable scientific evidence, do so many members of the
public and so many politicians fail to accept global warming? 18 Mainly for two
reasons. First, for several decades, newspapers have bent over backward to present
global warming as though it were the subject of a genuine debate—and not just the
sensationalist press, but mainstream papers like the New York Times , the Washing-
ton Post , and the Wall Street Journal . When one of these papers runs an article
on some new finding that supports global warming, the reporter feels compelled to
add, “but some scientists disagree,” going on to quote one of the always available
deniers. The reader is presented with “both sides” of an issue on which, as far as
science is concerned, there is only one side. This has happened too many times to
be put down to sloppy journalism. It must be the result of a policy decision made
at the upper echelons of each newspaper's decision makers.
As evidence, consider this example. In the first five months of 2010, the New
York Times ran twelve prominent articles about global warming. Judging from the
headlines, ten were about the alleged controversy: “Climate Fears Turn to Doubts
Among Britons” and “Skeptics Find Fault with UN Climate Panel,” for example.
Only two articles were about the science of global warming, and one of them was
written in such a way as to give the impression that scientists might have cooked
the evidence. During 2010 the evidence for global warming was growing stronger,
but from the paper whose masthead proclaims “All the News That's Fit to Print,”
readers got exactly the opposite impression. 19 Television has done no better. The
major network news reports spend less and less time on climate, leaving the field
to Fox News, which has denied global warming at every opportunity.
The second reason that the public has been misled is that fossil fuel companies
and conservative foundations have poured scores of millions of dollars into prop-