Latest blogstorm (Oreskes) fails to impress traditional media

Soon after the NASA GISTEMP non-story died away in the blogosphere, a new one started up concerning a yet-to-be-published paper in denier "journal" Energy and Environment that supposedly refutes the notion that there is a scientific consensus on global warming by counting publications. You can get some background at Stranger Fruit here and here, at DeSmogBlog here and here and at Deltoid.

But this blog is about traditional media coverage of which there's been none so far for this story. The NASA GISTEMP story took about 3 weeks between its first appearance on blogs and mention in the New York Times, although not how the deniers would want it. This one started around late August so time is running out. It might get another push when the paper is actually published.

Update: The best summary of this story is at the Stranger Fruit blog here and here.

No posts, moving.

I just finished moving within Chicago and will resume posting when things are somewhat back to normal.

Hansen releases GISTEMP source code

Jim Hansen and colleagues have made available the source code that generates their global temperature plots. From Hansen's latest email:

Because the programs include a variety of languages and computer unique functions, [my colleague] Reto [Reudy] would have preferred to have a week or two to combine these into a simpler more transparent structure, but because of a recent flood of demands for the programs, they are being made available as is.

The data which this source code uses was corrected slightly and this was the subject of a lot of hot air from the denier crowd who tried to take an insignificant data correction, blow it up and then sow doubt about the whole process. Gavin Schmidt maintained that the references for the algorithms were enough (see comment #44 and #67). I think open source is always better. Not publishing the source just gives deniers more mud to throw in people's eyes. Cheers to Hansen and his colleagues (especially Reto Reudy).

Editor and Publisher columnist: "Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity"

I've argued on this blog that the denialists haven't been getting nearly as much of their material in to the traditional media since the IPCC report came out in February (when I started this blog). They're mostly heard in the right wing outlets and in editorial and columnist pages (and in the non-traditional media.)

But other's are still concerned. The excellent column by Mark Lynas (below) started out haranguing the false balance in global warming stories. Now Steve Outing, a columnist for the newspaper trade magazine Editor and Publisher, has published a strong argument for abandoning "objectivity" about climate change.

He starts out thinking about what he can do do make his kid's world better:

I've also been thinking about the newspaper industry and global warming. And frankly, I don't think newspapers are doing enough. Indeed, newspapers' fabled commitment to "objectivity" has been a detriment to efforts to combat global warming.

The industry still has a lot of power to influence people. How about if newspapers abandon their old way of doing things when it comes to the issue of global warming, and turn their influence to good? It just might be that through this issue alone, newspapers revive themselves to some extent. Editors are shirking their responsibility to improve our world, in my view, so let's change that.

This echo's Mark Lynas' call for a "more rigorous and honest approach".

He then goes on the say where objectivity is meant to be used:

I have no quibble with the status quo when it comes to controversial issues where there is a significant split of opinion. Outside of the opinion section, most newspapers are not going to allow writers and editors to express an opinion on hot debates like the right to abortion, or public funding for stem cell research. There are sizable groups of people lining up on both sides of those issues (not to mention those who fall in between). It would be journalistic suicide to take a mainstream paper and go on an advocacy tear about abortion, for example.

But advocacy in terms of encouraging people to act to alleviate climate change is really a wholly different issue. There's clearly scientific consensus that humans are altering the planet's climate, and that the effect is accelerating. Stronger hurricanes, melting glaciers and sea ice, worse wildfires and longer fire seasons, more severe droughts and flooding, and more frequent bizarre weather events overall.

Wow. I'm glad that message has gotten through to this non-scientist professional newspaperman.

For me the most interesting part was this mini-history of "objectivity":

The problem with that kind of coverage is that it doesn't permit journalists to find the truth in an issue, like global warming. Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University and a respected new media observer, points out that journalistic objectivity first arose in the 1920s and '30s -- following a period of sensational, "muckraking" reporting by newspapers.

"Part of the problem is that journalists don't realize what objectivity was in the first place," says Rosen. "From the beginning it was a way of limiting liability, and allowing journalists to take a pass when it's hard to figure out who's right and what's really going on. From the beginning it was meant to dull the knife edge of the press. It was meant to 'de-voice' or defang the individual journalist, so that more people would be comfortable with the product. But the costs of that system have built up over time.

