How the Wall Street Journal and Rep. Barton celebrated a global-warming skeptic
The untold story of how a front-page article and powerful U.S. politicians morphed former mining executive Stephen McIntyre into a scientific superstar.


Why do so many U.S businessleaders and members of Congress doubt the scientific consensus on global warming? Consider the case of Stephen McIntyre, a semiretired businessman. His attack on one climate-change study, known as the “hockey stick”—a study often cited to make the case for global warming—plucked McIntyre from obscurity and got him featured on the front page of the February 14, 2005, Wall Street Journal. The page-one story caught the attention of Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. By late June, Barton was creating his own headlines by demanding that prominent researchers turn over the raw data from the hockey-stick analysis.