To many in the climate ‘blogosphere’, myself not excepted, the siren’s call of tackling global warming denial, of deceitful astroturf “studies” distorting the situation, and of shoddy ‘faux and balanced’ reporting in the nation’s newspapers of record can eat up too much of our attention. We must pay attention to what is actually going on in the real world. Scientific developments. Discussing meaningful Congressional legislation. Obama Administrationappointments. Statements from Administration officials, and the President himself. Achievements (and problems) with changing policies. New (and old) technologies and approaches to changing our energy and pollution paths. And … The list, you see, is near endless.
Sometimes, as we get caught up in this very long and very serious list, elements fall off the wagon (so to speak). For this blogger (and, sadly, it seems too many others), one of those fallen items is paying attention to how “friends” are undercutting (less politely, perhaps, call ‘stabbing in the back’) efforts to move forward with meaningful legislation approaches to tackling the intertwined E3 (economy, energy, environment) challenges and opportunities.
Recent votes in the Senate have highlighted how “moderate” Democratic Party Senators (“fencesitters” when it comes to climate issues)are unprepared for leadership on climate issues and lacking the political courage to take on deceitful arguments about the costs (without talking of benefits) of acting sensibly re climate change. Sadly, the “Gang” of moderates, seeking some form of middle ground between looking back toward an 18th century concept of energy and moving forward into the 21st century, seem wedded to false conceptions and false constructs as to the opportunities and challenges before us. It is long past time where Gang activities should be allowed to continue to operate in the murky shadows, at least as far as this blogger is concerned, and it is time to shine some daylight on them.
April 14th, 2009 · Comments Off on When your friends aren’t …
Taking meaningful steps to pursue sensible policies to deal with E3 challenges (economy, energy, environment) and seize E3 opportunities will take leadership and political courage. Leadership to move past simply testing the political environment via polling, wetting the finger to see which way the wind is blowing at the moment. Political courageto stand up to powerful interests (investing heavily to perpetuate the polluting status quo from which they profit so greatly) and the powerful (and deceitful) attacks that they will inflict on any and all who actually fight to create a better future for America and Americans.
Sadly, there are many in the US Senate who claim to care about these issues and who state that dealing with global warming matters, but who are unwilling to stand up and be counted in accord with these statements. They are showing themselves as unwilling to lead and without the courage to stand to deceitful astroturf distortions of the realities of the challenges and the opportunities before us.
April 12th, 2009 · Comments Off on For Sanity in an Editorial: A tip of the hat to The Tennessean
Too much energy has to be expended taking on “faux and balanced” material in the nation’s newspapers of record, striving to foster sanity and truthfulness in the publications, rather than the insanity and truthiness too often pandered in their pages. Swirling in the miasma of too often shoddy coverage and frequent deceit in the editorial pages, one can forget that there are are great journalists, that there are editors/editorial pages striving to speak truth to their readers, that there are people and institutions meriting pats on the back and tips of the hat.
April 12th, 2009 · Comments Off on Lessons from a little-known crank?
Amid all the insanities and “Faux and Balanced” in the major newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times, voices of sanity slip into the discussion. Today’s New York Times has such a ‘slip’ with a discussion likely discordant to too many in the American societal view, of a complexity and perspective that falls outside the acceptable weltanschauung for too many. In many ways, it is those ideas that make us uncomfortable that can merit focused attention, because the discomfort itself can help identify areas meriting further examination and help us understand where change can be much merited.
One of the struggles of the new Administration is adapting to having a US President who is actually worth listening to, for whom it is worth carving time out to watch and listen to public statements and the impressive number of press conferences/availabilities and town halls. Issues of energy and climate change come up in many of these. Join me after the fold for a selection of items related to energy and climate change from President Obama’s public comments on his recent overseas trip.
Despite an MIT professor’s written rejection of the misuse of his work by the Republican Party, Republicans around the country continue to distort the economic issues surrounding climate legislation with the dishonest citation of MIT as one of the crutches to their disinformation efforts.
According to an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by $3,128 per year.
“It’s just wrong,” said John Reilly, an energy, environmental and agricultural economist at M.I.T. and one of the authors of the report. “It’s wrong in so many ways it’s hard to begin.”
Not only is it wrong, but he told the House Republicans it was wrong when they asked him.
