Unfortunately, corrections are seldom front page news – Anthony
NYT and Reporter Revkin Issue ‘Correction’ – Admit ‘Error’ in Front Page Global Warming Article Touted By Gore.
Saturday, May 02, 2009 – By Marc Morano, Climate Depot
Washington, DC – The New York Times has issued a “climate correction” for an “error” for an April 23, 2009 high profile front page global warming article that was touted by former Vice President Al Gore during his Congressional testimony as proof that industry was clouding the science of climate change. [ See: Gore Mouthing-Off About Make-Believe Madoffs ]
But just little more than a week after publishing the front page article, The New York Times and reporter Andrew Revkin have now admitted the article “erred” on key points. Revkin wrote about the now defunct Global Climate Coalition and documents that suggest the group had scientists on board in the 1990’s who claimed “the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.” Revkin’s article came under immediate fire from scientists and others who called into question the central claims and the accuracy of the story.
In a May 2, 2009 post titled “A Climate Correction”, Revkin and the New York Times wrote: “The article cited a ‘backgrounder’ that laid out the coalition’s public stance, published in the early 1990s and distributed widely to lawmakers and journalists. However, the article failed to note a later version of the backgrounder that included language that conformed to the scientific advisory committee’s conclusion. The amended version, which was brought to the attention of The Times by a reader, acknowledged the consensus that greenhouse gases could contribute to warming. What scientists disagreed about, it said, was ‘the rate and magnitude of the ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ (warming) that will result.'”
The New York Times also posted an “Editors’ Note” on May 2 with the same correction.
In addition, the original Times article now has a May 2 “Editors’ Note” , “describing an error in the news story.”
Australian Paleoclimate researcher Dr. Robert M. “Bob” Carter was the first to dismiss the NYT’s Revkin article as “strange, silly even.”
Carter wrote to Climate Depot on April 23, 2009:
Revkin’s latest article in the New York Times makes for strange reading; silly, even. For though the technical experts may have been advising (for some strange, doubtless self-interested reason) this: “even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted”, I’ll eat my hat if anyone could show that was actually the case at any time since 1990. My guess is that Revkin — like all other promulgators of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hysteria throughout the media and scientific communities — is starting to really feel the weight of the evidence that shows all too clearly that dangerous AGW is a myth, and is simply thrashing around in any and every direction to try to find a way of continuing to obfuscate the issue until December. #
UK’s Lord Christopher Monckton was even more outraged and accused the New York Times and Revkin of “deliberate misrepresentation” in climate article and of writing a “mendacious article.”
Monckton wrote the following to New York Times Public Editor and Readers’ Representative Clark Hoyt, Esq., on April 28, 2009:
“The New York Times guidelines for staff writers on ‘Journalistic Ethics’ begin by stating the principles that all journalists should respect: impartiality and neutrality; integrity; and avoidance of conflicts of interest. Andrew Revkin’s front-page article on Friday, 24 April, 2009, falsely alleging that a coalition of energy corporations had for many years acted like tobacco corporations, misrepresenting advice from its own scientists about the supposed threat of “global warming”, offends grievously against all of these principles.” To read Monckton’s full note to New York Times see here:
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This article (the original, retracted one) is posted over at Real Climate, 2 or 3 entries down. Do you think they will just make it disappear, or will they put the retraction “into context” for us?
Tim
REPLY: We should all ask that question in comments submitted there. – Anthony
The NY Times achieved their nefarious aims. How many read and will remember the original front page article versus how few read the editor’s retraction.
It is however an excellent and explicit example of how AGW proponents (including scientists) are willing to lie to promulgate their religious agenda.
Al Gore better issue an apology to Congress, to the industries he called Madoff like schemes based on lies to get people to invest in them and to the millions of people who watched his testimony and believed every word of it.
This kind of obvious story planting based on false and unverified information that forced a central point retraction, perpetrated by the the NYT to reinforce Gore’s testimony is an example of how the Democrats are poisoning the well of public opinion and feeding the fires of populist rage against Corporate America and Wall Street.
Media bias is one thing, but keep in mind that the NYT is in financial difficulties and is soliciting “donations” rather than investments and it is hard to not wonder about the motivations here.
The discovery of a later version does not do much to change the original story.
The Climate Coalition still cut things that it disagreed with out of later version of the scientific advisory group’s paper..
Revkin points out in his blog where he explains the difference between the old and newer version.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/a-climate-correction/
“The coalition did, however, as the article reported, remove from an internal report by the scientific advisory committee a section that said that “contrarian” theories of why global temperatures appeared to be rising “do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.” After the later, amended version of the backgrounder was published, the coalition continued to question the scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions could heat the planet enough to justify sharp cuts in emissions. In the 1995 report, the advisory committee had concluded that “substantially higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases” constituted a “potential threat.” “
Original article in the Thu edition.
