The Patriot Post® · Climate Alarmism Minus Perspective Equals Fake News
Like any policy discussion, the field of science can be easily distorted and misconstrued when it lacks proper perspective and insight. The New York Times performed this masterfully in a recent climate piece, “Mapping 50 Years of Melting Ice in Glacier National Park.” The article’s objective was to tug at Americans’ heartstrings by highlighting the supposedly exceptional amount of ice melt occurring in northern Montana, where glaciers “shrank by more than a third between 1966 and 2015, according to new data from the United States Geological Survey and Portland State University in Oregon.”
To help readers understand how their carbon footprint is disposing America of its ice age relics, the Times publishes myriad images to visually (and emotionally) document the receding glaciers. The article then stipulates, “Glacier National Park’s eponymous ice formations have been around for more than 7,000 years, and have survived warmer and cooler periods. But they have been shrinking rapidly since the late 1800s, when North America emerged from the ‘Little Ice Age,’ a period of regionally colder, snowier weather that lasted for roughly 400 years. (At its founding in 1910, the park had at least 150 glaciers, most of which are now gone.) After the end of the Little Ice Age, glaciers across the Western United States, Canada and Europe lost ice as temperatures rebounded. But scientists have attributed more recent melting to human-caused global warming.”
By what objective temperature measurements? Well, the Times doesn’t say, and nefariously so. As Robert Tracinski observes, this form of climate deception has become a pattern at the Times. He writes, “There is no science without numbers. Science can’t get by on qualitative descriptions. If you say the average global temperature in 2016 was ‘higher’ than in 2015, that’s not science. It could be a lot higher or a little higher. It could be a number that is enormous, or it could be a number that is literally insignificant. (And if they don’t tell you the number, guess which of those it is likely to be.)”
The Times knows such disclaimers could jeopardize its message, which is the real motivation for its refusing to publish temperature minutiae. Why else would it neglect to report that regional temperatures around Glacier National Park have actually been flat for more than a century? Global warming is real — few dispute that. But if temperatures aren’t rising in tandem around GNP, there has to be more to the story for why glaciers are receding at an ostensibly faster rate because of human activity. None of this matters, however, because, as Tracinski opines, the Times is predisposed to believe that “nothing can be attributed to mere natural causes any more. It all has to be because of global warming.”
In January, The Wall Street Journal wisely editorialized that “nuances are important, because phrases such as ‘hottest year ever’ are waved around as a pretext for political action that usually involves giving more control over the economy to governments.” Sadly, the Times continues to borrow from the same playbook. After Donald Trump’s election in November, Times officials promised to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.” In truth, they’re sticking to the same statist agenda.