The first stage involves groups of experts and activists calling attention to a public problem, which leads quickly to the second stage, wherein the alarmed media and political class discover the issue.

The second stage typically includes a large amount of euphoric enthusiasm - you might call it the “dopamine” stage—as activists conceive the issue in terms of global peril and salvation. This tendency explains the fanaticism with which divinity-school dropouts Al Gore and Jerry Brown have warned of climate change.

Then comes the third stage: the hinge. As Mr. Downs explains, there soon comes “a gradually spreading realization that the cost of ‘solving’ the problem is very high indeed.” That’s where we’ve been since the United Nations’ traveling climate circus committed itself to the fanatical mission of massive near-term reductions in fossil fuel consumption, codified in unrealistic proposals like the Kyoto Protocol.

This third stage, Mr. Downs continues, “becomes almost imperceptibly transformed into the fourth stage: a gradual decline in the intensity of public interest in the problem.”

While opinion surveys find that roughly half of Americans regard climate change as a problem, the issue has never achieved high salience among the public, despite the drumbeat of alarm from the climate campaign. Americans have consistently ranked climate change the 19th or 20th of 20 leading issues on the annual Pew Research Center poll, while Gallup’s yearly survey of environmental issues typically ranks climate change far behind air and water pollution.

“In the final stage,” Mr. Downs concludes, “an issue that has been replaced at the center of public concern moves into a prolonged limbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest.” Mr. Downs predicted correctly that environmental issues would suffer this decline, because solving such issues involves painful trade-offs that committed climate activists would rather not make.

A case in point is climate campaigners’ push for clean energy, whereas they write off nuclear power because it doesn’t fit their green utopian vision. A new study of climate-related philanthropy by Matthew Nisbet found that of the $556.7 million green-leaning foundations spent from 2011-15, “not a single grant supported work on promoting or reducing the cost of nuclear energy.” The major emphasis of green giving was “devoted to mobilizing public opinion and to opposing the fossil fuel industry.”

The Wall Street Journal

Scientific credibility: In all instances the scientific credibility of the WSJ articles ranged between "low" and "very low".

Political stance: The Journal's editors stress the independence and impartiality of their reporters. In a 2004 study, Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo argue the Journal's news pages have a pro-liberal bias because they more often quote liberal think tanks. They calculated the ideological attitude of news reports in 20 media outlets by counting the frequency they cited particular think tanks and comparing that to the frequency that legislators cited the same think tanks. They found that the news reporting of The Journal was the most liberal (more liberal than NPR or The New York Times). The study did not factor in editorials.[66] Mark Liberman criticized the model used to calculate bias in the study and argued that the model unequally affected liberals and conservatives and that "..the model starts with a very peculiar assumption about the relationship between political opinion and the choice of authorities to cite." [The authors assume that] "think tank ideology [...] only matters to liberals."

The company's planned and eventual acquisition by News Corp in 2007 led to significant media criticism and discussion about whether the news pages would exhibit a rightward slant under Rupert Murdoch. An August 1 editorial responded to the questions by asserting that Murdoch intended to "maintain the values and integrity of the Journal." [...] Some of the Journal's former reporters claim that the paper has adopted a more conservative tone since Rupert Murdoch's purchase.

(Jun 7, 2018 04:19 AM)Syne Wrote: Why are you citing the WSJ's scientific credibility when this article is not making any scientific claims? Is it just the vain hope that political will hasn't largely vanished (been subverted by identity politics), or to give any true believer in catastrophic anthropogenic climate change a very weak justification to cling to such hope? Either is likely counterproductive to the cause, since a recent study has shown that CACC deniers are more likely to have eco-friendly behaviors than true believers: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/7/climate-skeptics-more-eco-friendly-global-warming-/
Turns out that those who believe in big government solutions take no personal responsibility for their own contribution to the problem (like Gore and DiCaprio jetting around preaching about it), while those who most believe in personal responsibility are responsible, regardless of how they view the hyperbolic claims of impending catastrophe.

And why question its political stance, other than as a transparent attempt to poison the well/genetic fallacy? Did the article make any factual errors? Why was the Paris Accord nonbinding, if not for the lack of political will to enforce it? These fallacious glancing blows at its validity would seem to indicate a lack of substantial rebuttal.