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USA Today on climate change

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Our view on climate change: Imperfect ‘cap-and-trade’ is best option to fight warming

It’s complex, costly — and as good as the political system can produce.

Reasonable people can disagree about how bad global warming will eventually be if nothing is done, and some of the doomsday scenarios might well be overblown. But virtually all climate scientists concur that it’s a dire enough threat that the wise course of action is to sharply curb use of carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Since CP has a daily news roundup, I thought I’d add an editorial feature, too, maybe not every day, but occasionally, especially when I’m on travel, as today.

This is from USA Today editorial board, which is I think is fairly mainstream.  Here’s the rest:

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Contest: Respond to this uber-lame NY Times op-ed

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

I could easily spend all my time just responding to every single piece of silliness that appears in the mainstream media on global warming.  But not only would that be unproductive and unhelpful for my readers (i.e. you), but heck I have great readers capable of doing such responses themselves.

The NY Times has just given some of its precious real estate to one of the lamest and most irrelevant op-eds ever published on climate change:  ”Ben Franklin on Global Warming.”  The gist of it seems to be that since weather changes over small parts of the Earth’s land were noticed by people in the 18th century and that Franklin himself apparently noticed part of what is now well understood and modeled by scientists as the heat island effect — “cleared land absorbs more heat and melts snow quicker” — that we should somehow think … well, actually, I can’t even figure out what the author is trying to say.

The piece appears to be a novel take on the “teach the controversy” strategy.  The author, Ben Gelber, meteorologist at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, sort of acknowledges anthropogenic global warming science but mostly makes irrelevant connections between the past and today to imply that what’s happening now is nothing really new.  If Gelber thinks we should do anything about global warming, he keeps it to himself.

Well, anthropogenic global warming is new, and it would be catastrophic or worse to do nothing about it — see, for instance, “Humans boosting CO2 14,000 times faster than nature, overwhelming slow negative feedbacks” and “Imagine a World without Fish” and “Intro to global warming impacts” and UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

But hey, I’ve written too much already.  You respond, and I’ll lift the best comments up into the main post.

Rogue Palin: “I always remind people from outside our state that there is plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.”

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

It is not really news that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is not an animal lover — or, I should say, is not a live-animal lover.  That’s especially true for animals that happen to stand in the way of producing more fossil fuels:

But if the Washington Post, which has four stories on Palin and her new book, Going Rogue, today, can take the headline quote above and put it on their front page in big type, well, then it must be news:

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Status-quo-media stunner: David Broder urges Obama to make a decision on Afghanistan right now, “whether or not it is right.”

Monday, November 16th, 2009

When we last left David Broder back in April, the dean of the DC press corp and the sultan of the status quo centrists, he was criticizing Obama for “launching highly controversial efforts in health care, energy and education.”  What was his argument?  “Each of those issues has a history in Washington — a history marked by congressional gridlock and legislative frustration.”

Never mind the fact that inaction on energy would destroy a livable climate for billions.  No, Obama was rocking the establishment boat by trying to do too much too fast, taking on problems that were mired in decades of inside-the-beltway inaction because they were too difficult.

But now, in a stunning piece titled, “Enough Afghan debate,” Broder flips his criticism entirely.  Obama simply can’t act fast enough on perhaps the most complex issue of his presidency — even if it means getting this vital and dangerous issue completely wrong:

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Supermodel: Why I Took It Off For Climate Change

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Our guest blogger is supermodel Cameron Russell, a junior at Columbia University and the organizer of the “Supermodels Take It Off For Climate Change” video for the 350.org movement.  This is a Wonk Room repost.

Right now, preventing catastrophic climate change is just about the most important thing any one of us should be working on right now. 350.org organized a worldwide day of action which took place on October 24. The goal of their effort was to educate and generate attention around the setting of a 350 parts per million CO2 target goal for the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in December. I know something about getting attention and decided to contribute to their effort.

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

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Memo to PBS’s NewsHour: You can do better than “carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas thought to contribute to global climate change.”

Monday, November 9th, 2009

So I’m watching an otherwise interesting story on “efforts to convert algae into clean fuel,” by the otherwise very solid Tom Bearden of PBS’s NewsHour.  Then, boom, he drops the media’s favorite wishy-washy hedge:

Wells also produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas thought to contribute to global climate change.

