News and Opinion
In his "Sustainable Developments" column in Scientific American, Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's leading economists, issues a challenge to the editorial board of the most widely read business paper in the world: The Wall Street Journal.
"Now I have nothing against the Wall Street Journal," he writes, "It is an excellent paper, whose science column and news reporting have accurately and carefully carried the story of global climate change." As for the editorial board, Sachs says it has sat "insouciant and comfortable, hurling editorials of stunning misdirection at their readers, continuing their irresponsible drumbeat that global warming is junk science."
He then offers to convene a meeting. "Many of the world's leading climate scientists are prepared to meet with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and to include in that meeting any climate-skeptic scientists that the Journal editorial board would like to invite," writes Sachs. Perhaps such a pow-wow could lead to more reasonable coverage of the issue, ... if only the editorial board would accept, ... which seems unlikely. Sachs notes that it's not the first time he has made the offer. "On many occasions, the news editors have eagerly accepted, but the editorial writers have remained safe in their splendid isolation."
Sachs's column prompts discussion at RealClimate, where, it so happens, Dr. Michael Mann, the researcher behind the 'hockey-stick' graph, is a regular blogger. The original RC post concludes: To those who would decry [Sachs's challenge] as a waste of time, we would point to The Economist, which recently produced a very sensible special on global warming and proposed a number of economically viable ways to tackle it, despite having been reflexively denialist not that many years ago. If the Economist can rise to the challenge, maybe there is hope for the Wall Street Journal...
Maybe so. It certainly couldn't hurt.
"Now I have nothing against the Wall Street Journal," he writes, "It is an excellent paper, whose science column and news reporting have accurately and carefully carried the story of global climate change." As for the editorial board, Sachs says it has sat "insouciant and comfortable, hurling editorials of stunning misdirection at their readers, continuing their irresponsible drumbeat that global warming is junk science."
He then offers to convene a meeting. "Many of the world's leading climate scientists are prepared to meet with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and to include in that meeting any climate-skeptic scientists that the Journal editorial board would like to invite," writes Sachs. Perhaps such a pow-wow could lead to more reasonable coverage of the issue, ... if only the editorial board would accept, ... which seems unlikely. Sachs notes that it's not the first time he has made the offer. "On many occasions, the news editors have eagerly accepted, but the editorial writers have remained safe in their splendid isolation."
Sachs's column prompts discussion at RealClimate, where, it so happens, Dr. Michael Mann, the researcher behind the 'hockey-stick' graph, is a regular blogger. The original RC post concludes: To those who would decry [Sachs's challenge] as a waste of time, we would point to The Economist, which recently produced a very sensible special on global warming and proposed a number of economically viable ways to tackle it, despite having been reflexively denialist not that many years ago. If the Economist can rise to the challenge, maybe there is hope for the Wall Street Journal...
Maybe so. It certainly couldn't hurt.
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