High Priests of Consensus Panic: The NYT’s Meltdown Over Scientific Skepticism

The New York Times is at it again—clutching pearls and reaching for the fainting couch as the Trump administration dares to let a little oxygen into the musty, tightly sealed room of government climate “consensus.” If the tone of their latest lament, “Trump Hires Scientists Who Doubt the Consensus on Climate Change,” is any indication, you’d think the barbarians had just sacked Rome with nothing but peer-reviewed papers and calculators.

Right out of the gate, the Times wrings its hands over the shocking spectacle of scientists—yes, actual scientists—who “reject the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change” being allowed anywhere near the Energy Department. If you detect a note of moral panic, you’re not wrong. “The three scientists joined the administration after it dismissed hundreds of experts who were assessing how global warming is affecting the country,” they warn, as though these dismissed “experts” were the last line of defense against an onrushing climate apocalypse.

But let’s talk about these dangerous contrarians—and, for a moment, let’s try something radical: list their actual credentials.

First up: Steven E. Koonin. The Times notes he’s a physicist and author but doesn’t dwell on the fact that he was Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Obama administration. Yes, that Obama administration. Koonin is also a former professor at Caltech, a former chief scientist at BP (one of the world’s largest energy companies), and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. His 2021 book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t and Why It Matters, challenged the prevailing doomsday narrative by calmly pointing out that, yes, climate science remains rife with uncertainty and debate—a statement so inflammatory to consensus enforcers that it might as well have been a call to heresy. Koonin’s influence is such that even Energy Secretary Chris Wright, before his current post, reached out to Koonin to say, “‘This is great,’” and later, “Chris and I have talked quite a bit over the last couple years, and I think he is well aligned with what I wrote in the book”.