Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section's editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity.

Now, reviews of climate research literature show universal support for the notion that human-caused climate change is happening  (Nature, 12/3/04), and surveys of climate scientists find the same unanimity (Science Daily, 1/19/09). Major scientific organizations around the world have endorsed the consensus of the climate research field, and have expressed alarm at the dangers to humanity posed by climate change.

So if a majority of the staff of Science Times nonetheless doubts that human-caused climate change is a real danger, that means one of two things: Either the journalists at one of the nation's most visible sources of science news consider scientists to be a dubious lot who may well not know what they're talking about, or those journalists have not been paying attention to what the scientists are saying. Either way, it's troubling.

And the response by the New York Times science editor Laura Chang in the comments section was hardly reassuring:

I must say your sentence about the science staff doesn't make sense. There are more than 20 people on the Science Desk of the Times, and no one has ever taken a poll of their positions on human-induced global warming. As far as I know, everyone here who covers climate--including our neighbors in the environment pod, who provide the bulk of this coverage these days--keeps an open mind about the evidence.

If "keeps an open mind" means what it usually does, then the people who cover climate for the New York Times think the jury is still out on whether climate scientists should be believed when they say humans are causing a global climate disaster. Talk about your serious threats to humanity.

The campaign against climate science has been enormously clever, and enormously effective. It's worth trying to understand how they've done it. The best analogy, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson trial....

The Dream Team of lawyers assembled for Simpson's defense had a problem: It was pretty clear their guy was guilty. Nicole Brown's blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning. So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian et al. decided to attack the process, arguing that it put Simpson's guilt in doubt, and doubt, of course, was all they needed. Hence, those days of cross-examination about exactly how Dennis Fung had transported blood samples, or the fact that Los Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman had used racial slurs when talking to a screenwriter in 1986.

If anything, they were actually helped by the mountain of evidence. If a haystack gets big enough, the odds only increase that there will be a few needles hidden inside. Whatever they managed to find, they made the most of: in closing arguments, for instance, Cochran compared Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler and called him "a genocidal racist, a perjurer, America's worst nightmare, and the personification of evil." His only real audience was the jury, many of whom had good reason to dislike the Los Angeles Police Department, but the team managed to instill considerable doubt in lots of Americans tuning in on TV as well. That's what happens when you spend week after week dwelling on the cracks in a case, no matter how small they may be.

Similarly, the immense pile of evidence now proving the science of global warming beyond any reasonable doubt is in some ways a great boon for those who would like, for a variety of reasons, to deny that the biggest problem we've ever faced is actually a problem at all. If you have a three-page report, it won't be overwhelming and it's unlikely to have many mistakes. Three thousand pages (the length of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)? That pretty much guarantees you'll get something wrong.

BUT.... don't think for a second that Milbank's going to let "greens" off the hook that easy. No way. As he put it on Sunday (2/14/10): "There's some rough justice in the conservatives' cheap shots. In Washington's blizzards, the greens were hoist by their own petard."

How so?  Climate activists "have argued by anecdote to make their case," especially Al Gore, who has warned of  a whole menu of negative consequences from climate change. Milbank writes: "It's not that Gore is wrong about these things. The problem is that his storm stories have conditioned people to expect an endless worldwide heatwave, when in fact the changes so far are subtle."

Milbank has more:

Scientific arguments, too, are problematic. In a conference call arranged Thursday by the liberal Center for American Progress to refute the snow antics of Inhofe et al., the center's Joe Romm made the well-worn statements that "the overwhelming weight of the scientific literature" points to human-caused warming and that doubters "don't understand the science."

The science is overwhelming--but not definitive. Romm's claim was inadvertently shot down by his partner on the call, the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters, who confessed that "there's a huge amount of natural variability in the climate system" and not enough years of measurements to know exactly what's going on. "Unfortunately we don't have that data so we are forced to make decisions based on inadequate data."

Aside from lamenting Romm's comments for being so "well-worn," did Jeff Masters really "shoot down" climate analyst Romm? That's not what Masters says happened; he has a response on his site, where he writes, "I agree with Dr. Romm's statement." Milbank's storyline--both sides are exaggerating--is a familiar one, but it's also entirely misleading. As is his drive-by summary of the whole "Climategate" scandal:

The scientific case has been further undermined by high-profile screw-ups. First there were the hacked e-mails of a British research center that suggested the scientists were stacking the deck to overstate the threat. Now comes word of numerous errors in a 2007 report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear in 25 years.

There is no credible evidence that climate scientists were "stacking the deck." It is hard to figure out what he means by "numerous" errors in the 2007 report; there are two prominent allegations, including the aforementioned glaciers error. The New York Times determined that the complaints have amounted to "half-truths." Milbank's assertion, then, that the "scientific case has been further undermined" is specious. But the point of climate change denial is to manufacture a political scandal--which is what journalism like this does well.

Well, it turns out that there was quite a bit of snow on the East Coast this week, which seemingly inspired another awful piece (2/11/10), this one headlined "Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze." The whole premise of the piece is based on complaints from right-wing climate change deniers--Sen. James M. Inhofe, assorted "global-warming critics," Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and the Virginia Republican party.

Not to worry, though; they're anti-science hysteria is "balanced" by a few comments from actual scientists. But at one point reporter John Broder counterposes "most climate scientists" who argue that severe storms could be linked to climate change with "some independent climate experts" who don't see the link. Why such scientists are "independent" isn't clear; nor is it actually clear who the so-called independents are anyway, since that argument was substantiated with this:

As an illustration of their point of view, the family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read "Al Gore's New Home."

James Inhofe is no way a climate expert--unless you count the number of times he is cited in the corporate media talking about climate change.

For more on corporate media's misreporting of global warming, see Extra!'s "Special Issue on Journalism and Climate Change" (2/10).