Milloy, who has tweeted multiple personal attacks against Thunberg, has also appeared on Fox News in 2019 to attack climate activism. In Australia, News Corp. columnist Andrew Bolt wrote a reprehensible column on July 31 that referred to Thunberg as a cult leader and mocked her autism.

Other examples of climate deniers attacking Thunberg from earlier this year abound. Frequent Fox guest Marc Morano tweeted in February that she “promotes useless apocalyptic drivel,” while sometimes Fox contributor and Trump favorite Patrick Moore tweeted in May that she is “like a puppet on strings.” The Koch-backed magazine Spiked tried to discredit Thunberg because her “autistic identity raises other worrying issues,” while James Delingpole at Breitbart.com invoked “climate alarmism” and accused her of being brainwashed. And not to be outdone, Fox host Sean Hannity’s favorite meteorologist, Joe Bastardi, retweeted a meme in June that likened Thunberg to Nazi propaganda.

Ad hominem attacks have also extended to the larger youth climate protest movement itself. The American Spectator’s R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. invoked climate denial in dismissing the school climate strikes in a March op-ed for The Washington Times, and Fox & Friends framed the climate strikes as a propaganda tool in two segments earlier this year.

Caldwell’s op-ed validates months of right-wing attacks against Thunberg

Climate denial and ad hominem attacks have been a feature in many right-wing critiques aimed at Thunberg and the larger movement of youth climate protesters that she represents. When asked in July how she deals with personal attacks, Thurnberg answered: “It proves that they don’t have any arguments. And that they see us as a threat because we are having an impact.”

As The Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty put it, this is because right-wing climate deniers know that “the jig is almost up.” With both the science and public opinion firmly on Thunberg’s side, Chakrabortty says climate deniers are “being nastier, more abusive and more personal” and trying to push “a culture war to cover up for its paucity of evidence and arguments.” The same tactic of personal attacks is also being used more broadly by right-wing media to invalidate progressive leaders and policies.

The New York Times’ decision to run an op-ed featuring such bad faith right-wing attacks on Thunberg is unconscionable -- especially when those attacks come from an author who has written skeptically of climate issues before. Bad op-eds from climate deniers like Caldwell or the Times’ own Bret Stephens do a disservice to the paper’s dedicated climate reporting. Differing opinions on how to address climate change solutions should absolutely be welcomed and considered, but the paper of record must have better editorial oversight when a piece containing climate denial and blatant personal attacks is submitted.