If we could afford to do it, we’d make the Letters to the Editor section of the magazine 20 pages long. Our readers are the lifeblood of our publication, and their thoughts add depth and breadth to every issue.
Having said that, sometimes letters come down the pipe that we don’t print. The blatant advertisements and ad hominem attacks are easy to distinguish and cull. Other letters, though, teeter right on the edge of printability. With these, we scratch our heads and wonder what to do. Here’s one such letter that we’ve been struggling with:
Please continue to print articles and letters on the carbon cycle. The dialog in your magazine is the most grown-up that I’ve seen. The Global Warming issue is over 3 years old now, and evidence has piled up to show that it is, indeed, dishonest and false.
The bottom line revelation is that the earth is cooling, not warming. The summer (thawed) level of the polar ice cap has grown from 1.7 million square miles to 2.6 million, from September 2007 to July 2009. Rhode Island and adjacent areas are having the coolest summer on record. My plantings here in climate zone 6 are behaving exactly as they did in climate zone 4 ½, where I once lived.
Specific arguments that have been used to support the hoax are also being exposed and debunked. For example, the warming is said to be caused by “excessive” carbon dioxide levels which are “accumulating” because of “human activity.” But that premise contains three errors. The increase in CO2 level is now seen to be exactly equal to the increase in the world population, about 1 ½ percent per year. Because CO2 is the ultimate bottom of the food chain for all life on earth, an increasing supply of CO2 is needed to feed the increasing population. It is not accumulating, but is being converted to food as fast as it is produced. The officially certified “biggest pumpkin,” established every year, is now 1502 pounds (that’s ¾ of a TON). This is just one of many examples showing that plants are capable of photosynthesizing as much CO2 as is provided to them. There is no “top limit” above which CO2 becomes “excessive” and “accumulating.”
The most insightful statement I’ve seen on the issue is a letter to the editor in the New York Times Sunday Magazine from a Harvard University researcher that stated that knowledgeable scientists know that the Global Warming threat was exaggerated, but they also know that it is the best way, if not the only way, to successfully compete for research grant dollars.
There are a number of problems in this letter. For one, the Harvard researcher’s case seems to be misrepresented. Monika Kopacz’s point/opinion in her April 12th letter to the New York Times Sunday Magazine was that while global warming science is both uncertain and exaggerated, in today’s world, exaggeration is the only way to assure any federal funding, thus enabling research that will reduce the scientific uncertainty. She was pointing out a Catch-22, while our letter writer seems to suggest she was sniffing a rat.
Furthermore, the facts presented by the letter writer to bolster his claim that the planet is cooling not warming are un-credited, which is a red flag to say the least. There is much accredited science that directly contradicts his assertions. An observation about the weather in Rhode Island is fine, but ice level baseline data needs a “says whom” attached or it’s just words.
And so what to do? Keep in mind that we have a finite amount of space on the page. And that laying down a gauntlet like this would probably evoke responses that would monopolize the letters page for many issues to come. Do we run the letter and open these floodgates? Do we pass on it and take our lumps as censors? Members of our editorial staff had different takes.
The argument was floated that it would be irresponsible to run the letter because the science reported in it could not be confirmed. It’s one thing to print a letter that says global warming is a hoax – that’s an opinion; but it’s another thing to print a letter filled with un-sourced scientific data and, it was suggested, logical inaccuracies. This all seems to fly in the face of good journalism.
Another perspective advocated for the letters inclusion. The argument was made that while un-sourced data wouldn’t cut it in a feature story, the letters page should be a place where readers can say whatever they want. The Letters section was analogized to a barroom, or a big tent, where all opinions are welcome. Censoring speech here, it was argued, would be like instituting a dress code.
We wondered if this letter elevated discourse. We wondered if it was too far removed from the original discussion of carbon sequestration. Inevitably, our own discussion progressed far enough afield that global warming itself, from polar bears to the socio-political ramifications of carbon credits, was debated passionately. Bull moose partake in ritualized sparring; it’s different than legitimate fighting. Two males will approach each other in a low-key way, position their antlers together gently, and then push. Two members of our editorial staff partook in the editorial equivalent of this behavior. One wondered if magazines were giving enough coverage to dissenting views on climate change, the other wondered if magazines were giving too much coverage to dissenting views on climate change. Global warming models were poked and prodded. Al Gore was lionized and demonized. The office was quite a mess afterwards.
The point of bringing all this up is to show that the decisions we make regarding what letters get printed in the magazine are not always easy. Sometimes journalists, with all their high-minded talk about ethics and balance and truth, can make the craft seem black and white. The truth is that there are more gray areas than we report. The truth is that the walls erected between sections of magazines and newspapers (op-ed, letters, news) are sometimes hard to define. Sometimes we’re not sure what the right thing to do is.
So are we going to run the letter? You’ll have to wait for the winter issue to find out.
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