"Saying ‘there's no sign humans have caused climate change' is not stating an opinion, it's asserting a factual inaccuracy," wrote Paul Thornton, editor of L.A Times paper's letters section on his blog.
Thornton wrote point-blank on his editorial section that he will not be publishing anything that denies man's role in climate change as it is considered wrong and he wouldn't want to mislead people with wrong statements.
He admitted that the L.A Times get plenty of letters from skeptics of climate change with some accusing the liberals of using it as a plot to restrict personal choice. He then backed up that even if he doesn't have academic background on science, he relies on "real" experts when deciding whether to publish a letter or not. These are people with advanced degrees and had done tedious research of the topic. Thus he supports the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report saying 95 percent of global warming was caused by human activities. The report was finalized by the world's top scientists.
Thornton's decision to filter letters denying climate change received criticisms from other scientists. They believe that he is not in the position to deny anyone of free press in the U.S.
"In a word, the LA Times should be ashamed of itself," William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton, told FoxNews.com.
"The free press in the U.S. is trying to move the likelihood of presenting evidence on this issue from very low to impossible," J. Scott Armstrong, co-founder of the Journal of Forecasting and a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told FoxNews.com.
Thorton clarified that he is not against any skeptics but on "factual inaccuracy."
"This is not a blanket ban on 'skeptics.' What it does ban is factual inaccuracy," Thornton told FoxNews.com. "I'll put it this way: It's fine to say that the Lakers are a terrible basketball team, but it would be factually inaccurate to say they're bad because they put four guys out on the court every night instead of five. The latter 'perspective' also happen to be objectively false, so a letter containing it wouldn't be considered for publication."
