Bill Saletan learns more about science each week. His opinions are well formed, maybe not perfect, but he was designed with flaws. Ron Rosenbaum doesn't know much about science and doesn't seem to care. Isn't it sort of goofy to take an idea from the editorial in The Columbia Review of Journalism, and use it as an argument against an article that appears elsewhere? Doesn't the use of that straw man rhetoric negate Rosenbaum's position? Of course it does, but no matter.

If Abu Dhabi wants to have a green city, why in Allah's name shouldn't it? There's plenty of wind, why bring an issue up and not posit an objection? Could politics be an issue?

"She's correct in saying that this is the consensus, that most journalists now accept what's known as the "anthropogenic theory" of global warming"

But that's not what she says. Not close to what she says. She isn't writing about journalistic consensus, she's writing about scientific consensus and strangely her (as another poster pointed out, why not use HER name?) exact words are quoted, "mainstream science and environmental coverage has generally adopted the scientific consensus that increases in heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels and tropical deforestation are changing the planet's climate."

This kind of distortion, lying, is not acceptable journalism. There used to be an editor at Slate. What he says she says, he lies about.

Rosenbaum then mis-uses the term, consensus. It does not mean, "(W)hoever who has the greatest number of consistent papers—papers that agree with him or her—"wins." The present consensus on global warming is based on literally billions of data gathered by thousands of scientists in thousands of locations over thousands or years. The consensus is that those data, independently gathered and interpreted, point toward the same conclusion. But Rosenbaum prefers the flourish; Beware the green alarmists, hide the children and women, the green alarmists are going to kill us all. Scapegoating isn't a journalistic ideal. It does find its uses in political screeds, yes?

The Einstein example is ludicrous. Einstein was not the Lone Ranger. He did not work in a vacuum, well, maybe a vacuum tube. He did not overturn any consensus. He was thoroughly convinced of the "truth" of Newtonian physics. It's still as true as it ever was. Without a complete understanding of physics, he would not have understood that light behaves differently. The Lone Ranger hypothesis is almost never true. Maybe Grandma Moses (I'd like to point out the appropriate nature of that example; linguistically that is) was an original genius with no precursors, but not Einstein, and not Samuels. Kekule and his snake dream were close to originality, but as the Greek says, something from nothing cannot come. Everybody has precursors and everybody should always do some checking of the facts. The proper journalistic question would be, who does the myth of the lone hero fighting against the Giant Evil Consensus lend credibility to? Is that myth statistically supportable?

There are legitimate disagreements in the global warming data. Some, not nearly as many, imply everything is fine. That is dissent. But if you have a billion data that point one way, and hundreds that point another, wisdom suggests a consensus is necessary. There are also differing interpretations of all that data. Those differences have not been discounted by the large scientific studies. They are included. Do journalists have a duty to present those data and interpretations as equal? That would be dishonest. Besides, the journalists I presume Rosenbaum refers to are tv readers, they only have 22 seconds to avoid getting their point across. Like the Bush administration (hmm, the think dissent about global warming is good, but dissent about war in the Middle East is bad, hmmm) our brave, individualist author thinks ignorant data are just as important as thoughtful data.

The dissent Rosenbaum seems to prefer is along the lines of, my grandfather smoked for 98 years and didn't die of cancer. Or, I don't see any noxious gases coming out of my SUV, what the hell, it's my way of expressing my individual freedom to drive whatever machine I want to, whatever machine subtly supports my inner vision of the individual hero fighting against the horrible paradigm.

Exploring arguments is fine, excellent, go do good works. But exploring stupid arguments is, you know? There was one good point in the screed; Climate Debate Daily. Here's another web site to look at and wonder about: <link>

If you wonder why the specific references to overturning consensus thinking are all many years in the past, it's because science has moved very far since Popper (properly a philosopher of science) wanted falsification (and verification) to be the lynch pins of exploration. It's not that the consensus that falsification is necessary for proof are no longer necessary, it's that proof and truth are, like everything else, not what they seem in the temples of god.

Here's a place to read an in-depth, falsifiable, complete dissection of the ethical dilemma posed by the dissent about and ignoring of global warming: June 2008, Scientific American, page 96: The Ethics of Climate Change.

Freeman Dyson's article was simplistic; his credentials don't make him right. Freedom of the press doesn't mean that scientific journals or journalists should be forced to repeat inanities.