AP's Seth Borenstein is just too damn cozy with the people he covers – time for AP to do something about it

Here are some of the objectionable quotes in Seth Borenstein’s story. (I hope others, who have more in-depth knowledge, can find additional quotes.):
A. “It is not clear if any data was destroyed; two U.S. researchers denied it.”
This would have been the point for him to mention that some data has been lost. (If Seth wanted to be even-handed, he could even venture to use sneer-quotes, as I suspect he has on other occasions against skeptics, and say “lost.”)
B. “Keenan threatened to have the FBI arrest University at Albany scientist Wei-Chyung Wang for fraud. (A university investigation later cleared him of any wrongdoing.)”
First, it’s a mild journalistic no-no to include an “any” like the one I boldfaced, because it nudges the reader into taking sides. (There’s probably a technical term for this sort of insinuating adjective.)
Second, this would have been the point for SB to mention that the U of A has refused to release its hearing-report, which it is supposed to do.
Third, I don’t think it’s accurate to imply that the accusee was entirely exonerated. Here are links to the two WUWT threads on this topic:
Climate Science Fraud at Albany University?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/03/climate-science-fraud-at-albany-university/
Surface Temperature Records in China
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/08/12/surface-temperature-records-in-china/
Here’s what one commenter, “An Observer,” stated in the first thread:
”Read the odd letter [from Albany U] as a lawyer rather than a layman and it all makes sense. The letter says the “the investigation committee finds no evidence of the alleged fabrication of results and nothing that rises to the level of research misconduct having been committed by Dr. Wang.”
The operative phrases in this two part sentence are (1) fabrication of RESULTS and (2) having been committed by DR. WANG.
The way I read the letter – and I have written many similar ones in my career – is that Albany found something. And it was large and was research misconduct. It involved the fabrication of DATA not results and it involved research misconduct by someone other than Dr. Wang. I have my suspicions of whom they are referring to but they are just suspicions.
This letter is true, accurate and very deceptive. It covers Albany’s posterior while not actually lying. I would venture to guess that Albany has a definition of “research misconduct” that does not include failing to supervise a grad student or failing to thoroughly check the work of your co-author.
This would also explain why Dr. Keegan was not given the report and why he was not interviewed.
C. “The “trick” that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data that was misleading, Mann explained.
First, once again SB has put his thumb on the scale with a reader-leading word, “explained.” This is taking sides. The neutral word would be “claimed.” (My journalistic experience is limited to a stint as a news producer at a college radio station. But even in that lowly position I was sensitive to the connotations of word-choice in cases like this. I’m a bit surprised SB’s editors didn’t catch this pair of cub-flubs.)
Second, this would have been the point for SB to slip in a salient fact, thusly: “Mann … who is now also the subject of an official investigation …” (The quote is from the Daily Mail’s story of Dec. 13 by David Rose, here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235395/SPECIAL-INVESTIGATION-Climate-change-emails-row-deepens–Russians-admit-DID-send-them.html# .)
Third, his simplistic treatment of “hide the decline” amounts to a whitewashing. The Daily Mail’s fuller treatment is justly non-exculpatory, to put it mildly:
”Finally, Briffa changed the way he computed his data and submitted a revised version. This brought his work into line for earlier centuries, and ‘cooled’ them significantly. But alas, it created another, potentially even more serious, problem.
According to his tree rings, the period since 1960 had not seen a steep rise in temperature, as actual temperature readings showed – but a large and steady decline, so calling into question the accuracy of the earlier data derived from tree rings.
This is the context in which, seven weeks later, Jones presented his ‘trick’ – as simple as it was deceptive.
All he had to do was cut off Briffa’s inconvenient data at the point where the decline started, in 1961, and replace it with actual temperature readings, which showed an increase.
On the hockey stick graph, his line is abruptly terminated – but the end of the line is obscured by the other lines.
‘Any scientist ought to know that you just can’t mix and match proxy and actual data,’ said Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
‘They’re apples and oranges. Yet that’s exactly what he did.’
Since Warmergate-broke, some of the CRU’s supporters have claimed that Jones and his colleagues made a ‘full disclosure’ of what they did to Briffa’s data in order to produce the hockey stick.
But as McIntyre points out, ‘contrary to claims by various climate scientists, the IPCC Third Assessment Report did not disclose the deletion of the post-1960 values’.