"One of the most insidious and deceptive things about the system of objectivity is how it persuades journalists that the alternative to it is 'subjectivity.' From this angle, to relinquish objectivity means to surrender to partisanship, opinion, bias. Not very attractive, that. But what if the real alternative is truthtelling itself?" Rosen adds.

That's a powerful observation that should be repeated often to anyone trying browbeat the media into downplaying or denying global warming. The alternative to false-balance "objectivity" in global warming reporting is not advocacy or subjectivity but truthtelling.

He concludes the philosophical discussion:

The good professor would seem to support my idea that newspapers' sacred commitment to journalistic objectivity perhaps is hindering the power of the press to impact humans' behavior, because in the name of objectivity, reporters must give equal time to the tiny minority of skeptics and not go too far out on a limb to declare that climate change indeed is caused by humankind. (Perhaps that's why during recent news coverage of severe summer flooding in the Midwest US and historic wildfires in Greece, seldom is mentioned the possible -- I'd suggest, likely -- link between those events and human-caused climate change.)

As long as news organizations keep alive the idea that there's still a "debate" about whether human-induced climate change is real or not, people have an excuse for not changing their behavior.

What I take away from this is that editors need to go beyond making sure their reporters don't fall for the denialist spin, they need to also clean up their editorial pages.

Mr. Outing's inbox was apparently filled with flames from a few newspaper people and some denier usual suspects. Lets let him know his views are appreciated.

The morality of global warming and its reporting

I've been aware of the movement to describe global warming as a moral issue but mostly saw it as a way to bring more people, such as religious leaders, in to the effort to stop it.

However this excellent column by British reporter and activist Mark Lynas, called "Neutrality is cowardice", has made a connection between this moral side and reporting which I had not appreciated.

The BBC was planning an "Earth Relief" day of climate-change related programming. A little complaining from some anti-environmentalists and the BBC executives couldn't disown it fast enough:

The spat at last weekend's Edinburgh International Television Festival was a classic example of this impulse to timidity. When the anti-environmentalist film-maker Martin Durkin and his Channel 4 commissioning editor Hamish Mykura attacked the BBC's upcoming Planet Relief project - a proposed day of climate change-related programming and entertainment modelled on Comic Relief - corporation executives present rushed to disown it. "It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet," insisted Newsnight editor Peter Barron. "I think there are a lot of people who think that it must be stopped."

Yes its not the BBC's job but if you could help save the planet, wouldn't you? Here's the passage that really struck me:

If Barron is really suggesting that the BBC should be "neutral" on the question of planetary survival, his absurd stance surely sets a new low for political cowardice in the media. It is also completely inconsistent. On easy moral questions, such as poverty in Africa, the BBC is quite happy to campaign explicitly (as with Comic Relief or Live Aid), despite the claim by the corporation's head of television news, Peter Horrocks, that its role is "giving people information, not leading them or prophesying". By analogy, the BBC would have been neutral on the question of slavery in the mid-19th century, and should be giving full voice today to the likes of the British National Party - all in the interests of balance and fairness. Likewise, it should not cover the plight of Aids orphans in South Africa without constantly acknowledging the views of the tiny minority who still dispute the link between HIV and Aids.

Another example that immediately came to mind was Apartheid in South Africa which the press here easily condemned in the eighties. More from Mr. Lynas:

It is worth re-stating again what a more rigorous and honest approach to climate change might look like. First, it would recognise that, despite small uncertainties regarding the specifics, the larger scientific question regarding causality has been settled for a decade at least. Second, it would acknowledge the moral repercussions of our failure to act so far: on people who are already suffering and dying in more frequent and extreme weather events, on future generations of human beings who will suffer a far worse fate, and on other species that will be driven to extinction as a result.

Mr Lynas has a lower opinion of reporters, editors and producers then I do (some of them know what to do). But this does put the onus on the traditional media: its not enough to not give deniers space in your pages or patiently explain the latest scientific findings. They need to talk about how this is ruining lives now and in the future and why action is necessary now. More on this in a future post.

I'll also track down and comment on an interesting reference Mr. Lynas found comparing denier-speak with pro-slavery arguments from 19th century America!

Update: BBC canceled the Planet Relief special. Cowards.

More on religion and climate change

I continue to be fascinated by the growing involvement of religious leaders of many different faiths in stopping global warming. Here's a few recent articles on the topic:

A small gathering of church leaders was held in Charleston:

It is an issue of stewardship, Rose Edington, co-minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, said.

