The Times Fails Global Warming 101

For a page so sanctimonious about its global-warming campaign, the least The New York Times' editorial page could do is get basic facts right. In an editorial yesterday, the Times begins:

Four major bills have recently been offered in the Senate calling for mandatory controls on carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

Wrong. The main global warming gas is water vapor. If the Times' editorialists were referring to anthropogenic gases, they're still wrong. Methane -- almost all of which, incidentally, is not manmade -- contributes to the "greenhouse gas effect" 20 times more than carbon dioxide. (Ironically, the Times' editorial page acknowledged as such less than a month ago.) And even of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, less than four percent is manmade. The rest is a naturally occurring atmospheric element, or is created by the natural world -- you know, forests, and "the environment."

This stuff is Global Warming 101. Which makes the Times' mistake all the more embarrassing -- and revealing.