Retraction in the Sat edition.
The oil companies were always in a difficult position on this one.No matter what they said they would be accused of protecting their interest.Looks like they did try to counter the tide(acting in their interests he he)but they were swamped and gave in.They may have had a lot of influence,but as it turned out,they didn’t have enough,proving that the talk about how powerful they were was wrong.Another group,and who knows who they were and are,does have a lot of power,and to be honest if it had to go that way,I would rather it have been the oil companies that brought the media.How did it happen?That’s a question for scientists,and I really have no time for science now.Too little,too late.I’m not a sceptic any more,I guess I’m a disbeliever.I disbelieve any scientist.Whenever I read an article that says
a scientific study shows
I’ll be yeah whatever.
On the bright side there is all the wonderful advances in medicine.I thank science for that.
I spent a lot of time last year trying to convince Andy Revkin and dotearth readers that there was a big problem with the CO2=AGW paradigm, without much success. Andy is a committed alarmist and has been for two decades. However, I have a lot of respect for his intelligence, curiosity, and integrity. I predict he’ll get it right eventually, and get a Pulitzer, too.
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It is amazing how many respected news sources are allowing their credibility to deteriorate based on one false story line. When the Global Warming Narrative being propagated by the mainstream media comes unhinged, and it will, the backlash against some of the most respected media outlets (especially the NY Times, BBC and the Economist) is going to be severe. People don’t like to be lied to and that’s exactly what’s happening right now.
To the editors of the NY Times, BBC and the Economist, why have you allowed your institution’s reputations to be hijacked and maligned by a bunch of sloppy charlatans?
Have some respect for the facts. Maybe start by printing these two charts with an unbiased explanation of them:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Antarctic sea ice extent is well above average and the Arctic sea ice extent is quite close to average. The fact is that sea ice is not disappearing at alarming rates as has been reported.
Respect the facts…
As noted at Climate Audit in ‘Unthreaded’ reader MJW also noted the problem and alerted Andy, who promised to review it. MJW also deserves credit for straightening out this mess.
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The New York Times, and a lot of other MSM newspapers, are liberals and many of them are going bankrupt. Why? Because they’ve lost their objectivity and have become politically left leaning. The public is wise to that and the Internet has been the major cause of their demise since it has been the counter balance to the MSM. It won’t be long before the NYT and others like them become irrelevant.
Totally off topic, but MJW, and I think it is the same person, was the first to figure out that Richard Armitage was the original leaker in the Valerie Plame case, by analysis of redacted portions of testimony.
Here I tiptoe into politics, and may get snipped, but the Sainted Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, completely excused Sir Richard, in order to pursue a member of the White House, Scooter Libby, who hadn’t even leaked Plame’s name. The relevance, which may save this comment after all, is the destructive capability of a false meme in the mainstream media.
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As this argument of Anthropogenic Global Warming and/or its newer version called Climate Change, notoriously has been disapproved by the scientific community, it would be advisable for those who used it as a means to get an specific goal, to chose another and quite different argument more adequate for their purposes.
Follow the money.
Follow the power.
And the money, the power, the influence, the control … follows the the power and the control over cultures and nations that the “religion” of AGW provides.
“Green” interests are the ultimmate “religion” – NO ONE can begin an AGW argument by saying “I hate nature” or “Natural processes are bad” or “CO2 does not contribute to global warming” (warming – that is – up from 0 Kelvin up to 25-some-odd Centigrade! The importance of its increase from 25 some-odd Celcius to 25.3 Celcius is what the debate is all about.)
So the enviro’s have won 3/4 of the battle by the way they have defined the terms and the judges of the debate.
And the socialist news media IS the source and the method of the control of our cultures BY the socialists internationally.
Follow the money – to find the REASON why the money and the control is flowing.
I left the following comment on Revkin’s ‘Dot Earth’ blog @ur momisugly 1:14 p.m. I hope the moderator will let it through…
Andy,
I challenge you to justify the timing of the article’s publication — and then give us your word that the date of publication was mutually exclusive of the date of the Congressional hearing w/ Al Gore’s appearance and that there was no collusion regarding the article’s publication date.
Will you allow this comment to be published?
— Dave the Denier, Ohio, USA
Because preaching to the faithful is the only lifeline they have left. They’re becoming extinct.
