2008

Lazy Ass Reporters!

by Lene Johansen on March 5, 2008

in Politics

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change was a great hit. For the sheer audacity of daring to discuss the questions that IPCC omitted, a ton of reporters could not stay away. The problem with reporters is that they pick the easy story and so far the only story that got out was the political stories.

I found some amazing science stories at the conference, but they take time to develop and sell. The science news cycle is slower than most if it is done properly. The fast science news cycle is faster, but the significance of a story takes experience and effort to follow, it used to frustrate the hell out of me when I started writing about science.

The Columbia Journalism Review published a story headlined the The Skeptics Ball, -Heartland Institute conference tests news judgment. Just by the headline they have dismissed the conference was not labeled Heartland Institute Conference. The Heartland Institute actually has one of those, but this one was the 2008 International Climate Change Conference.

As John Stossel pointed out in his speech on Tuesday, he was impressed by Joe Bast's optimism about the coverage. Bast was probably bolstered by the fact that major media internationally actually carried stories from the conference, it is more than he is used to for his courageous, but counterintuitive approaches to public policy. Mainstream media has been killing people who questions the reasoning and policy approaches to the global warming scare with silence for months and years.

I posted this comment on the Columbia Journalism Review's comment section to Curtis Brainard's story the Sceptics Ball. I have to admit, I did expect the gospel meeting, but I got a kick ass science conference, the reporters that wrote about the gospel meeting was sloppy, lazy, or in non-attendance. National and international reporting involves a lot of assumptions, and as my professors beat into me the hard way in the Missouri School of Journalism (one of the best, in case you are not part of the media mafia), assumption makes an ASS out of U and ME.

The reports that got out so far was the easy, short deadline political reports, but the science reports from this conference will take time to develop. I hope to put Roy Spencer to shame so we can make him a center fold in the magazines that science geeks reads.

"I am not sure if Curtis Brainard actually went to the conference, but I have read a lot of press accounts and I am not sure that some of those guys went to the same conference as I did. There was in fact a slough of reporters there, including a three-person team from BBC who did not find the stories they expected, but they found a whole lot of others according to my conversations with them.

The fact that few stories have surfaced yet is an aspect of science reporting, because there were quite a few interesting science stories there. Some of those stories take a bit longer to develop, because they are complicated stories.

I have participated on a ton of science conferences and a ton of political conferences over the years. I thought I was heading to another political gospel meeting when I got to New York on Sunday, but I soon figured out that I had underestimated this conference. This was a science conference like any of the top ones I have attended. Many of the presentations were breaking science stories, and I know that I have freelance material for several months following this trip.

Roy Spencer's presentation on his upcoming paper in the Journal of Climatology where he identifies a serious omission in most pre-eminent climate models are big news for science journalists, but it is probably too complicated for non-beat journalists to handle. Not because those reporters are lacking in any other department than in the time department.

The stories that have come out so far are the stories that were easy to write. I am willing to bet you that some of these reporters never left the newsroom to write their stories. They stuck with the pre-dominant frame and mostly used sources that did not attend the conference. If you are a science geek reporter and you had a chance to go, but did not, you missed out. However, as any conference we get the stories we want to get out of them and that is a part of the problem. This is our problem as reporters, not the problem of the researchers that attended this conference, but it is their reputations we are dragging through the mud."

Stossel: ‘Socialist Media — Maybe They Will Just Never Get It’

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

ABC '20/20' co-anchor says journalism has anti-business, anti-capitalist tendencies. Do journalists have axes to grind with business and capitalism? ABC ‘20/20’ co-anchor John Stossel says so. Stossel spoke before an audience at the Heartland Institute’s 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 4 in New York. He called the media “socialist” and warned things weren’t likely to change.

Lessons from the Skeptics’ Conference

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

Yesterday I asked you to analyze a report presented at the Heartland Institute’s conference of global-warming skeptics. A lot of readers had the same reaction I did after I read the report and attended the conference yesterday: There are some interesting points here, but who knows? The skeptics point to some genuine discrepancies between the climate models and what’s actually happened; they’re probably right in criticizing the United Nations’ I.P.C.C. for not paying enough attention to the impact of solar variations on the Earth’s climate.

The battle of Bear Creek: New threat in America’s backyard

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

An attack by eco-terrorists on one of Seattle's most exclusive enclaves has exposed the dark side of environmental activism.

When developers were looking for a new "Street of Dreams" to market to Seattle's upscale homebuyers, they alighted on Woodinville, a peaceful wooded community in Snohomish County, about 25 miles north of the city.

Known for its stables and boutique wineries, it seemed a perfect location to build the next generation of million-dollar show homes. And, in a twist to attract the eye of upscale Prius-driving buyers from Seattle, the houses would be built to the latest environmental standards.