On the final diagram, the cut off was simply concealed by the other lines.
By 2007, when the IPCC produced its fourth report, McIntyre had become aware of the manipulation of the Briffa data and Briffa himself, as shown at the start of this article, continued to have serious qualms.
McIntyre by now was an IPCC ‘reviewer’ and he urged the IPCC not to delete the post-1961 data in its 2007 graph. ‘They refused,’ he said, ‘stating this would be “inappropriate”.’”
D. ”But in the end, global warming didn’t go away, according to the vast body of research over the years.”
It’s a bit of a red herring to imply that the entire Climategate controversy is over whether global warming is occurring. The dispute is over whether “the consensus” is any longer entitled to the amount of trust that would entitle it to say, “The debate is over; cut your industrial throat, and pay reparations into the bargain.”
If the consensus ever had that degree of legitimacy, it’s lost it now. The commanding heights on the warmist side – the CRUsaders, the IPCC, the big-name journals, etc. – have shown themselves to be petty, Pecksniffian, and partisan (e.g., Santer’s violence-tinged remarks). They countenanced or engaged in dodgy data, dirty fighting, and dirigisme — an “I direct” attitude. They had the unscientific, autocratic belief that it was an outrage to say them Nay or inquire into their data methods. Etc.
Well, the wind has whipped that would-be emperor’s robe aside for a moment and shown us his feet of clay. We see that the consensus has, to a significant degree, been engineered rather than arrived at in a purely scientific manner—a manner that a finding of such great economic and social import requires.
No longer can King Consensus command assent on his mere say-so. The populace in the US will ask itself, “Can fiddlers and finaglers, or their enablers and excusers, be trusted to take our trillions?” The answer will be NO, in thunder. It’s the populace that’s the sovereign. It will not accept an arrant imposition and abuse of its trust – and, if pushed (by the EPA and courts), it will push back.
If popular consent is to be obtained, a properly scientific do-over is required, under the auspices of panels of independent scientists from a variety of fields (mostly retired), and with lots of input from climate contrarians. This re-do may seem, to the arrogant top-lofties in the field, like a great imposition on them. But, in a year or two they’ll be begging for any chance at a comeback, when they find themselves in history’s dustbin.
E. ”None of the e-mails flagged by the AP and sent to three climate scientists viewed as moderates in the field changed their view that global warming is man-made and a threat.”
First, only two scientists are named, Vecchi and North.
Second, as I mentioned in “D,” it’s a bit of a diversion to focus on whether or not the CRUtape letters debunk global warming. That’s not the gravamen of the charge.
Third, it’s not significant that moderates aren’t yet stepping out of line, because it’s not yet safe to do so (notice how the Team kept their doubts to themselves), and because they’re in to it up to their necks in the groupthink themselves. They can’t turn around on a dime, but have to extricate themselves with circumspection.
Fourth, I wonder how thoroughly these moderates have considered the skeptics’ case. Have they really heard an extensive and vigorous presentation of the contrarians’s side of the debate? The alarmists have mostly avoided debates, often claiming they would be silly in front of an unscientific audience. OK then, how about a series of video-conferenced debates presented to a scientific audience only? (Perhaps behind the paywall of a scientific society’s website.)
F. ” Gerald North … headed a National Academy of Sciences study that looked at — and upheld as valid — Mann’s earlier studies that found the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries.”
That’s a half-truth. The NAS sort of agreed (it’s “plausible”) with Mann’s conclusion (“the 1990s were the hottest years in centuries”), mostly because other studies came to the same conclusion. But it did not uphold the validity of Mann’s studies that came to that conclusion. They disagreed with his use of bristlecone pines as good proxies. Here is a link to the lengthy NAS report: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676
Here are the quotes from the NAS report that express little confidence in Mann’s proxies:
Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.
The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming.
Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.””
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Summing up, SB’s article contains attempts to subtly demean skeptics, valorize alarmists, omit embarrassing information, and misdirect attention from alarmists’ weak points. When I say that it’s not a bad article, considering the author, you can imagine what that implies about his other work.

I’m not sure any of the AP team can report news anymore. It’s difficult to remember a well reported article from them. They have to have one, but where.
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I just finished beating to death the GHCN antarctic temperatures. It seems there is about 8 times more warming than actual in the GHCN dataset.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/ghcn-antarctic-warming-eight-times-actual/