C’mon.  I think we are at least one decade, if not two decades or more, passed a time when the words “thought to” are justified.

Note to Beardon:  Why exactly do you think it is called a greenhouse gas?

This hedge remains all too common in the media — see Memo to Wall Street Journal: You can do better than “greenhouse gases, which are believed to contribute to climate change.”

As I wrote in that earlier post, this hedge is especially pointless and misinforming because of the second hedge — “contribute to.”  All but the most extremist deniers of the basic climate science accept that carbon dioxide contributes to global climate change.

So perhaps the NewsHour might catch up with the scientific understanding and write some variation of:

… carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes the global climate to change.

And people wonder why the public is still underinformed on this subject.

Related Posts:

Media stunner: Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash, host energy and climate events with lawmakers — while publishing the uber-greenwashing story, “Big Oil Goes Green for Real”

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

In September, I wrote a post “Newsweek gets duped by Big Oil — for real — in worst Big Media story of the year.”   The Newsweek piece by Rana Foroohar was titled “Big Oil Goes Green for Real” with greenwashing lines like “So how should we take the spate of new green announcements from the world’s major oil firms?”  Not.

What I didn’t realize is that Newsweek was not getting duped by Big Oil — it was getting cash from the American Petroleum Institute in return for “access,” as journalism and ethics experts told E&E News (subs. req’d).

Newsweek since 2007 has sold advertising packages to the oil industry’s biggest influence group that included the right to co-host forums on energy issues, including two where members of Congress sat side-by-side on panels with the association’s president.

American Petroleum Institute ranks among advertisers that have reached a spending threshold that allows them to attach their name to a Newsweek event and have their top executive as a panel speaker. API President and Chief Executive Jack Gerard was the sole industry speaker joining Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Reps. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) at an “executive forum” the magazine and API held at the U.S. Capitol in March.

Newsweek and API have teamed on four forums so far and are planning another — “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?” — for Dec. 1, when the Senate could be holding a floor debate on climate legislation. An invitation sent yesterday to lawmakers’ offices said Gerard again would be a panelist and that requests to speak were “currently pending confirmation with notable members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.” Lawmakers receiving invitations included Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

I urge all lawmakers to shun this event.

TPM Muckraker also has a good story on part of this, “Newsweek And Oil Lobby Team Up To Host Climate Change Event With Lawmakers,” which noted:

In February 2008, the news weekly and the oil lobby held a panel discussion on “Globalization Trends and Energy and the Growing Competition for Resources.” That event featured Foroohar, the author of the recent Newsweek story lauding big oil, as well as Tony Emerson, the managing editor of Newsweek International, API’s then-CEO Red Cavaney, and an energy specialist for the Chamber of Commerce. Emerson, moderating, described API as “an advertising partner.”

Remember, the API is spending millions to spread disinformation about the climate bill (see here) and create fake grassroots campaigns against it (see “Leaked memo: Big Oil manufacturing ‘Energy Citizen’ rallies to oppose clean energy reform“).

The E&E story, “API’s partnership with Newsweek raises ad cash and ethics questions,” is so shocking that I will excerpt the rest of it at length below:

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Grist on the NYT’s “baseless hit job on Gore,” plus the story’s origin in a Fox News doctored video

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

http://mediamatters.org/static/images/home/214/ingraham-20090502.jpgAl Gore is in the spotlight again with his must-read solutions book — “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” And that means the daggers are out.  But who would have imagined that one of the first pieces would be by the NYT’s John Broder, who repeats the false claims by “Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics,” that “Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first ‘carbon billionaire,’ profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.”  I’m going to repost a piece by Media Matters from May that looks at one of the despicable origins of this smear, “O’Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham presented clips of Al Gore’s recent congressional testimony that had been edited to remove his statements that he donates the money he makes from his climate-related work to a non-profit organization.”

But first I’m going to repost a response to the NYT piece by Grist’s Dave Roberts:

Al Gore’s back in the public eye, promoting his new book, which naturally raises the question: which mainstream press outlet will be the first to do a vapid hit piece?

Today [Monday] we have our answer: The New York Times, which has run a truly absurd and embarrassing piece from John Broder. It casts about desperately seeking something sinister about the fact that Gore invests in clean energy technologies. Listen to this piece of dark insinuation:

Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

Gore is “positioned to profit,” you understand. No wonder he’s dedicated most of his adult life to schlepping around the world giving a slide show to tens of thousands of people! It was all to marginally increase the return on his future investments! Diabolical.

