Bret Stephens lowers the bar for intellectual honesty and more @NYTimes

Many climate scientists have been quite horrified that the New York Times boasted how it had hired Bret Stephens. They pointed out he is a climate science denier, though he's probably more correctly labeled (if you like labels) a climate change disinformer of the usual ideological kind. (Irrational commitment to an ideology can do strange things to the brain. It can kill logic for one thing.)

I thought, okay, let's see what he writes and, hopefully, the NYT will have arranged for Bret to stick to subjects he knows something about and not let him spout his climate science denial.

That didn't happen.

In his very first NYT article you'd not have guessed that Bret Stephens had ever been awarded a Pulitzer. You'd not have known that he was a journalist at all, let alone one with any sort of reputation. You'd have thought he was a hack paid to spread disinformation by one of those flaky denier groups so prevalent in the USA, someone from fake insinuation and straw man land.

Brett wrote under a misleading headline: "Climate of Complete Certainty". This set the tone for his disinformation. He likened climate science to political polls, and touted his personal brand of FUD, which has the same look as the climate science FUD you can read in any of the dim corners of climate conspiracy cyberspace.

Lazy, sloppy thinking

In his article Bret Stephens strung together various unrelated notions as if there was a logical link. He also included a few logical fallacies for good measure. But first, the unrelated thoughts:

• Hillary Clinton didn't win the Presidency, despite the polls.
• In the USA, the polls show there are still a lot of people who are not "a great deal" worried about climate change.
• Climate scientists are generally meticulous when reporting science.
• Some climate activists are unscrupulous (no examples are provided)
• Smiling at deniers is all it takes to have them change their opinion and accept science (well, that's an extrapolation from what Bret wrote, but it's close enough).

What was he trying to argue? I think his main points were that climate science might get overturned by opinion polls, and that deniers will do an about face on their science denial if you're nice to them. He is also hopeful that climate science will be disproven one of these days. Fat chance on all counts.

Bret demonstrated that he's one of the unscrupulous climate activists he mentioned. He doesn't want to take action to protect us and our planet. He doesn't want us to invest in mitigating or adapting to climate change.

He showed he is not meticulous about reporting science, downplaying the the huge and rapid increase in global temperature as "modest".

He showed that he doesn't understand probability. He portrayed temperature measurements as having 100% probability. (They aren't all that far off but the mean temperature reported is not 100% certain, as the error bars on temperature charts demonstrate.) He then wrote how climate model projections have likelihood estimates also, but acted as if they are not reported - the strawman fallacy.

Logical fallacies, loaded language, climate disinformation

This is what Bret Stephens wrote, denier-style. Spot the fallacies. Check out the loaded language.

Anyone who has read the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change knows that, while the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That’s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future. To say this isn’t to deny science. It’s to acknowledge it honestly.

Bret then showed that he is is a fudger-style disinformer. He wrote another strawman:

Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

Now we get to the nitty gritty. Bret is a fossil fuel advocate but not game to come out and say so. He talks about "ideological intentions" and "expensive changes", but doesn't admit to his own ideological intentions, nor mention the much bigger cost of inaction.

Notice his opening strawman. No-one is claiming total certainty of science. That's not how science works. And if fake sceptics and disinformers like Bret Stephens act like imbeciles and deplorables, then they can expect that some people will treat them that way.

Bret finishes with a whimper, not a flourish, writing as his confusing penultimate paragraph:

None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences. But ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism. They know — as all environmentalists should — that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power.

What is his "opinion" here? Is he doing a denier and saying he has hope that the greenhouse effect will be disproven? If not, then what is he trying to argue?

He provides no further clues to his message. He does demonstrate that his intellectual capability is pretty poor by NYT standards generally, finishing off with this mix of logical fallacies - a false analogy and a strawman:

Perhaps if there had been less certitude and more second-guessing in Clinton’s campaign, she’d be president. Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.

Right.

Hands up everyone who thinks Bret Stephens would be capable of having a "reasoned conversation" about climate science? That is, one that he doesn't fill up with logical fallacies. I cannot see any hands raised - can you? Which proves my point every bit as well as Bret Stephens proved his.

Is this why the NYT hired Bret Stephens?

This bloke was touted by the NYT as a recipient of a Pulitzer, which was meant to justify their purchase. His first NYT article showed no sign of that. His article looked to have been dashed off in about five minutes with no thought, no research, no facts, and logical fallacy from woe to go. Is this really and truly why the NYT pays him the big bucks? Heck, Anthony Watts at WUWT gets his readers to write this sort of junk for free.

To take a leaf from Bret Stephens' book, let me pose some questions:

• Is the NYT getting ready to sell to Rupert Murdoch, and wanting to make the paper more appealing to him by joining his "war on science"?
• Is the NYT suffering because Donald Trump has been taking potshots at it, and got Bret Stephens to write shallow denier nonsense to appease Trump and the GOP?
• Is the NYT considering a change of market segment, and about to shift holus bolus to the sensationalist gutter press tabloid audience?
• Is there a KGB sleeper among the NYT editors who has awakened to destroy the paper?
• Is NYT against the Climate March and wanting to discredit climate science?
• Has Bret Stephens got writers' block and sold himself to NYT for a song, thinking he could write any crap he felt like and get away with it?

I'm sure you can think of other plausible and not so plausible explanations for this new hire at the NYT, particularly given the very first "opinion" from Bret Stephens, and particularly given the timing of it - just ahead of the Climate March.

Now if Bret had written an opinion that made any sense, exhibited logic, and was based in fact, and if he'd written about something on which there are legitimate different opinions, then NYT could have held it's head up high and said - this is why we hired him.

But he didn't. So they can't.

A long way from Pulitzer material

Bret was awarded a Pulitzer in the Commentary category back in 2013 "For his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist." There's nothing incisive about his first article at NYT. Nor is it enlivened by anything.  It's nothing more than a lazy rehash and mishmash of what you've been seeing from US disinformation lobby groups for around 30 years. Tired, wrong, and outdated.

If NYT was persuaded to hire Bret Stephens hoping for some Pulitzer content he's shown them their huge mistake. If NYT is prepared to lose the respect of its subscribers in order to try to expand its reach then I believe it will succeed in the former and will fail in the latter.

Today's article shows that NYT editorial page editor James Bennet of the NYT was wrong when he said: "I have no doubt he crosses our bar for intellectual honesty and fairness." The only way Bret Stephens can cross the bar is if the NYT lowers the bar.

Top photo - Bret Stephens on Twitter.