“Someone from the House Republicans had called me (March 20) and asked about this,” Reilly said. “I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it, but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time.”
Caught throughout his career at serial deception after serial deception, unabashedly serving as a rallying point for truthiness and disinformation on climate change from his Jim Inhofe (R-Exxon) provided sinecure position in the Senate Environmental and Public Works committee, Marc Morano recently left the Public Dole to a funded effort to set up a website to serve as a bastion for global denier lunacies. What is the New York Times reaction? To provide free advertising with a shoddy article that doesn’t go beyond “he says, she says”.
After the fold is the first shot at this sad excuse for an article from The New York Times. After scrubbing, hard, to wash off the filth, there might be another shot. [Read more →]
Writing mea culpas and apologizing for errors isn’t necessarily the most joyous thing for a writer, analyst, commentator to do. But, standing up and admitting error and seeking to learn from faults is a fundamental basic obligation that an author has in their implied contract with their readers. And, for myself, my own ethical standards. Thus, for those who wish to notice, let me take a moment to write a mea culpa. In multiple posts, I made an error. I referred to the “University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center” when, in fact, there is no such institution. Getting names right is a basic thing, that first check-mark to be notched by any fact-checking organization. As with many others, I relied on the professionalism of The Washington Post‘s fact checkers and George F Will’s research staff and wrote posts using “Arctic Climate Research Center” without assuring that there was such an actual institution. I apologize for relying on The Washington Post and George Will to actually get names right.
The Washington Post clearly has a major internal battle under way. Clear because the discussions and disputes are spilling so clearly into public. This week, five different Washington Post employees (four in The Washington Post or on WashingtonPost.COM) have directly criticized George Will’s Will-ful Deceit in what has escalated into The Will Affair.
On Tuesday, two Washington Post pieces sought to correct George Will’s deceitful statements in regards to global warming issues.
Andrew Freedman, Capital Weather Gang, Will Misleads Readers on Climate Science — Again, directly addresses The Will Affair and provides a Washington Post employee, on the record, documenting fault with George Will’s deceit.
Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan, New Data Show Rapid Arctic Ice Decline: Proportion of Thicker, More Persistent Winter Cover Is the Lowest on Record, begins: “The Arctic sea ice cover continues to shrink and become thinner, according to satellite measurements and other data released yesterday, providing further evidence that the region is warming more rapidly than scientists had expected.” They include in the article a direct comment about George Will, calling this report a direct contradiction of one of George Will’s deceits. As discussed after the fold, have to wonder whether there will be a correction to Eilperin’s and Sheridan’s story even though there has been no formal correction to George Will’s more egregious and repeated deceits.
And, last night, Washington Post Associate Editor Eugene Robinson criticized Will and the Post’s handling of The Will Affair on the Rachel Maddow show.
MADDOW: Eugene, I feel like factchecking politicians is a full-time job and it is a very fun one. But does it sort of feel like there is just more made up stuff in the daily back and forth of political news right now than usual?
ROBINSON: It certainly does, and it’s distressing. I think there’s a distinction here among the examples we cite. What George Will did was cherrypick a sentence in a report, be very persnickety in the way he parsed his sentences, and end up making it sound as if the report had said the exact opposite of what it actually said. He was persnickety enough that his editors, who happen to be my editors, felt he didn’t cross the line. I thought he did. And the ombudsman agreed with me, actually, and wrote about it in last Sunday’s paper.
Have to wonder what Fred Hiatt and George Will are thinking about now …
It’s very good to see Post staff standing up to Will’s nonsense like this. But ultimately this is an issue for Fred Hiatt and Hiatt’s bosses at the top levels of the company. The newspaper shouldn’t be printing stuff that’s not true, refusing to correct it, and then printing other stuff criticizing the author of the un-true stuff. It shouldn’t be printing the untrue stuff in the first place, and if an error is pointed out it should be corrected. If Will refuses to acknowledge that he’s misleading people, the paper should get rid of him
Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that there are people at the Post who want to make sure that it remains a source of reliable information about crucial topics in the news. It’s just too bad that — outside of Toles — the uprising doesn’t seem to have spread to Fred Hiatt’s op-ed page, which continues to give no indication it has any problem at all with Will’s writing.
