Deltoid makes us aware of this effort by Scientific American to bring the WSJ editorial page back to the realm of reality.

Reporters for the Wall Street Journal routinely distance themselves from the editorial page. Many of the paper's own reporters laugh or cringe at the anti-scientific posture of the editorials, and advise the rest of us simply not to read them. Nevertheless, the consequences of those editorials are significant. The Wall Street Journal is the most widely read business paper in the world. Its influence is extensive. Yet it gets a free pass on editorial irresponsibility.

As a neighbor to the paper at Columbia University, the Earth Institute has repeatedly invited the editorial team to meet with leading climate scientists. I've offered to organize such a meeting in any way that the editorial board would like. On many occasions, the news editors have eagerly accepted, but the editorial writers have remained safe in their splendid isolation.

Let me make the invitation once again. Many of the world's leading climate scientists are prepared to meet with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and to include in that meeting any climate-skeptic scientists that that the Journal editorial board would like to invite. The board owes it to the rest of us to make the effort to their own "open-minded search for scientific knowledge." If only for the sake of their own sweltering hometown, it's time they accept the invitation.

Reading the article, and every other damn problem identified by the science writers at the Science Blogs, it's clear that again the problem is denialism. There is no interest in knowing the truth, but only in being contrarian and denying something hard to face, that their libertarian ethos has no equipment ready to face a problem that requires government intervention, and selfless behavior on the part of corporations.

Anyway, this appeal won't work until they do something outrageous like break into the WSJ and sabotage their air conditioners, or, more legally, take out a full page ad in the WSJ attacking the editorial page and offering them an open debate. The WSJ editorial page has everything to lose and nothing to gain by having a discussion with real scientists. But someone has got to do it, they're just crazy over there.