“New York Times” columnist Thomas Friedman took a nasty swipe at conservatives over the subject of climate change on Sunday April 6. Friedman appeared alongside Heidi Cullen of Climate Central on Sunday’s CBS This Morning and proceeded to mock conservatives who question human-caused climate change.
Speaking to host Bob Schieffer, Friedman claimed that 97 percent of scientists believe in climate change and “conservatives are saying I’m going go to with the 3%. That’s not conservative, that’s Trotskyite radical.”
Friedman’s obnoxious comments came after Schieffer wondered, “In our politics now, everything breaks on these ideological lines. It just breaks. Is there such a break in the scientific community? How does the scientific community come down on this whole idea of climate change?”
The Times columnist then misleadingly argued: “Let me put it in personal terms. So your son or daughter has a disease and you go to 100 doctors. 97% of them, 97 of the hundred say this is the cause and this is the cure. And 3% say this is the cause and this is the cure. That is what it is on the climate science.”
Friedman is not the first person to use the misleading [1] “97 percent of experts” claim, which has been refuted numerous times. Unfortunately, Schieffer failed to challenge Friedman for his attack on conservatives or for his use of an erroneous statistic. Instead, the CBS host allowed his guest to go on an extended monologue to push his climate change agenda unchallenged.
See relevant transcript below.
CBS's Face the Nation
April 6, 2014
10:50 a.m. Eastern
BOB SCHIEFFER: Tom, let me just ask you this question. In our politics now, everything breaks on these ideological lines. It just breaks. Is there such a break in the scientific community? How does the scientific community come down on this whole idea of climate change?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Let me put it in personal terms. So your son or daughter has a disease and you go to 100 doctors. 97 percent of them, 97 of the hundred say this is the cause and this is the cure. And three percent say this is the cause and this is the cure. That is what it is on the climate science. 97 percent of experts say this, three percent say that and conservatives are saying I’m going go to with the three percent. That’s not conservative, that’s Trotskyite radical. Okay? That you would go with the three percent and not the 97 percent. To pick up on something that Heidi said. I don't like to use the term global warming because that sounds so cuddly. To a Minnesota boy Bob that sounds like golf in February. I much prefer the term global weirding because that’s actually what happens. The hots get hotter, the wets get wetter, the dries get dryer and the more violent storms, for the reasons Heidi outlined, are most likely to become more severe and that is what he we saw in Syria. We saw a four-year drought, worst in Syria's modern history that preceded the revolution there and produced a million refugees that basically laid the predicate for that revolution.
— Jeffrey Meyer is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Jeffrey Meyer on Twitter. [2]