It’s Insignificant (Or even Beneficial…)
--
Featuring: The Wall Street Journal
The “This is Fine” approach to the climate crisis tends to appeal to those who wish to appear rational, moderate, and impartial in their judgment. The “Hoax!” approach suits those with deeply paranoid political streaks. The “Insignificant/Beneficial” view of rapid anthropogenic global heating tends to draw myopic but bright technogeeks who zero in on one singular element of the issue and ignore all else. Promoters of this view, that climate destabilization is possibly beneficial, dazzle the unsuspecting public jury with a show of numbers, images, and dance routines, all designed to get away with… murder.
The Wall Street Journal is precisely one of those places where such razzle-dazzling myopia is rampant.[1] Unsurprisingly, they tend to exclusively frame the issue in terms of the short-term financial cost of doing anything about the problem and its multiple manifestations. The WSJ tries to obscure this narrow vision by placing their most outrageous Denialist articles in the Opinion section. This gives the publisher the plausible deniability to claim that they are not Denialists. Yet the constant drumbeat of climate “skepticism” (as the editorial board likes to call it) which appears both on those opinion pages, and the couched and conditional use of “may” and “could” on their “news” pages for the past three decades puts the lie to their claim to be rooted in science and not profiteering ideology.
For example, in January of 2017 the editorial staff opined “By now you’ve seen the headline: 2016 was the hottest year on record. The news has been paired with predictions of civilization’s imminent demise. But a closer look at the evidence reveals that the political heat is overwrought — and there’s still no reason to re-engineer the global economy to mitigate small climate fluctuations.”[2] Twenty nine years after James Hansen’s congressional testimony, the WSJ opinion article chalks up the heat increase to a temporary fluctuation of El Niño and only compares 2016 to 2015 — which was another record-breaking year, thus creating a lack of longitudinal global temperature context.[3]
One recent gem published in the WSJ was by John Coleman’s good friend, Fred Singer: “The Sea is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change”. [4] The Opinion article promotes the physics-denying idea that basic thermodynamics are not operating on the oceans. The WSJ can claim that it is not saying Singer’s absurdities are factual, just that they are worthy of being heard. The goal is the creation of doubt which suffices to forestall taking any action. So long as the world drags its feet on the issue, those who profit most from inaction (fossil fuel corporations, the plastics and petrochemical industries, and their investors/supporters above all) will continue to profit as the biosphere is increasingly sickened.
Another approach taken by the Wall Street Journal (and a few others such as Trump’s former EPA head Scott Pruitt before he resigned from office) is the claim that global warming is actually beneficial.[5] The Trump administration’s attempt to buy Greenland, aware that the ice sheets on it are melting and that it may become accessible to mining rare-earth materials is typical of this “beneficial” thinking.[6] The opening salvo of Julian E. Barnes’ January 12, 2014 Wall Street Journal news report (not opinion) on the challenges facing the US military due to melting Arctic sea ice ignores such loaded and hysterical terminology as “global warming” or “climate change” (to say nothing of RAGH!) and instead sets out the benefits of a melting polar cap immediately:
“The 40-year-old Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star returned to the Arctic Ocean this summer after seven years in semiretirement, charging into a thinning polar ice sheet that U.S. defense officials predict will give way to new commercial waterways and a resource-rich frontier by midcentury.”[7] (emphases mine)
The potential benefits of global climate destabilization are reflected in the subheader as well: “Thinning Polar Ice Expected to Give Way to New Commercial Waterways and Resource-Rich Frontier” (emphasis theirs). Since the article never addresses global climate destabilization, it also does not need to address oceanic acidification, globally reduced crop-yields, increasingly strained infrastructure, loss of marine habitat and species, potential catastrophic end of the Gulf Stream, or any other numerous calamities related to global climate destabilization which will impoverish resources and wreak havoc on the global economy. Trying to stop the planet from warming becomes, by implication, counterproductive to the American (and therefore global) economy! We need global warming, according to the WSJ! (And we’re making investments now in it to ensure it happens in the future!)
Another WSJ article (not opinion piece), which combines “This is Fine” with “Hoax!” and “It’s Beneficial!” is “Matt Ridley’s 2012 “Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change”; subtitle in full: Evidence points to a further rise of just 1°C by 2100. The net effect on the planet may actually be beneficial.[8] Ridley takes all three positions (there is no significant change; the UN’s IPCC is a secretive anti-capitalist organization built on occult eco-theology; increasing temperatures might even benefit us!) and produces a science-fantasy projecting neo-liberal dreams into a happily-ever-after of unbounded growth and prosperity for all! This is what passes as “journalism” in the WSJ, effectively blurring the line between Chrichton’s paranoid fantasies, Coleman’s delusional rants, and the WSJ editorial board’s idea of “The Truth in its proper use” (a motto they finally ditched in 2020).
* * * * *
[1] Carly Cassella’s article in Science Alert (June 12, 2018) points out that the practice of publishing climate-science denial is not particular to the WSJ but is endemic to other leading media sites such as Forbes, The Washington Times, The Hill, and leading news sources in the US I have already mentioned in this chapter. https://www.sciencealert.com/major-news-outlets-wall-street-journal-climate-denial-opinion-piece The notable hiring of climate science Denialist Bret Stephens from the WSJ to the NYT in 2017 typifies this incestuous corporate news media relationship in which key players in Denialism simply move from venue to venue, their messages unchanged. See Matthews, Susan “Bret Stephens’ First Column for the New York Times Is Classic Climate Change Denialism” April 30, 2017 Slate.com. https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/bret-stephens-first-new-york-times-column-is-classic-climate-change-denialism.html
[2] Editorial Staff. “Keeping Cool About Hot Temperatures” January 19, 2017. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/keeping-cool-about-hot-temperatures-1484871286
[3] Hausfather and Merchant. “The Wall Street Journal fails to acknowledge that 2016 was the warmest year on record” Climate Feedback, January 27, 2017. https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/wall-street-journal-fails-acknowledge-2016-warmest-year-record/
[4] Singer, Fred. “The Sea is Rising , but Not Because of Climate Change” in the Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2018” (accessed, November 18, 2019 in the Opinion Section) https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sea-is-rising-but-not-because-of-climate-change-1526423254
[5] Oliver Milman. “EPA head Scott Pruitt says global warming may help ‘humans flourish’” The Guardian, February 7, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/07/epa-head-scott-pruitt-says-global-warming-may-help-humans-flourish
[6] Editorial Staff, “Buying Greenland isn’t a good idea — it’s a great idea” Washington Examiner, August 17, 2019. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/buying-greenland-isnt-a-good-idea-its-a-great-idea
[7] Julian E. Barnes. “Arctic Passage Opens Challenges for U.S. Military” January 12, 2014. The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/arctic-passage-opens-challenges-for-us-military-1389584014
[8] Matt Ridley. “Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change” in The Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2012 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323981504578179291222227104 (accessed, November 18, 2019)