Who is saying this absurd crap?

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WashPost gets climate bill politics story backwards, buries the big news: Graham and Kerry are in talks with White House “to discuss a possible compromise.”

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

The big climate bill story of the last few weeks is the breakthrough Senate climate partnership between Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA).  The result — E&E News’s latest analysis shows, “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill.

This isn’t to say Senate passage will be easy, but I think it is now likely, and, it is certainly far more likely than it was two months ago.  That’s what makes the lead story in today’s Washington Post so flawed.  It opens:

With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Uhh, yeah, well, it now looks like quite a few GOP lawmakers are willing to risk that backlash.  Equally lame, the article’s subhead is “Democrats Deeply Split,” and the print edition continuation headline is

With Senate Democrats still divided, climate bill’s prospects cool

Now what’s particularly amazing about that headline — other than it gets the direction of recent political movement exactly backwards — is that the WashPost quotes precisely one Democrat dissing the bill’s prospects, Ben Nelson (D-NB).  Yet no serious vote counter had ever considered Nelson a serious prospect.  For E&E, Nelson was always a “probable no.”  For Nate Silver, Nelson is a whopping 10.29% “probability of yes” — the lowest of any Democrat (see “Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?

The real news, and it’s pretty big, is actually buried at the end:

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Meet blogger Keith Kloor

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

UPDATE 1:  Besides smearing my parents on his blog, besides questioning both my honesty and sanity on the same blog, Keith Kloor tried to smear me at Nature blogs, as one of my commenters notes below.  In the original version of that Nature blog post, Kloor wrote that Pielke said “Dubner and his co-author Steven Levitt have indeed been slandered” by me.  I asked Nature to take down that statement.  I pointed out that not only did subsequent reporting by Pooley and others show that my original piece was accurate, Kloor knew the charge against me was false when he wrote it (!) — since later in the same piece he quotes from the Bloomberg piece by Pooley that backed up my account (see “Bloomberg interview of Dubner and Caldeira backs up my reporting on error-riddled Superfreakonomics“).  Nature changed what Kloor wrote, not surprisingly, which is why the current (corrected) version of Kloor’s piece no longer makes much sense:

Roger Pielke Jr., never one to shy away from a battle, believes that Dubner and his co-author Steven Levitt have indeed been criticized by Joe Romm over at Climate Progress.

Yeah, I “criticized” them.  Can’t argue with that.  As the commenter below notes of Kloor’s false charge against me in Nature:

Why else is that Nature would have had to doctor up your first post at their climate blog? Do you think that they were worried about any legal problems you may have brought to their publication by defaming Romm? Or do you think they were simply embarrassed that they had hired someone who doesn’t know the difference between slander and libel?

So yes Kloor has been trying to spread false charges about me — again and again for months, as you will see. But at least Nature intervened to stop him in this case.

So after months and months of Kloor smearing me, misrepresenting what I wrote, and attacking other climate science advocates, I finally decided to do one post to set the record straight.

Some might have you believe that journalists (even those who are really mainly bloggers) should not be the subject of hard-hitting critiques by bloggers (though apparently bloggers can be).  I think even bloggers have the right to set the record straight.

UPDATE 2:   As one of the commenters at Nature blogs wrote in response to the original smear by Kloor:

What a nonsense disclosure, Keith. You haven’t just “weighed in on the matter on my own blog.” There’s almost not a week that goes by in which you don’t have something derisive to say about Joe Romm, often times in concert with Roger Pielke Jr.

So there’s no surprise that when there’s a controversy over a book replete with climate change errors that have been discussed at length across the internet, that you should focus on charges of “slander” by Roger Pielke Jr. against Romm. Are either you or Pielke Jr. lawyers who can speak competently about “slander”? Are you aware that unfairly raising charges of slander is also a form of slander?

This is extremely unprofessional. But par for the course for a blog that got off to an extremely rocky start by having Roger Pielke Jr. as one of its original authors.