“Regardless if the science on global warming is true, half true or not true, we have to be stewards of our planet for the next generation,” he said.

A group of scientists and Evangelicals took a trip to Alaska together to discuss climate change:

The historic collaboration between leading scientists and Evangelicals to protect the environment, spearheaded by the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) continues this week with a trip to Alaska.

"The goal of our trip is to witness together what human-caused climate change is doing to our world," said co-leader of the trip Eric Chivian, who shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize and is Director of the HMS Center. "While this collaboration may come as a surprise to some, it makes perfect sense. Both scientists and Evangelicals see life on earth as sacred and share the same deep sense of responsibility about protecting it."

"The idea is for all of us to experience what human activity is doing to God's Creation so that we can understand the urgent importance of caring for it," added expedition co- leader Rev. Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the NAE. "We dare to imagine a world in which science and religion cooperate, minimizing our differences about how Creation got started, to work together to reverse its degradation."

Counterpoint: On the other hand, some Evangelicals are not yet convinced.

Update: The Pope is also saying climate change is a serious issue.

Did anyone in U.S. cover U.K. climate protests?

This is now old news but I want to write about it before its really old.

On Saturday, August 18th, and the week prior, groups of protesters conducted a coordinated protest of global warming over multiple sites in England including Heathrow airport where early rumors the protests would shut the airport down didn't pan out. It all went peacefully.

Despite getting lots of coverage in the U.K., I didn't see anything in the traditional U.S. media except for this story in the L.A. Times.

The traditional media missed a great story. From the L.A. Times article:

The greatest show of force was a midday parade through this village's streets -- shadowed by Heathrow's lumbering jets overhead -- as demonstrators carried placards reading, "No Third Runway," "Altitude Sickness" and one of the catchier slogans of modern protest, "We Are Armed Only With Peer-Reviewed Science."

Heh, heh. I love British humor.
From the same article:

Over the last week, an estimated 1,200 activists set up makeshift tents, a fleet of bicycles on loan and a sophisticated recycling center in the Camp for Climate Change near the site of the proposed runway. In addition to preparing for Sunday's showdown, camp leaders conducted workshops on civic activism and environmental science and oversaw a series of earlier protests leading up to Sunday's clashes.

This was a large, well coordinated protest. Besides Heathrow, there was action at other places. From The Guardian:

Demonstrators from the Heathrow Camp for Climate Action today glued themselves to the Department of Transport in the latest action to highlight their protest against the airport.

Around 11 protesters arrived at the building in Horseferry Road, central London, at around 8.15am.

Six superglued their hands to its rotating doors, police said, while another two climbed on top of them with a banner protesting against airport expansion. A further three chained themselves to the doors

. Clever. Also from The Guardian:

Climate change activists who set up a camp at Heathrow airport nine days ago yesterday began to wind down their protests after a second day of civil disobedience which saw financiers, oil and nuclear power companies and even carbon offset firms targeted. In the past week there have been 12 separate actions and 71 arrests.

The climate camp's promised 24 hours of direct action, which began with protests at Heathrow against the aviation industry on Friday evening, spread to protests in Oxford, the City of London and Essex. Targets included organisations which campaigners said were contributing to climate change through their emissions at Heathrow or which they judged were not offering solutions

Here's my favorite story:

Two carbon offset firms staffed by committed environmentalists also found themselves targeted. Climate Care in Oxford was invaded by people dressed as red herrings and the CarbonNeutral Company in London was leafleted. Both offer to "neutralise" the emissions of consumers and companies by investing in projects which lower emissions elsewhere.

"Carbon offsets are ineffective, based on dubious science and lead people to believe they are helping when they are not," said Sophie Nathan, who took part in the CarbonNeutral Company action.

Now I realize that U.S. newspapers usually ignore domestic events in other countries but this particular domestic event involves an issue that affects all of us so maybe that should change.

You can catch up with this story at Google News and YouTube.

Update: H. E. Taylor of GW News has provided a collection of links to coverage, mostly on non-traditional media. I've put the summary here.

Who killed the DSCOVR climate satellite? An experiment in blog-to-traditional media crossover

DeSmogBlog is launching an investigative series into how a NASA satellite called the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) was killed before launch even after 90% of it was done. The DSCOVR satellite is designed to sit at an L1 point, very far from the earth, and measure its energy budget. This can provide a very simple and direct measurement of global warming and also help bound a few important parameters in climate models.

