Green Weenie of the Week: The New York Times

A couple days ago I mentioned that I expected some nitwit at any moment to say that the California fires are proof of climate change, and I was not disappointed. But I did not expect the New York Times to step up and totally beclown itself in such spectacular fashion.

Here’s the Times headline yesterday:

In a Warming California, A Future of More Fires: The recent cycle of drought and deluge in California led to major fire risk. Climate change makes that cycle worse.

No surprise here. But then you read down into the story and you come to this admission:

It is too early to know if climate change is directly responsible for all of these conditions in California over the past several years. . . Climate change may not be to blame for this. Meteorologists suggest a ridge of air over the Pacific Northwest, perhaps related to the cooling of Pacific waters under current La Niña conditions, is the likely culprit.

So the story refutes its own headline, and merely repeats the usual standard case about how greenhouse gases warm the planet. But hey, why let scientific ignorance get in the way of a good headline.

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