Kloor often flaks for Pielke, who just happens to be a Senior Fellow at The Breakthrough Institute (TBI).  As I discuss in “A Breakthrough Institute primer,” TBI has dedicated the resources of their organization to trying to kill prospects for climate and clean energy action in this Congress and to spreading disinformation about Obama, Gore, Congressional leaders, Waxman and Markey, leading climate scientists, Al Gore again, the entire environmental community and anyone else trying to end our status quo energy policies, including me

Finally, for a complete debunking of the underlying charge that my critique of Superfreakonomics was in any way a smear of the authors, read “One error retracted, 99 to go. Superfreaknomics authors will, in future editions, correct their claim that Caldeira believes “carbon dioxide is not the right villain.” What follows is an updated version of the original post.

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Contrarian Chic: Why can’t the media tell the difference between an attack on dubious ‘conventional’ wisdom and an attack on genuine scientific wisdom?

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

The Atlantic Monthly named Freeman Dyson a “Brave Thinker” for the “contrarian view” he’s taken on climate change.  They tout his quote, “I like to express heretical opinions. They might even happen to be true.”

Like the authors of the error-riddled Superfreakonomics, Dyson is contrarian for the sake of contrarianism — the truth is secondary.  Coincidentally, the same is true of the reporter who profiled him for the NY Times magazine — see Media stunner: When asked “Does it matter, from a journalistic point of view, whether [Freeman Dyson is] right or whether he’s wrong?” his NYT profiler replies “Oh, absolutely not.”

In fact, the media’s adoration of contrarians means it is a lot less brave to be a contrarian these days than it used to be in, say, Galileo’s day.   Dave Roberts at Grist makes that point in a terrific piece (reposted below):

Willing to risk a fawning NYT profile … freeeeeedooooom!
Is Freeman Dyson really “brave”?

What leads people to think that entire areas of climate science and policy, the subject of close study by thousands of very smart people all over the globe every day, can be overturned with facile points of logic and Silver Bullets Nobody’s Thought Of?

Well, it ain’t bravery….

On the other hand, simply repeat the broad global consensus— climate change is an urgent problem that warrants coordinated action to reduce GHG emissions—and you get nowhere. Boooring.

(I can’t tell you how many back-and-forths I’ve had with media outlets where I try to explain that the thing most people think is right actually is right, and they say, maybe so, but that’s not going to titillate our readers.)

Ditto!  Scientific wisdom was, like, so last year.

Krugman had it right in his first take on the Superfreaks:  “If you’re going to get into issues that are both important and the subject of serious study, like the fate of the planet, you’d better be very careful not to stray over the line between being counterintuitive and being just plain, unforgivably wrong.”  Last week, in “Contrarianism without consequences,” the Nobel laureate added:

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Memo to Baucus: Your state’s trees are being ravaged by warming-driven pests now and Montana faces 175% to 400% increase in wildfire burn area

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Sen. Max Baucus said Tuesday he has “serious reservations” about climate legislation unveiled by his Democratic colleagues, signaling trouble for a proposal that is stronger in certain respects than a bill passed by the House.

In an effort to inject drama and conflict into a hearing that lack both, the WSJ and other media outlets trumpeted the fact that Baucus said he thought Boxer’s proposed bill was too strong.

In fact, it’s obvious to everyone else that one couldn’t get 60 votes for Boxer’s bill and the final bill is going to be different (see Breakthrough Senate climate partnership: Graham (R-SC) and Kerry (D-MA) join forces and assert they are “convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress“).  The WSJ story never mentioned this fact, but ominously writes, “Supporters of the climate proposal can ill afford to lose any Democratic votes in the Senate, given stiff Republican opposition.”  Baucus himself said (full remarks at the end):

I support passing common-sense climate legislation that reduces greenhouse gas emissions while protecting our economy. And the key word in that sentence is “passing.”

So Baucus will be voting for the final bill.

One part of the media focused on the real story that Montanans are increasingly concerned about:  Climate change is already hitting their state hard now and is poised to devastate it utterly.  American Public Media’s Marketplace has be done a terrific multipart series on climate change, which can be accessed here, along with a map of how different regions of the country are being affected now and how they are likely to be hit in the future.

The first piece “Climate change in our own backyards,” tells the amazing story of the warming-driven bark beetle infestation around Helena.  And yes, this is the same exact story that the NYT screwed up in July (see “Signs of global warming are everywhere, but if the New York Times can’t tell the story (twice!), how will the public hear it?“).

