[amalcon]

They are many of the same arguments we see everywhere else. Most of them are true-but-irrelevant (the 2% number given early in the article is essentially meaningless, as it's a percentage of one component of a derivative in a complex system). He's at least smart enough to leave out transparent falsehood.

The basic problem is that the Wall Street Journal is a newspaper. You can't address scientific questions in a newspaper. You just can't. It's a tightly-controlled broadcast medium, in which all arguments must be kept simple enough for the average reader to understand without being a professional in a related field. All three of those factors (control, broadcast, simplicity) actively work against science.

What scientists need to do is find ways to address these kinds of oversimplifications in ways that the average reader can understand. It's hard, yes, but someone's going to need to do it if the public discourse is ever going to get onto the right track.