I’m afraid my friend and colleague Marty Rosenberg has fallen into a couple of logical and journalistic traps on global warming.  His most recent piece, “Warming Skeptics Should Blush” has indeed caused me to blush, but not because of yet another piece in The New York Times continuing to promote an unproven scientific position by attacking those who demur on the movement.  Marty and I each respect the other for our journalistic and writing abilities, mine now considerably more hoary than Marty’s since I left the profession some 30 years ago and, in fact philosophically, more than 40 years ago.  (It took me 10 years of effort to find honest work outside that for which my training had prepared me.)  I'm blushing about what my former profession has become.

The New York Times is a prime example of why I voluntarily left the profession in the 1970s.  I left it because it was morphing into something different than what it was when I entered journalism.  Led by organizations such as The New York Times and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, in the 1960s and 1970s, much of “mainstream journalism” morphed into becoming first apologists, and then advocates for the far left in our society.  That change from fact-based, balanced reporting of both sides of an issue to “advocacy journalism” was seminal in the history of our country.  Among other things, it caused us to abandon a war in which we won all the major battles against the enemy but left the field to the vicious terror of Communism.  That change, abetted by the capture of many of our universities by leftist ideologues posing as professors, also caused us to lose the Cold War.  You don’t actually think we won do you? 

The reason I’m not blushing about being a global warming skeptic is because man-made Global Warming is not a proven scientific fact.  There are many responsible scientists, including some former believers, who also are skeptics.  More than being skeptical, many of them are demonstrating the fallacy of global warming being “proven” by publishing contrarian research and documentation.  Even a few science journalists disagree.  According to the Business and Media Institute, “CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers had never bought into the notion that man can alter the climate and the Vegas snowstorm didn’t impact his opinion. Myers, an American Meteorological Society certified meteorologist, explained on CNN’s Dec. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” that the whole idea is arrogant and mankind was in danger of dying from other natural events more so than global warming.  Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media.” (Emphasis added)

I have no problem with healthy debate over unproven theories when such debate is open and free.  That is not the case with anthropogenic Global Warming.  Instead, “mainstream journalism” has bought into what is essentially a political movement designed to reorder society and the utility industry I work in.  I don’t care for the reordering envisioned by these advocates which will include limiting access to electric power for all Americans.  We’ve been warned about such “reordering” by writers such as Eric Blair (George Orwell).

The fact that mainstream journalism likes to throw around such pejorative terms as "skeptics" and "fundamentalists" and "right-wingers" when people disagree with their "advocacy" for umproven science and so-called "progressive" positions is what bothers me about The New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and Hollywood and much of "mainstream" journalism of today.  Actually, to be entirely accurate, I didn't leave journalism, it left me when it abandoned fairness, balance and telling all sides of a story.  I'm a writer and analyst, I avoid mainstream journalists.  I've actually written a book about the subject called From Reporter to Pastor: The conversion of a liberal and the loss of a culture if you're interested in reading more about how mainstream journalism was captured by the far left.  It's available on Amazon or at https://www.createspace.com/3373795.