The figure above is from a major recent study, which projects a staggering increase in “wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States” — “with the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains experiencing the greatest increases of 78% and 175% respectively” by 2050.  The graph “shows the percentage increase in area burned by wildfires, from the present-day to the 2050s,” if we only see an “average global warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050.”  If we don’t start reducing emissions sharply — sharper than Baucus wants — the UK Met Office says the plausible worst-case is 13-18°F warming over most of U.S. by 2060. Montana would be an inferno.

You can see how serious Marketplace is about getting the climate story right from the very first words of Kai Ryssdal (audio and transcript here):

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No wonder polling shows more people don’t know the scientific evidence that humans are warming the Earth has grown stronger. Revkin stunner on NPR: “I’ve made missteps. I’ve made probably more mistakes this year in my print stories than I had before.”

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

UPDATE:  Yes, bad coverage by big media, including the NYT’s Revkin, is one reason there has been a modest decline since April 2008 in the number of Americans who know that there is solid (in fact, overwhelming) evidence the Earth is warming and humans are the primary cause (see here).  Big media “did” the global warming story in 2006 and 2007 when Gore’s movie came out and then throughout 2007 when the IPCC released its four major summary reports.  Looking for a new angle, the NY Times and others played up the global cooling myth.  Now couple that with a ramped up disinformation campaign from the deniers who keep repeating the global cooling myth and continued lame messaging from the scientific community (see “Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1“) and a progressive community filled with people who have been persuaded by bad analysis that they shouldn’t even talk about “global warming” (see Messaging 101b: EcoAmerica’s phrase ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’ isn’t going to replace ‘global warming’ — and that’s a good thing).  That’s a recipe for an underinformed public.

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Limbaugh to NY Times environment reporter Revkin: “Why don’t you just go kill yourself?”

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

From today’s The Rush Limbaugh Show (via Media Matters):

LIMBAUGH: I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

Yes, one of the few remaining intellectual leaders in the conservative movement — whose views dominate conservative discourse because few if any conservative politicians will publicly disagree with him — has just told the lead climate reporter for the New York Times to commit suicide.  Who among the deniers and delayers will have the courage to denounce Limbaugh here?

What incited Limbaugh?  Here is Revkin’s NYT blog today (emphasis added by MM):

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What makes a news story? A boy not in a balloon — or a genuinely ballooning effort to achieve 350 ppm?

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

http://images.brisbanetimes.com.au/2009/10/16/793912/420x600balloon-boy-cnn-420x0.jpg

Clearly, pretending to loft your kid across the countryside in a balloon is the big story.

But what about the fairly extraordinary effort that the kids at 350.org and Bill McKibben are mounting next weekend?

They’ve taken serious scientific analysis—the contention first raised by Jim Hansen that 350 ppm co2 is the target we should be aiming for—and turned it into a real movement. On Saturday, their day of global action, there will be at least 3,800 events and rallies and demonstrations in almost 170 countries. It’ll be one of the most widespread days of political action in the planet’s history.  People are rallying all over the place:

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Media stunner: Columbia suspends Environmental Journalism Program even though “our graduates have done well in their careers.”

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Columbia Journalism Review itself reports the startling and depressing news:

For the first time since it was created fourteen years ago, Columbia University’s highly regarded dual-degree graduate program in environmental journalism will not be accepting applications for next academic year.

In a letter to faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of Environmental Sciences, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the program directors cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students as the reasons for their decision:

“As you know, media organizations across the county are in dire financial straits and thousands of journalists’ jobs have been eliminated. Science and environment beats have been particularly vulnerable. Although our graduates have done well in their careers, even those still employed are finding few opportunities to do the kind of substantive reporting for which the dual degree program has trained them, as they scramble to do their own work plus that of laid-off colleagues.”

Maybe not a total surprise to readers of this blog and Chris Mooney’s book, Unscientific America,” but very untimely decision for two reasons.  First,”The scientific community is failing miserably in communicating the potential catastrophe of climate change.”  And second, the issue of global warming has already emerged as a top tier issue — and it’s increasingly obvious that it will become “the Story of the Century,” as I called it in my book.  Indeed CJR quotes one of the graduates pointing this very fact out:

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Gawker: The Washington Post Has the Worst Opinion Section in America

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Okay, this isn’t news to CP readers:

But for the wider world, it’s nice that the uber-popular website Gawker has weighed in with, “The Washington Post Has the Worst Opinion Section in America,” which I reprint below:

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As the planet hits record high temperatures, a falsehood-pushing film-maker tries to shout down real journalists from asking Al Gore questions

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Planetary warming continues unabated (see “It’s the oceans, stupid!“), so the deniers are shouting even louder in their efforts to stifle genuine discussion.

