The New York Times took a lot of heat for hiring Bret Stephens, a former opinion writer at The Wall Street Journal, as its newest columnist. There was a lot to criticize. In his storied tenure on some of the most radically conservative pages in print journalism, Stephens accused Arabs of suffering a disease of the mind, railed against the Black Lives Matter movement and dismissed the rise of campus rape as an imaginary enemy.

But Stephens views on climate change namely that the jury is still out on whether burning fossil fuels is the chief cause drew the widest condemnation. ThinkProgress admonished the Gray Lady for hiring an extreme climate denier, and famed climatologist Michael Mann backed them up in the critique. DeSmog Blog , a site whose tagline reads clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science, reported on a letter from climate scientists who are canceling their subscriptions to the newspaper over its latest hire. In These Times headline pointedly asked: Why the Hell did the New York Times just hire a climate denier?

Even the Times own reporters publicly questioned the hire.

Late Friday afternoon, Stephens made his debut. In a column boldly titled Climate of Complete Certainty, he provocatively compared the climate activists surety to that of Hillary Clintons failed campaign managers.

Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong, he wrote. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting ones moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

He couches this, of course, by denying that hes denying anything.

None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences, he wrote. But ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism. They know as all environmentalists should that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power.

Sure, thats a fair general point about science, but it misses the problem with climate science denial altogether. Environmental consciousness didnt used to be partisan. Lest we forget, President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. But NPRs On The Media did a nice job of explaining how Democrats, under President Bill Clinton, co-opted the environmental movement for political purposes, clearing the way for Republicans to fight against climate regulations as a sort of zero-sum game.