The Independent, Big Oil and me

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

A gossip columnist’s libel against spiked in a national newspaper unwittingly revealed a lot about contemporary politics and debate.

During the past week, while the rest of the media went into a tailspin over the Harry-in-Afghanistan news blackout, I experienced a strange little media blackout of my own. On 21 February a gossip columnist at the Independent published an article in defence of green authoritarianism – the government must ‘force us all to shift towards cleaner behaviour’, apparently – in which he described spiked as ‘fake libertarians’, who criticise green hectoring only because we are in the pay of ‘the fossil fuel industry itself’. That’s not true. So I wrote a letter to the Independent clarifying the matter, but they didn’t publish it, on the basis that the author of the article ‘absolutely stands by his story’. That’s nice for him, I said, but his allegations are still untrue, so please publish my correction.

EPA: No Timeline To Answer High Court

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

In a tense exchange with a senator, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson suggested that few if any people at the agency were directly working on the issue now. The high court in April 2007 had said the EPA was required to determine whether carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases posed a danger to public health.

Prince faces climate change dilemma over cruise

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

He says he is a green pioneer, and flaunts his environmental credentials. So why is Prince Charles leaving today on a cruise that will do as much damage to the planet as 260 transatlantic flights?

US Won’t Meet Ethanol Goal Due Cellulosic Shortfall

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

The United States will not meet Congress' mandate to produce more ethanol from waste products over the next 15 years, resulting in an overall shortfall in ethanol production requirements contained in a new energy law, a government forecaster said Tuesday.

Herding Skeptics Through Walmart

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

This week, half of CEI’s staff, it seems, decamped to New York City for the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change organized by the Heartland Institute.

There was a lot going on at the Heartland conference, with five different tracks – paleoclimatology, climatology, climate impacts, economics and politics. Unlike some of my colleagues, I hardly heard any science while there, because I was more interested in the economics and politics discussions. My own presentation (I’ll post a link when it’s online) took the line that, even if we accept that temperature is going to increase significantly this century, short-run emissions reduction of the scale necessary to have any effect on global temperatures is still a bad idea. Others, like Julian Morris of IPN or Sterling Burnett of NCPA, took a similar approach. Barun Mitra from India, Leon Leouw from South Africa and Roy Innis of the Congress on Racial Equality talked with passion backed up with data about how affordable energy is an absolutely vital weapon in the fight against poverty. Matt Sinclair from London’s Taxpayers Alliance outlined how even with the entire British establishment in favor of green taxes, the British public was still more opposed to them than in favor.

Yet we weren’t all generalists. Kendra Okonski outlined how getting proper property rights into the almost-universally nationalized water industry is a critical step in avoiding any possible negative effects of warming on water access. Owen McShane from New Zealand demonstrated how “smart growth” policies were contributing to the increase in housing prices that spurred the subprime crisis while at the same time being less environmentally friendly – on environmentalists’ own terms – than traditional suburban homes. Michael Economides hilariously dissected claims that “renewable” energy sources could easily and quickly replace hydrocarbon fuels. One law professor (I regret not being able to recall his name right now) demonstrated how alarmists use graphical misrepresentation of data to win over the public.

The highlight of the conference for me, however, was the advance screening of the new film from Mine Your Own Business’s Phelim McAleer and Anne McIlhenny. “Not Evil, Just Wrong” looks at how sanctimony and misunderstanding drove environmentalists to stop Africans from using DDT to help save children’s lives and how that model is repeating itself in the global warming debate, with potentially even greater tragic consequences. It moved me to tears.

Meanwhile, there were disagreements. I understand there was real scientific debate between, for instance, those who regard natural factors as overwhelming in the science and those who believe man is having a substantial effect, but that it won’t amount to any warming to worry about. There were economic disagreements between those who believe a form of revenue-neutral carbon tax is an appropriate response and those who regard that as an unwarranted and/or potentially disastrous market distortion. No-one who attended could at all honestly contend that this was scripted by some vast energy conspiracy. Politically, there were libertarians, conservatives, moderates and, yes, self-described socialists.

My one complaint with the conference was that there was so much going on that I felt like I’d missed most of it. I’m reading Harry Potter to my daughter at the moment. I could really have done with Hermione’s time-turner.

Climate crisis getting short shrift in US president race: Gore

by Julie Walsh on March 5, 2008

in Blog

Former US vice president and renowned climate change fighter Al Gore said Saturday that the global warming crisis is getting short shrift in this year's presidential race.

Gore used the stage at a prestigious Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California, to call for activism to push climate change to the top of the candidates' political agendas.

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