The latest disinformer raising his voice and making headlines on Drudge is Phelim McAleer.  We’ve all been at major speaking events where some jerk tries to hog the microphone, asking a series of questions that seem pointed — but are in fact just rude and nonsensical.  In this case, however, the forum Gore was speaking at was a major gathering of journalists, so the refusal to give up the microphone was the equivalent of blocking other (i.e. real) journalists from asking Gore questions:

Former Vice President Al Gore shared his optimism about the “shifting momentum” of the climate change debate with about 500 environmental journalists Friday in Madison.

“We’re very close to that political tipping point,” Gore said at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference at the Madison Concourse Hotel. “Never before in human history has a single generation been asked to make such difficult and consequential decisions.”

You can watch McAleer’s version of events here in what the NYT’s Andy Revkin (who was there) describes as a “whiny video.”  But while McAleer’s a clever filmaker, he’s a bad liar.  He asserts of Gore, “He never takes questions.”  Not.

Take a look at this press conference in New York City on September 24 with Mayor Bloomberg, with extended Q&A:

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Wall Street Journal puzzled by a climate, clean energy and security bill that achieves multiple benefits

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Someone directed me to this odd post from the normally reliable and politically savvy WSJ “Environmental Capital” blog:

Shadow Boxing: What’s The Climate Bill’s Real Goal?

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, it seems like the biggest problem with the Senate energy and climate bill is that nobody knows exactly what it’s for.

Clean-tech executives that descended on Washington this week see it fundamentally as a jobs bill, meant to kickstart the U.S. clean-energy industry. That’s a view shared by Energy Secretary Steven Chu: “The cost of not doing something is we will lose the chance to lead in this next Industrial Revolution,” Dr. Chu said Wednesday.

Couldn’t agree more, said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown—jobs are indeed the key to passing any legislation. Not clean-energy jobs, though—existing manufacturing jobs in the heartland.

“This bill is written to deal with climate change and it’s written as a jobs bill,” he said, explaining why protectionism is the key to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. Which happens to be almost exactly the opposite approach of some big companies, such as General Electric.

Yes, it’s a jobs bill, says Sen. John Kerry; the bill’s title reflects that. But for the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and President Obama, it’s about a lot more. “The message [Obama] wanted to get over is he’s committed to moving forward,” Sen. Kerry said. “He views it as a critical. It’s a job creator. A national security priority.”

What does that mean? Does that refer to the possible national-security implications of climate change? Or does that mean national security as in energy security?

[Answer to WSJ:  Both!]

Is there really so little to blog about in the vast energy and environmental arena that the WSJ has to spin up this non-story?  Senator Kerry (and many others, including CP) have written and spoken at great length for a long time about the fact that any bill would have multiple benefits.

Unlike the WSJ, however, most of us think that’s actually a good thing.  I think it kind of silly to attack the bill because, say, avoiding catastrophic global warming and reducing oil consumption, is good for both national security and energy security or because solving those problems will generate millions of new jobs (and, yes, even preserve existing manufacturing jobs) or because more than one technology or strategy will be needed to achieve those goals:

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Memo to WashPost, George Will: Cassandra was right

Monday, October 5th, 2009

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George Will and the editorial page editors at the Washington Post proved a long time ago they don’t know science (see “The Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages“).  And they don’t do any fact-checking (see WashPost op-ed page remains the home of un-fact-checked disinformation about clean energy and global warming).

But as a letter to the editor pointed out, they don’t know mythology either.  I was so focused on critiquing the substance of the original post (here and here), I missed the unintentional inanity of the headline, “Cooling Down the Cassandras,” and Will’s final line:

Environmental Cassandras must be careful with their predictions lest they commit what climate alarmists consider the unpardonable faux pas of denying that the world is coming to an end.

Other than not knowing the science or doing basic fact-checking, the faux pas is pretending to be an intellectual while not even knowing you’ve used a mythological metaphor containing a hidden army that destroys your whole damn message.   Cassandra famously had the gift of prophecy but the curse of not being believed, with archetypally tragic results:

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