The New York Times just hired Bret Stephens, a conservative writer who identifies as a "climate agnostic" ― infuriating many readers who say the paper is going against its mission to cover climate change.
Now, scientists are rallying people against the Times and its new hire.
Climate scientist Michael E. Mann launched the hashtag #ShowYourCancellation this week after the paper's public editor defended the decision to hire the former Wall Street Journal columnist, dismissing its so-called "left-leaning critics" who they claimed were leading a "fiery revolt."
Mann called for people to prove to the Times that they were actually ending their subscriptions to the paper over Stephens, who published his first column on being skeptical about the effects of climate change on Friday.
The Times' decision to hire Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, was part of the paper's efforts to expand its range of political views. But for many, Stephens' hire was a backward step for a paper that had previously declared climate change to be one of the most pressing modern topics.
And Mann wasn't the only scientist to denounce the paper's decision. Ken Caldeira, a Stanford climate researcher, and physics professor Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean science fellow with the American Geophysical Union, both wrote letters to Times editors alerting them of their canceled subscriptions.
"I will support your newspaper no more," Rahmstorf wrote to the Times in his letter, which he shared on Twitter Thursday. "Instead, I will give the money to ClimateFeedback.org, a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage. It is much better invested there."
Thanks to Mann, many others are following suit.