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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Does anyone even read the NYT anymore?
Barry Foster (01:48:43) :
Yes.
The following comment is by someone who appears to be a RealClimate moderator [posted on Climate Audit; note the “we”] :
A few comments:
First, despite their denials, RC is a heavily political discussion blog. As President Eisenhower pointed out, government money is dangerously corrupting science. Government in a democracy is inherently political. Gavin Schmidt is James Hansen’s immediate subordinate. The entire agenda of RC is to politicize science in order to divert more money into government-favored pockets.
The next false claim is that other sites are paid to “promote a certain agenda.” This is pure psychological projection, in which one’s own wrongdoing is imputed to others. It has been disclosed that George Soros financially supports RealClimate. And James Hansen, purportedly working for the taxpaying public, is the recipient of over a million dollars in cash from organizations with an AGW agenda.
As numerous posters at WUWT have made clear, RC routinely censors comments that dispute their AGW agenda.
RealClimate is a propaganda site. That is one of the main reasons they did so poorly in the Weblog Awards; people don’t want to be spoon fed propaganda. WUWT won the “Best Science” site award because this site provides a forum for all points of view, while RealClimate is an echo chamber that deletes/censors uncomfortable comments [the final vote total gave WUWT ten times the number of votes that RC got].
It corrupts science when a government agency runs a blog that censors comments from taxpaying citizens, in order to please those who give hefty cash donations to those running the blog.
MJW (and others),
You may find this article interesting:
Veteran New York Times science writer Andy Revkin calls it “my worst misstep as a journalist in 26 years.”
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/05/reporter-revkins-worst-misstepaftermath-of-a-climate-reporting-gaffe/
Thanks, Rick, that’s interesting. Revkin said something similar to me one of his emails. I didn’t know until I read the Yale article that he’d seen Greenpeace’s GCC file before I mentioned it to him. I’d wondered why he considered it a serious mistake rather than just a lack of awareness of the revised backgrounder. I still think I’d judge him less harshly for the error than he judges himself.
On the other hand, I’d judge him considerably more harshly than he judges himself for the original article, whose underlying issue he claims still stands. Even without the revised backgrounder, that article fails to support its premise. He admits the older version of the backgrounder was circulated in the early 90s, yet somehow offers it as proof the GCC was denying the conclusions of the late 1995 scientific report. He also asserts in the original piece– and continues to assert — that omitting the section on contrarian arguments from the primer was highly significant, even though the primer was never made public. He might have argued that the primer was intended to be made public, but then suppressed. Since he didn’t, I tend to assume he found no evidence that that happened.
I’m a bit confused about his attribution of the error to the “tyranny of time.” The events he wrote about occurred more than 13 years ago; I doubt a week or two’s delay would have spoiled the newsworthiness. I can’t think of a looming deadline — well, other that Gore’s Capitol Hill testimony (that’s mostly just a cynical joke).