Despite being ready for launch for about 5 years, the satellite has sat in storage. I've always heard this was because it was 1) a climate thing and 2) championed by Al Gore and the Bush administration is just that petty.

DeSmogBlog investigative reporter Mitchell Anderson hints that the oil lobby may have requested that it be killed. In an odd move, DeSmogBlog is asking for donations to support the ongoing (?) investigation in to this story. Don't you want to keep the investigation a secret until the story is done so you don't spook sources? And what if there's no story there? Unlikely, but still....

Anyway, good for DeSmogBlog and I wish them luck. It will be interesting to watch and see if this story makes it in to the traditional media. Blogs are often criticized (unfairly (by the traditional media)) for only feeding off the original reporting of the big papers and news networks. But lefty blog Talking Points Memo is credited with pushing the fired U.S. attorney scandal back in to the traditional media, thus making it a scandal, by a combination of linking and original reporting. It will be interesting to see if DeSmogBlog can accomplish something similar.

There are models and then there are models

Some NASA scientists recently published an article in Journal of Geophysical Research Letters which shows that severe thunderstorms may be more intense in a warmer world.

There's nothing wrong with the article or the science, but I have a quibble with the press release NASA put out about it. It seems to imply that NASA built an entirely new climate model. Consider the opening paragraph:

NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth’s climate warms.

Wow! A whole new climate model? NASA sure has been busy! There's more:

Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including “severe thunderstorms” that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground.

I know how hard it is to make a climate model so I didn't think it was really a new model. Indeed the article said that Dr. Genio et al. had simply altered one small part, the convection parameterization, of the NASA GISS Model E which is probably 3-4 years old. Its more accurate to say that Dr. Genio et al. have developed a new model of convection and placed this in the larger model of the global atmosphere. Those two uses of the word "model" are very different. I would expect this distinction to be lost somewhere but not in the NASA press release.

The press release, or slightly re-written versions of it, have shown up in a couple of places so far: ScienceDaily and even Fox News.

U.S. states continue to lead on global warming

Global warming is expected to be a big topic when Congress returns in September. I continue to believe that Bush won't even sign a bill with weak restrictions on CO2 emissions and lots of loopholes. His position is still "no mandatory cuts".

So leadership will have to continue to come from the states. Some recent coverage:

In Oregon:

Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed the state's first climate change legislation Tuesday, capping what he called the "most momentous legislative session for energy and the environment in more than 30 years in Oregon."

The bill sets ambitious standards for greenhouse gas reduction in Oregon, including reducing greenhouse gas levels by 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

In Maryland:

[Governor] O'Malley signed a bill earlier this year on tightening car emissions and created the Commission on Climate Change. And Mr. Aburn [top air quality official at the Maryland Department of the Environment] also said he expects his boss to continue to take action on global warming.

Standing in front of a bright yellow banner advertising the goals of "at least 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050," Mr. Aburn said: "I think the time has come and you're going to see action this year."

Mr. Aburn hinted that even stricter emissions are possible, pointing to the banner and saying, "I'm glad you put the words 'at least' in there.

In California, Attorney General Jerry Brown was suing cities who weren't abiding the state's environmental laws in its development planning:

San Bernardino now sets the pace for how local government can adopt powerful measures to combat oil dependency and climate disruption," Brown said. "This landmark agreement establishes one of the first greenhouse gas reduction plans in California. It is a model that I encourage other cities and counties to adopt."

Approved today by the County Board of Supervisors, today's settlement resolves a lawsuit, filed by the attorney general in April, contesting the adequacy of San Bernardino's general plan under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Bush Administration ordered to produce climate report

A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to finally produce the two reports about climate change that its required to make under the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

Part of this report was leaked to a couple of reporters in March.

This press release from the Center for Biological Diversity has the details:

The Research Plan and National Assessment required by the Global Change Research Act are intended to be the preeminent documents guiding federal research and policy-making on issues related to global warming. The Research Plan guides all federal climate research, while the National Assessment serves to provide an understandable summary of global warming impacts on the environment, economy, human health and human safety of the United States and is to by used by Congress and federal agencies in setting policy and responding to global warming. The last National Assessment was issued in late 2000 under the Clinton administration. Its use and dissemination was suppressed by the Bush administration, and the required update in 2004 was never produced. The Research Plan was required by law to be updated in 2006 but also has never been produced.

