New York Times: Our readers are too dumb to understand global warming numbers

So if I understand this correctly, a reporter from the New York Times is telling me that his readers are too dumb to understand numbers.

I don’t believe this for a minute, and not just because I’ve lived through 30 years of New York Times readers telling me how terribly intelligent and sophisticated they are. The newspaper actually does have an educated audience, and more to the point, if its readers lack knowledge on a subject, the reporters are there to analyze the issues and explain them. That’s supposed to be their job.

But this exchange with Gillis started with him telling us that he doesn’t think it’s his job. As far as he’s concerned, the data is somebody else’s department. He points out that there was also an “infographic” associated with the article—prepared by and credited to somebody else—and that if we cared to peruse that, we could “positively drown yourself in numbers.”