As long as Gore is going to stand up on Hansen’s AGW soapbox and yell fire on a crowded planet, reports are going to get stampeded, and a lot of public opinion is going to be alienated to him.
The man is going about with a chip on his shoulder, picking fights.
Fine.
The world will learn to hate you, Mr. Gore.
This article makes no sense. It’s just a collection of unconnected convoluted statements, which I can’t be bothered to try and string together.
Very interesting how the correction still refers to the ‘scientific evidence’ (last paragraph) as if it is fact. What they should have said is ‘a large set of published results from studies and simulations’ which is what it is.
I also would like to state for the record, as I am a scientist, that something being peer-reviewed does not mean that it is correct; it just means that it has been deemed sufficient to enter the scientific debate. I keep hearing this ‘meme’ in warmist arguments e.g. ‘do you refute the large amount of peer-reviewed articles’ as if the minute they were published they became correct. And that there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ side in scientific debate.
As an example, I did my PhD in ferroelectric materials. A lot of people are trying to make capacitors out of these materials so that they can make smaller transistors and memory elements. The big issue is called the size effect. If you take a material like Barium Titanate (BTO) and have a crystal or compressed powder the dielectric constant is about 10000 (This may be wrong but it will do for comparison). If you make a thin film (3 microns thick and below) the constant starts to drop as the film gets thinner. Its can get as low as 100. Many people came up with theories that it was to do with couping effects and the number of unit cells in the material, or others had parasitic capacitances near the electrodes called ‘dead’ layers where there was no polarisation etc. There are reams of papers on this and for want of a better word it became the ‘consensus’. Then some friends of mine managed to get a crystal of BTO and cut a 75 nm slice of it and make a little capacitor. They did some standard material processing on it (annealed it) and low and behold it had the same dielectric constant as the bulk crystal. Turns out the ‘size effect’ was purely about how good the interfaces were and not to do with the actual crystal properties.
So it goes to show that peer-review simply puts these papers out there for debate. The theories were wrong.
A beautiful and elegant theory can sometimes end up soiled by the ugly truth of a methodical and well characterised experiment.
I come across a peer reviewed statement on a blog in a newspaper.I said as far as I was concerned the man made global warming theory was getting peer reviewed on the net.
“Original article in the Thu edition.
Retraction in the Sat edition.”
Heh, yeah, Saturday being the paper with the least circulation. Also, original posted on page A1 probably, retraction probably on page Z-93 in tiny type between a couple of foot powder ads.
kim (09:52:08) :
Andy is a committed alarmist and has been for two decades. However, I have a lot of respect for his intelligence, curiosity, and integrity.
I’m very sorry Kim but I can’t let this one pass.
If he’s a “committed alarmist” how on earth can he also be described as having “intelligence, curiosity, and integrity”? Being “committed” is, as far as I can see, being firmly wedded to a particular point of view and therefore can’t possibly be included in the second sentence of the extract above.
The New York Times financial difficulties and impending bankruptcy can be summarized in one word.
Suicide.
Well deserved.
Adopting the following recommendations would be a good start for the NY Times to regain a smidgen of ethical behavior:
eric (09:30:14) : The discovery of a later version does not do much to change the original story. The Climate Coalition still cut things that it disagreed with out of later version of the scientific advisory group’s paper..
So what? There is no convincing evidence that the models are valid particularly in light of their abysmal lack of predictive power.
It’s up to the modelers to prove the worth of the model(s) and not at all the task of ‘contrarians’ to disprove. For example, take the following hypothesis Extraterrestrials have visited Mars and the Moon . Would it be your job prove it wrong or mine to prove it right? If the latter, what purpose would a statement of inability to disprove serve except to unjustly lend credence to the reversal of roles?
Or are you of the opinion that AGW models are special so don’t require proof of worth?
Mr Green Genes 11:02:11
A fair question. I think the answer is that for someone of his intelligence and curiosity and integrity, and with committed beliefs, it is difficult to change one’s mind. He saw his beliefs validated for two decades, and only within the last year has he been exposed to significant skeptical opinion. I interacted with him and dotearth readers for months, and he would listen respectfully, consult his panel of experts(predominantly alarmists), and come back with the predictable true believer responses. However, he did allow my heretical comments, and that of others, and he would seriously consider objections. And he is slowly exploring the world of the skeptic; he just hasn’t gotten there himself, yet. As I say, I think he’ll get there eventually, as the globe is unequivocally cooling, and the CO2 effect on climate has been unambiguously exaggerated, and when he does, it will be a gamechanger. Keep the faith; I am. I have high hopes for him.
Also, parsed as it is, admitting some error in this story is another sign of integrity.
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