The Court ordered the Bush administration to issue the draft overdue Research Plan by March 1, 2008, with a final 90 days thereafter, and the National Assessment by May 31, 2008.

Coverage by Bloomberg, ABC News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Associated Press.

The administration claimed the law gave it lots of discretion on deadlines and the judge flatly rejected that. The administration also said it didn't need to do 2 reports and is instead planning to do 21 little reports over 2 years. Thus minimizing the impact and press coverage, of course. You can see the planned reports and schedule here.

The news articles are all appropriately harsh to the administration. This is mentioned as their second legal setback along with the Supreme Court decision on CO2.

Newsweek editor's pre-apology.

I read Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's "Editor's Desk" note in the issue of Newsweek with the great story on global warming deniers. I found this anecdote interesting:

In the issue of NEWSWEEK dated April 28, 1975—the cover that week, about the pending fall of Saigon, was called "The Last Battle" —the magazine ran what is probably the most-cited single-page story in our history. Headlined the cooling world, it explored worries about a new ice age. Global warming soon led scientists to put such concerns aside, but those who doubt that greenhouse gases are causing significant climate change have long pointed to the 1975 NEWSWEEK piece as an example of how wrong journalists and researchers can be. (If you type NEWSWEEK and global cooling into Google, you get 262,000 hits—not bad for a 33-year-old article.)

Meacham continues to misinterpret this history by saying scientists "put aside" cooling like it was some fad and now the same scientists are talking about warming. This was never more than a handful of scientists' speculations being blown up by the press, e.g. Newsweek. See realclimate for the definitive debunking of this media myth.

But I missed the significance of this odd paragraph in the same note:

We are not saying that it is time for all Americans to give up their cars and bike to work, or that Gore should be canonized or that the board of the Sierra Club should be given emergency powers to run the country.

Well of course you're not. Does a story about the denial industry really need this qualifier?

Luckily, the Daily Howler is long skilled at spotting this kind of journalistic weasel-ness:

But the real must-read in the current Newsweek is Jon Meacham’s weak-kneed “Editor’s Desk,” in which The Parson finds three hundred ways to apologize for running such a piece. Meacham is a genial person, but we’ve long been struck by his lack of spine, a problem which was always clear when he was doing more TV punditry. But this “Editor’s Desk” is an Instant Classic—a portrait of a multimillionaire press corps’ pusillanimity in the face of conservative power.

Sigh. Between the Democratic leadership and traditional media editors, I hope there's enough spines to go around.

The deniers screamed and nobody listened

For the last couple of weeks, the climate blogosphere has been a-buzz with the story of how a small error was spotted, and corrected, in the NASA GISS global temperature record. The correction was very minor and did not alter the global trend (up) at all. See coverage at realclimate, ClimateProgress (reprinting much of an email from James Hansen), and the August 19th edition of GW news.

Here's what's really interesting about this event: despite the coordinated effort from the deniers and their supporters in Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the Washington Times, this "story" was completely ignored by the traditional media. About all I could find was a mention in the Washington Post, where it was portrayed as a "look at what those bloggers are in a tizzy over now" story. The LA Times also had a brief mention where the change in the data is appropriately described as "negligible" and the blog reaction is a big part of the story.

This non-reaction underscores a point I've been making a lot on this blog: the traditional media have shut the door on the climate deniers. When they're mentioned at all, they are always qualified with their conservative and other agendas. They aren't portrayed as scientists engaged in a legitimate debate.

So what should climate bloggers do? Take a cue from the traditional media reporters: when climate deniers say they have "proof" that GW isn't happening or is a hoax, ignore them. No matter how much they post in your comment section, ignore them. They will only sap your strength and time for the real fight that will begin when Congress returns in the fall: the debate about what to do about global warming.

Update: The paper of record, the New York Times, has weighed in with a story by their main climate reporter, Andrew Revkin. Again the emphasis is on the over-reaction in the blogosphere. There's some interesting words on what James Hansen and Stephen McIntyre agree on (a surprisingly large amount). This passage was interesting in what it didn't say:

Everyone appears also to agree that too much attention is paid to records, particularly given that the difference between 1934, 1998, and several other sets of years in the top 10 warmest list for the United States are so small as to be statistically meaningless.

And who is it that pays all this misleading attention to records? The media, Mr. Revkin.

Speed Matters

Let me take a timeout from climate coverage to address an issue that concerns everyone who uses the internet. Did you know the U.S. is currently ranked 16th in the world in average internet bandwidth to the home? I can remember when the U.S. led the world in internet bandwidth but that was apparently back in the dial-up days.

