The Broad article

The recent article by William J. Broad in the NY Times about supposed over hyping of climate change by Al Gore has been addressed by the folks at realclimate.

A slightly different take comes from this essay by Joe Brewer on the use of frames in the global warming obfuscation effort. Mr. Brewer has an interesting perspective since he has an M.S. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois and is a fellow in the Rockridge Institute which promotes the idea of frames and their use in politics.

Broad's horrible article should be an embarrassment for any newspaper. So why did it happen in Times?

One view comes from the Daily Howler, who has passionately documented the mainstream media's War on Gore of which the Broad article is a sample. Howler's thorough put-down of Broad's article and subsequent media coverage is in 5 parts: part1, part2 , part3 , part4, part5 (scroll down each page for parts 2-5). A sample quote:

A question came to our analysts’ minds as they worked their way through the endless jumbles of Broad’s report. Here it is: Could a college student present such work without being rebuked by his Teaching Assistant? One would hope that the answer is no—that American teens are held to a higher standard than Broad observes in this report. And yet, amazingly, we see such work misleading the public at the very highest levels of American journalism! For reasons only the gods can explain, Broad is part-owner of two Pulitzer Prizes, and his piece appears in “Science Times”—a section which would surely count as one of the headiest regions in all of American newspapering. But his work is an utter failure—a joke.

So why did this bizarre essay, which misreports facts the Times got right in its earlier coverage of the IPCC release, appear in the "paper of record"?

Media Matters patiently dissects the Broad piece here, here and here with a piece by Eric Boehlert here.