Via Climate Progress (3/16/10), Scientific American guest blogger John Horgan (3/16/10) makes a disturbing claim: Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section's editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity. Now, reviews of climate research literature show universal support for the notion that human-caused climate change is happening (Nature, 12/3/04), and surveys of climate scientists find the same unanimity (Science Daily, 1/19/09). Major scientific organizations around the world have endorsed the consensus of the climate research field, and have expressed alarm [...]
Feb
26
2010
OJ and Global Warming: Fossil Fuels Have Their Own Dream Team
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Bill McKibben (TheNation.com, 2/25/10) has a good analogy that explains the success of global warming deniers: The campaign against climate science has been enormously clever, and enormously effective. It's worth trying to understand how they've done it. The best analogy, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson trial…. The Dream Team of lawyers assembled for Simpson's defense had a problem: It was pretty clear their guy was guilty. Nicole Brown's blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning. So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian et al. decided to attack the [...]
Feb
22
2010
WaPo Editorial Page: Watch What You Read!
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From the paper's editorial today (2/22/10) on climate change deniers: The Earth is warming. A chief cause is the increase in greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Humans are at least in part responsible, because the oil, gas and coal that we burn releases these gases. If current trends persist, it's likely that in coming decades the globe's climate will change with potentially devastating effects for billions of people. Contrary to what you may have read lately, there are few reputable scientists who would disagree with anything in that first paragraph. That's especially true if "what you may have read [...]
Feb
16
2010
Dana Milbank, Snow and Climate Change
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Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank thinks it's pretty silly for Republicans and climate change deniers to say that the recent snowstorms mean that climate change is phony. BUT…. don't think for a second that Milbank's going to let "greens" off the hook that easy. No way. As he put it on Sunday (2/14/10): "There's some rough justice in the conservatives' cheap shots. In Washington's blizzards, the greens were hoist by their own petard." How so? Climate activists "have argued by anecdote to make their case," especially Al Gore, who has warned of a whole menuof negative consequences from climate change. [...]
Feb
12
2010
NYT and Climate Change: It Gets Worse
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On Tuesday, the New York Times (2/9/10) was front-paging a non-story about criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change– hyping accusations about scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest that the paper itself called "half-truths" (FAIR Blog, 2/9/10). Well, it turns out that there was quite a bit of snow on the East Coast this week, which seeminglyinspired another awful piece (2/11/10), this one headlined "Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze." The whole premise of the piece is based on complaints from right-wing climate change deniers–Sen. James M. Inhofe, assorted "global-warming critics," Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and the [...]
Feb
09
2010
NYT and the IPCC: Little Evidence, Big Story
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Last month CJR blogger Curtis Brainard (1/29/10) complained that the media were not giving enough attention to some complaints–mostly from climate change deniers–about the 2007 IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change report and complaints about IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri. Jim Naureckas suggested right here that this was a bad idea, but today the New York Times (2/9/10) seemed totake CJR's advice. The headline ("U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege") and second paragraph suggest something important: But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of [...]
Feb
02
2010
Journalists Examine Teapot Tempests as Real Glaciers Melt
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Curtis Brainard of CJR's Observatory blog (1/29/10) complains about the lack of coverage of what he calls "Glaciergate": Almost two weeks ago, the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, "broke" the story that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had made significant errors in its 2007 report on the impacts of global warming…. The report stated that there was a very high likelihood that glaciers in the Himalayas would disappear by 2035 if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Three days after the Times published its article, the IPCC essentially admitted that this was an error (while glaciers in [...]
Dec
14
2009
Calling Science 'the Left' Is Not Advocating for Science
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New York Times' climate change reporter Andrew Revkin is taking a buyout from his employer after a tough year, the Columbia Journalism Review's website (12/14/09) reports. Revkin, whom CJR's Christine Russell describes as "one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment," says that 2009 "has been the hardest year Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve experienced on this beat"–in part because Revkin has increasingly found himself–and his paperâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s coverage–the target of critics on both the right and the left, particularly in the often vitriolic blogosphere. He described himself as "an advocate for scientific reality," not for either side of the debate. "The [...]
Dec
14
2009
Kurtz Covers for Post, Palin
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The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz spends his Sunday mornings as the host of Reliable Sources, the media criticism show on CNN. Yesterday (12/13/09), one segment concerned the Washington Post's decision to print an op-ed (12/9/09) on "Climategate" by Sarah Palin. It prompted this exchange with guest John Aravosis of Americablog: ARAVOSIS: What newspapers aren't supposed to do is present an issue that's already decided as being a he said/she said of, hey, half the people say yes, half the people say no. KURTZ: So you say it's already decided. ARAVOSIS: Ninety percent of scientists believe global warming is manmade. KURTZ: [...]
Dec
07
2009
Forbes Publishes Fiction on Climate Change Debate
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Forbes.com has an article up called "The Fiction of Climate Science" (12/4/09). Thanks no doubt to a link from Drudge, it's currently one of the website's "top rated," "most popular" and "most emailed" items. "Fiction" is a polite word for what the author, Gary Sutton, does with evidence. Sutton grinds the already well-worn denialist ax about "global cooling"–scientists were predicting an imminent ice age in the 1970s, the argument goes, so why listen to those eggheads now about global warming? See FAIR's Action Alert from last February 18 for a debunking of this myth. But wait! Sutton provides a quote: [...]