If we want to grow the online community, one straightforward way to do that is to improve the infrastructure.

A group called speedmatters.org is advocating that Congress address the problem of both speed and access. The results from their test on my AT&T DSL line are on the right. Try it yourself at their website and see what you can do to help.

How to report on science: "Its not that hard".

Sharon Begley, the lead reporter on the mostly excellent Newsweek article on the global warming denial industry had an online chat last Wednesday. In it she not only showed a good grasp of the issues but had a good answer for the question of how reporters report on global warming:

White Stone, Va.: How can the responsible media best meet their "fairness/accuracy/'balance'" responsibilities in dealing with climate change deniers?

Sharon Begley: We haven't figured that out, have we? In my case, whether it's climate change or the latest fossil find, I believe that only those who do research in the given field are qualified to comment. Further, I don't think science is like political or social issues, where all views are of equal weight. To the contrary: in science, there really is a 'right' answer, tho it may take time to emerge, and journalists have a duty to tell readers what that answer is likely to be. Me, I don't do he said/she said, but delve into the arguments and see which has empirical merit. It's not that hard.

The question was an odd one, how to fairly deal with deniers (?), but the answer was a very good one on how to report science. Indeed it is not that hard. The deniers, even the few legitimate scientists like Lindzen, don't have the facts on their side. So you don't have to give equal column inches to their "view". I'm not familiar with Ms. Begley's work so I don't know if she's always been this good in reporting on global warming. But why did her fellow reporters do so badly until recently?

The best example of how to deal with deniers is the Newsweek article itself. Ignore them on stories about global warming, since they only lie about it, and instead write articles on their motives for and history of lying. I'm sure there's more great stories there. As Gavin Schmidt recently speculated in a post on Realclimate:

However, there is clearly a latent and deeply felt wish in some sectors for the whole problem of global warming to be reduced to a statistical quirk or a mistake.

Yeah. Why is that? C'mon reporters! Dig!

Newsweek's history of "The Denial Machine"

The August 13th edition of Newsweek has an eye-catching cover with a picture of the sun and the headline "Global Warming is a Hoax*". The asterisk goes on to say "Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change. Inside the denial machine". This excellent article by Sharon Begley (with help from 4 others) gives a history of the denial efforts which started as a response to Jim Hanson's 1988 testimony to Congress and continue through today.

If you are new to this topic and think there's any doubt about global warming, please read this article and see how you've been manipulated. Even if this is all old news, its a good summary.

The article is mostly history but here's a quote about where things stand today:

To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew [Center for Climate Change]'s [Manik] Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments

.
Fortunately, they can still be voted out of office.

Update: Joe over at Climate Progress thinks Newsweek wasn't hard enough. He also think the cover is a little to clever and I agree with that. A lot of people will just read the cover headline and not see the asterisk.

Update II: more on this article from me here and here.

Open source energy policy development

Over 10 years ago, a programmer named Eric S. Raymond presented an essay called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" which explained why he thought the software development model that produced Linux was so successful. (Also around that time anyone reading a web page was also probably a programmer so I wouldn't need this background. How times have changed.)

Basically the action of many loosely connected individuals (the bazaar) looking at and working on source code made bugs more likely to be found and created good, reliable software in a fraction of the time of the traditional model. This was only possible if the source code was available for anyone to look at and the whole process was open. This was, and still is, a dangerous notion to companies like Microsoft that view source code as valuable intellectual property for which access is to be strictly controlled and monitored.

Well now the same open source philosophy has been applied to the arcane world of energy policy making. The result is Energize America, "a comprehensive and compelling 20-point plan developed by informed citizen activists to wean the U.S. from its fossil fuel addiction and provide the U.S. with Energy Security by 2020, and Energy Freedom by 2040." It also will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2020.

I learned about this plan at a panel at YearlyKos. Some of their ideas already have the support of members of Congress. A related panel, which I missed, talked about "Using the Blogosphere to develop Policy". There's obviously a lot in common with the ideals behind the open source movement: take creation of a valuable public good (An operating system, a sustainable energy policy) and take it out of the hands of the few (for-profit software companies, lobbyists) and give it to the many (volunteer programmers,concerned citizens). Congrats to the Energize America team (whose work has really just begun).

With Murdoch, will Wall Street Journal come around on global warming?

