USA TODAY has chosen to propagate the noxious Heartland Institute's climate misinformation once again, pointing to a larger failing in their “Our View” / “Their View” editorial format: whenever the board writes an editorial acknowledging global warming as fact, it attempts to “balance” the facts with denial.

On January 31, USA TODAY published an editorial titled “Baby, it's cold outside, but globe is warming.” The board correctly pointed out that the recent cold weather snap and rare southern snowstorm do not contradict long-term data showing the climate is warming, driven by human activities. But the paper also ran an opposing op-ed from the Heartland Institute's James Taylor, who claimed that "[t]his winter shows that global warming is not changing our climate severely."

The Heartland Institute is possibly the worst of the worst climate “skeptic” think tanks, yet USA TODAY chose it once again to “balance” its editorial. The fossil fuel-funded organization is infamous for its attacks on climate science, previously comparing those who accept climate change to a domestic terrorist in a billboard campaign. James Taylor, a lawyer with no scientific background, is one of the Institute's most prominent media figures and a primary instigator of spreading misinformation as a regular contributor to Forbes.com.

Taylor claimed that global warming will “benefit, rather than harm, human health and welfare.” But economic studies show that the impacts of global warming driven by carbon emissions will result in net negatives -- even one from Bjorn Lomborg, an economist who opposes large-scale climate action. Lomborg's study estimating the economic damage caused by climate change found that “after year 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world, justifying cost-effective climate action.” Other studies have found that the costs of climate change will be much higher.

USA TODAY's editorial format, requiring two sides to every issue, is concerning -- particularly when one “side” is truth and the other is misinformation. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), which is composed of hundreds of scientists, stated in its most recent report that scientists are 95 percent certain that the majority of recent warming is manmade, or about as certain as they are that cigarettes kill. Interestingly, the Heartland Institute also denied that cigarettes kill, stating that “smoking in moderation has few, if any, adverse health effects.” USA TODAY likely wouldn't run an op-ed from the Heartland Institute espousing this “view” -- so why did they do so with climate denial?

UPDATE (2/3/14): James Taylor bragged about his USA TODAY op-ed on the Heartland Institute's website in an article titled “USA Today Gets it Right, Nature Gets it Wrong,” elated that “a mainstream media organ acknowledge[d] the existence of scientific debate on the climate change issue.”