Science, religion and global warming

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby leans heavily on MIT scientist Richard Lindzen — and not for the first time — in arguing that global warming is nothing to worry about. Lindzen has a commentary in the current Newsweek suggesting that we should all calm down, a sentiment that Jacoby heartily endorses.

To their credit, Lindzen and Jacoby are too intellectually honest to assert something they know to be false. Neither is willing to deny that global warming is real, or that human activity is at least partly responsible. Indeed, this is how Lindzen opens his piece:

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it?

Both Lindzen and Jacoby go on to say that we should relax because global warming might be good for us. True, Lindzen does say that global warming might prove not to be as bad as current models predict. But his essential view is contained in this sentence: “A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now.”

This is religion, not science — not far removed from Frosty Hardison, the guy who likes global warming because he believes it will hasten Jesus’ return to earth.

Jacoby and other conservative commentators should be careful about invoking Lindzen. The fact is that Lindzen accepts the science of human-caused global warming. Thus we are under no more obligation to accept Lindzen’s value judgments than we are those of Frosty Hardison.

Globe bites Times Co.

Kudos to the Boston Globe this morning, which runs an op-ed piece blasting the New York Times Co. for outsourcing 45 Globe jobs to Bangalore, India.

The column, by Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Robert Haynes and journalist-turned-PR-consultant Jeremy Crockford, makes the point that the Times Co. is shipping jobs overseas just as the leaders of more-enlightened companies are beginning to realize that’s incompatible with quality customer service. They write:

If it doesn’t make sense for Comcast or Dell, it certainly doesn’t make sense for The Boston Globe. Bad business decisions have dogged the Globe over the last 10 years and helped push circulation and revenues steadily downward. It’s time the paper’s owners turned to their own business pages and followed the lead of more savvy corporate thinkers. It’s time to give local people back the jobs they are sending to Bangalore.

Here is an earlier piece, on the AFL-CIO Web site, about the labor group’s efforts to stop the Times Co. from outsourcing Globe jobs.

Say goodnight, I-Man

CBS Radio has fired Don Imus. That’s perhaps a bit more than necessary (not that I’m shedding any tears), but, according to the Associated Press, advertisers were abandoning him and his high-profile media buddies were jumping ship.

New England Cable News is supposed to be dropping by Media Nation for an interview in a little while.

Update: You can watch the NECN piece here.

Welch takes no for an answer

Jack Welch now says it’s obvious that the New York Times Co. isn’t going to sell the Globe to him and advertising honcho Jack Connors. “There was a time when it would have been right,” Welch said in a speech at MIT, according to an account by Reuters. “Management has made it very clear to us that they have no interest in selling the Globe.”

This is not a big surprise. The Times Co. hasn’t budged since last fall, when Welch first made his interest known. (In keeping with the theme of the day, I’ll point out that Mike Barnicle somehow figured into all of this.) Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. apparently believes there are better days ahead for the Globe. As a reader, I hope he’s right. (Via Romenesko.)

The Mike and Don show

Mike, how can we miss you if you won’t go away?

Yesterday, Herald columnist Howie Carr wrote that former Globe columnist and current Herald contributor Mike Barnicle — identified only as “a local columnist … who … had just been forced to quit his paper for writing ‘fables'” — had once conveyed an insult to Don Imus that Carr claims he’d never uttered. That allegedly provoked an outburst by Imus against Carr’s wife that Carr claims led to an out-of-court settlement.

Today, Globe columnist Joan Vennochi alludes to Barnicle — or maybe it’s Doris Kearns Goodwin (or both) — in writing about why Imus’ well-connected friends are sticking by him following his “nappy-headed hos” characterization of the Rutgers women’s basketball team: “No one wants to give up the air time or book plugs, no matter what Imus says on the air. He forgives them their transgressions, be it plagiarism or drunken moments caught on tape, and they forgive him his.”

Just to be clear, Barnicle’s transgression was plagiarism, not drunkenness.

Meanwhile, the Herald’s Jesse Noyes and Jessica Heslam report today that Imus doesn’t have to worry about being Wally Pipp to someone else’s Lou Gehrig during his two-week suspension: He’ll be replaced by, yes, Mike Barnicle. Noyes and Heslam helpfully note that Barnicle himself once called former secretary of defense Bill Cohen, who’s white, “Mandingo” — a charming reference to the fact that Cohen’s wife, Janet Langhart, is black.

Finally, the siege continues. As you no doubt already know, MSNBC pulled the plug on Imus yesterday. Will he be able to keep his CBS Radio show? We’ll find out soon enough.

What goes around

Stop what you’re doing right now and read Howie Carr’s Herald column on Don Imus, starring Mike Barnicle (unnamed, but he’s hard to miss), Alan Dershowitz, Riddick Bowe and an unspeakably sick putdown of Carr’s wife that Howie attributes to the I-Man. No direct evidence that Imus ever said it, but Carr claims Imus settled out of court, and I believe him.

Meanwhile, Imus himself was back on the air this morning, doing his “I’m contrite but I’m really a decent person” thing before beginning his two-week suspension on Monday. I caught him with one of his enablers, Paul Begala, who turned in a performance that could only be described as icky.

If Imus’ bosses were really serious about punishing Imus for his “nappy-headed hos” crack, why are they giving him a week to spin this his way before giving him a timeout?

More: Is the Globe’s front-pager on Barack Obama’s restrained reaction to Imus really a story? Squaring the Globe says no.

Not much of a come-uppance

I’ve never thought Imus was a racist. Nor do I think he blurted out “nappy-headed hos” in order to goose his ratings. Nevertheless, he and his crew have repeatedly crossed the line over the years. This isn’t Michael Savage-style hate radio — rather, these are old men playing at being naughty boys. Still, Imus and company’s act is old and offensive, and it’s time to bring it to an end. A two-week suspension? Please.

Carolyn Ryan is N.Y.-bound

Scratch Globe metro editor Carolyn Ryan from the list of possible replacements for columnist Eileen McNamara. The New York Observer reports that she’s accepted a job as deputy metro editor for government and politics at the New York Times.

I’ve known Ryan since the early 1990s, when she was covering Beacon Hill for The Patriot Ledger of Quincy. As a media reporter, I always found her to be accessible and a straight shooter, and I wish her well in New York. (Via Romenesko.)

Toward less anonymity

I don’t want to rehash today’s New York Times article about attempts to encourage civility in blogland through a voluntary code of conduct. Rather, let me briefly consider one aspect of this that I’ve wrestled with from time to time: the matter of anonymous comments.

The code, online here, includes this:

We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

I can almost guarantee that Media Nation will adopt this system later in the spring. I like how I’ve seen this implemented on other blogs. Blogger, unfortunately, does not appear to offer any middle ground between full registration and total anonymity (although some commenters here work around that by including their names or pseudonyms). But change is coming.