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages are one of the more notable MSM holdouts on climate change (see this post on realclimate for an example)

The great Bob Parks wonders in his "What's New" newsletter if Murdoch's takeover of the WSJ will change that:

Last week, WN predicted that if news mogul Richard Murdoch was successful in acquiring the WSJ, its editorial policy on climate would not get greener. Several readers, however, pointed out that Murdoch may have had a recent epiphany on climate. Indeed, Monday's New York Times quoted a May 8 Murdoch speech, "Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats." To demonstrate his conversion, he went out and bought a Prius for a lot less than it cost him to buy Dow Jones. "The debate is shifting," he said, "from whether climate change is really happening to how to solve it." Is that enough to change the WSJ? I don't know.

Murdoch explains his green turn in an interview at Grist.

I'm with Bob's initial reaction. Fox news hasn't changed their denial-tinged coverage so I doubt the WSJ editorial pages will change anything.

For you young blog readers out there: Bob Parks has been sending out his newsletter by email since before blogs and even before the world wide web. He has been debunking junk science and calling out climate denial flim-flam for a long time. Prof. Parks is a national treasure.

Will anyone come to Bush's climate party?

I blogged about the run up to the G8 summit, where a big story was the pressure being put on Bush to do something about global warming. Blair tried his best to prod his ally. Bush made a big phony speech the week before and announced he would call his own summit of the world's CO2 emitters. Nothing came out of the G8 meeting itself.

Well he's now made the formal invitations to this conference as reported in a Washington Post story by Michael Fletcher:

President Bush yesterday formally invited top officials from the world's leading economic powers to take part in a climate change summit aimed at establishing voluntary goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions while sustaining growth.
....
Long wary of the effectiveness of global environmental agreements, Bush tried to seize the initiative on global warming with his pledge to initiate a series of meetings to set flexible, long-term goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He said his approach would allow countries to find their own best paths to reducing pollution.

In other words, Bush wants to spread internationally the "voluntary" program he advocates for U.S. businesses. This will accomplish nothing. Actually it might give the illusion something is being done and hold off real solutions which is worse then just continuing to be quiet.

Mr. Fletcher was sure fooled:

The proposal marked a clear shift for Bush, who had come under international criticism for his opposition to participating in the Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations-led environmental agreement that expires in 2012.

.
Uh....no. This is not a Kyoto-level of commitment to change so his opposition to that approach is intact.

China and India are invited and Secretary of State Rice will host.

Reuters has a longer article by Matt Spetalnik where Greenpeace also worries about the effect of the smoke and mirrors being set up:

John Coequyt, a policy analyst with Greenpeace, expressed concern the Washington conference would be used to "erode support for the process that's strengthening at the U.N."

.
Note the timing...

The talks, where the Bush administration will control the agenda, will take place three days after a U.N. summit on climate change in New York in which U.S. policy on global warming may come under sharp criticism.

And this just starts a process which is scheduled to finish after Bush leaves office.

The White House said the U.S. meeting was meant to supplement, not upstage, ongoing international initiatives.

.
Yes I'm sure thats the only intent.

Its simple: any effort which doesn't start with binding, mandatory cuts in emissions is not a serious attempt to address this problem.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress also thinks there's not much here.

What Adam said

Adam Siegel has a nice diary up at Daily Kos about how to view upcoming global warming legislation.

He brings up a point that I hadn't really considered before about legislative inertia and the importance of getting it right the first time.

When it comes to "Global Warming" legislation, who seriously believes that we will be able to drink at the trough multiple times. That if a GW titled piece of legislation is passed by Congress and signed by George the W, that it will be possible to invest the effort and convince 'moderates' to pass another Global Warming act just a few years later?

As per Stoller

only the Sanders-Boxer bill does what is needed. The rest of them are worse than nothing. If you pass a big piece of legislation, we'll have to wait at least five years before understanding it hasn't worked, which is five years we don't have.

This is a one-shot opportunity.

We get it wrong, the consequences will last generations.

We must get it right.

He's right that we must get it right. However I had previously been thinking that a series of laws, each tougher then the last, might be the way to go just to show the economic doomsayers that you won't wreck the economy, or even dampen it, by cutting carbon emissions. But, as Seigel points out, the legislative process doesn't work that way.

I continue to maintain that George the W isn't signing anything. The first chance for global warming legislation to become law will be late January of 2009.