I usually skip USA Today unless I'm in an airport or hotel where it's free. 

Even in those instances it holds an amusing fascination because it's the vanilla ice cream of journalism.

I'm reminded of a Simspons episode where Homer reads a newspaper called USofA Today with the cover story: "America's Favorite Pencil - #2 is #1." Homer reads aloud another headline: "SAT scores are declining at a slower rate." After Lisa criticizes it, Homer says "this is the only newspaper in the country that is not afraid to tell the truth: that everything is just fine."

Until now.

The "Our View: America, pick your climate choices" editorial on Monday criticized the "head-in-the-sand" position of GOP, a few Democrats, and the climate skeptics that deny climate change - comparing them to the "birthers" that deny our President was born in the United States. Check out this passage:

Late last week, the nation's pre-eminent scientific advisory group, the National Research Council arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a report called "America's Climate Choices." As scientific reports go, its key findings were straightforward and unequivocal: "Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by human activities, and poses significant risks to humans and the environment." Among those risks in the USA: more intense and frequent heat waves, threats to coastal communities from rising sea levels, and greater drying of the arid Southwest.

Coincidentally, USA TODAY's Dan Vergano reported Monday, a statistics journal retracted a federally funded study that had become a touchstone among climate-change deniers. The retraction followed complaints of plagiarism and use of unreliable sources, such as Wikipedia. Taken together, these developments ought to leave the deniers in the same position as the "birthers," who continue to challenge President Obama's American citizenship -- a vocal minority that refuses to accept overwhelming evidence.

Well, there you have it. Pretty dead on. The entire column is excellent, opening with "One way to deal with a problem is to pretend it doesn't exist." But I would like to see more coverage of climate change in mainstream media - it's a powerful tool to educate folks, especially an audience that reads USA Today. Or the sheer number of people that read it: USA Today has the widest print circulation in the United States. I don't know if this will the change hearts and minds of climate skeptics however researchers attribute the decline in American belief in climate change partially to poor media coverage over the past several years. Hopefully this signals a new shift.

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