Wall Street Journal opinion editors are attacked for deep climate bias

In the climate wars, a little-known but apparently well-financed environmental group is assaulting the Wall Street Journal‘s (WSJ‘s) opinion page, a mighty bastion for climate scoffers. A 14 June Politico blurb summarizes:

That first ad filled the lower-right-hand quarter of one of the WSJ‘s three opinion pages. It ended by doubling down on its headlined challenge: “Historically, when faced with a national security threat like climate change, Americans have set aside ideology, faced facts and taken action. It is time for the editorial board of the WSJ to become part of the solution on climate change. Watch this space for how.”

To watch that space, WSJ nonsubscribers have cost-free options. They can sign up for email notifications or periodically consult the webpage where the partnership has begun displaying the dozen ads. The first two can already be seen there. “We want to bring accurate, mainstream climate science to readers of this publication’s opinion pages,” the group announces, “and show that pricing carbon is a bipartisan, market-based solution to the climate challenge that will increase economic growth and American competitiveness.”

The second WSJ ad, which ran on 16 June, carries the headline “Carbon dioxide traps heat on Earth,” with the subhead “If we can agree on that, we can have a conversation.” Concerning the trapping, it says, “We’ve known this for more than a century.” Citing work by Spencer Weart , historian emeritus at the Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics (publisher of Physics Today), the ad recalls, “In the 1820s, French physicist Jean-Baptiste Fourier identified the Greenhouse Effect. By 1896, Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius showed how CO2 from industrial emissions would cause temperatures to rise.”

The partnership calls its vision for climate policy “Climate 2.0.” The idea is to “harness” the free market in nonpartisan ways, with energy-innovation incentives and “a revenue-neutral carbon fee.” The partnership explains that “about half of the revenue could be used to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent (the highest in the industrialized world) to 25 percent. Most of the balance could be returned to low and middle income families through a lump sum tax credit, rebate, or other tax reductions. We call this bipartisan approach ‘carbon-funded tax cuts.’”

In a 14 June Washington Post piece , media reporter Paul Farhi insinuated that the WSJ charged an extra $9000 for the initial WSJ-bashing ad, but he also reported a WSJ official’s denial. Farhi quoted partnership cofounder and chief executive George Frampton: “We’re not really trying to convert or attack the paper. We’re trying to reach out to a business audience in a medium that never tells them the science is basically settled and that this is a national-security and economic problem. ... I’d say if the Journal won’t cover it, we’ll pay to have them cover it.” The Post piece identified Frampton as a lawyer and former Wilderness Society president, and it added that cofounders Walter Minnick and William Eacho are, respectively, a Democratic former congressman from Idaho and a businessman and former ambassador to Austria.

The assault force prepared extensively for its attack on the WSJ scoffing bastion. Researchers for the Partnership for Responsible Growth analyzed some 602 WSJ editorials, columns, and op-eds going back two decades. The partnership has posted online a spreadsheet titled “Database: How the Wall Street Journal opinion section presents climate change.” According to the group, the analysis shows “a consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action, and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat.”

Once a cursor has been placed within it, the spreadsheet can be navigated with keyboard arrows. Its oldest entry cites the op-ed “Keep cool about global warming,” from 16 October 1995. A blurb reports, “Robert C. Balling Jr, the director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University in Tempe, offers four environmental statistics that dispel the notion of global warming brought about by use of fossil fuels.”

The group has also placed online a 15-page report that opens by declaring why the WSJ matters: It’s “the premier paper of the business world and one of the widest circulating daily papers in the United States. From small business owners to titans of industry to policy makers in state capitals and Washington, the Journal has long been a powerfully influential source of news for those responsible for turning a profit and setting economic policy.”

The introduction stipulates that the “reporting of the Journal is widely recognized as some of the best in the world,” but it adds, “Yet this analysis indisputably shows that its opinion page has done its readers a disservice by consistently ignoring or ridiculing the scientific consensus on the reality and urgency of climate change, and in so doing minimizing the potential economic, social and environmental risks of climate change.” It charges that “such an out-of-balance view cannot help but hinder its readers’ ability to make accurate assessments of the risk climate change poses to their businesses.”

The analysts found that of 201 WSJ editorials since 1997, not a single one acknowledged that fossil fuels cause climate change. (To emphasize that graphically, they included a pie chart with no slices shown—only a full, or maybe empty, pie.) Of 279 op-eds published since 1995, they found only 40—14%—that reflect mainstream climate science. Of 122 columns published since 1997, they say that only four—3%—"accept as fact that fossil fuels cause climate change, or endorse a policy to reduce emissions.”

They also assert that mainstream scientists “routinely” criticize the op-eds. My own anecdotal surmise, however—from more than a decade of observation—is that criticism specifically via letters to the WSJ editor, in any case, is not routine, whether thanks to nonfeasance by experts, or rejections by the letters editor, or both. The report says only, “Letters to the editor were dismissed for technical reasons (multiple letters exist on a single URL) and because their purpose is often to oppose the opinions presented by a paper.”

The analysts level the accusation that the WSJ opinion page “consistently highlights voices of those with vested interests in fossil fuels—though only sporadically are these industry ties disclosed.” They also charge that “downplaying established science and battling health protections is an established pattern for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. The paper exhibited editorial bias on: the harmful health effects of tobacco; the safety and efficacy of airbags and seat belt laws; the danger of dioxin/Agent Orange; and other environmental threats.”

The analysts conclude the following:

“Casting doubt on solid science”? In realms other than climate, the WSJ opinion page generally does the opposite, as when it published physicist Michio Kaku’s op-ed both explaining and celebrating LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves.

How, if at all, will the editors react to the assault? As of 16 June, they had not responded.

Update, 29 June:

With sarcasm starting in the headline and subhead—"Climate denial finally pays off: A series of Journal editorial page-bashing ads shows the climate cause in mid-crackup"—the Wall Street Journal‘s Holman W. Jenkins Jr has answered the series of opinion-page ads calling for the WSJ opinion editors to “become part of the solution on climate change.”

The 29 June op-ed attacks the ads’ sponsor:

The op-ed boasts that Jenkins himself leads all WSJ commentators indicted by the ads’ sponsor. In a “ploddingly conventional” way, he says, he has

• merely “written that evidence of climate change is not evidence of what causes climate change,” and that
• “it would be astonishing if human activity had no impact, but the important questions are how and how much,” and that
• “science has been unable to discern signal from noise in the hunt for man-made warming,” and that
• “it’s difficult to justify action on cost-benefit grounds,” and that
• the “climate crowd has turned to persecuting critics as a substitute for meaningful climate action because, as President Obama has acutely observed, voters won’t support their efforts to jack up energy prices.”

Jenkins also criticizes some of what was heard when the ads were discussed by guests on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. The guests included Partnership for Responsible Growth cofounder and chief executive George Frampton.

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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.