Byrd-Hagel Redeux

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

President Bush has just reaffirmed the unanimous Byrd-Hagel position established by the Senate in 1997, as its (otherwise unsolicited) Article II, Section 2 “advice”.

Let’s see if this is also how the warmists portray it, including aspiring occupants of the Oval Office, three of whom hail from the Senate one of whom was serving in ’97 and voted for the resolution.

Particularly galling is that Mr. Bush had the temerity to flatly state what the establishment media have so far refused to print, “We’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies. We’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change, and we’ll stay that way”. No no no, we need to “begin ‘investing’” in these new technologies!

That is, all have refused to reveal such things except the Washington Post, once, in a piece last fall wonderfully titled “White House Taking Unearned Credit for Emissions Cuts” – a week or so after our emission reduction was announced and only for the purpose of saying that (suddenly) U.S.-only emissions aren’t the important point and besides Bush shouldn’t get credit anyway.

Matthew Nisbeth: This is an Agenda Setting Throw Down!

by Lene Johansen on March 5, 2008

in Science

I adore Matthew Nisbeth's research but he is off his rocker in this comment he posted on his blog and that he presented in an interview on The World. I did not see him at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York, and this is not the first time I catch researchers I respect in their lack of actual grounding in facts before they present research on an issue.

The first ever research conference I attended as a graduate student, I attended a panel on the ethical issues on plant biotechnology. I won't mention names, but some old geezer that had not left his ivory tower for quite a few years was talking about the problem of having one genetically modified plant growing all around the world. He was a bit shocked to find out that the GMO trait was bred into more than 70,000 local varieties, because the corn that will grow in the Midwest will not grow in India quite as well. But that is the reporter in me, I call people, and I ask what they actually do.

A communication professor that I adore got into my car when I gave her a ride to a conference, and she saw a name tag from the Heritage Foundation with my name on it hanging from my rear view mirror (yeah, it's a quirky habit, but good for conversations). She said, "but Lene, aren't those conservatives?" Hell yeah they are, and I don't like them much for it, but every year they put on a conference where you meet everything from the pro-life think tanks from St. Louis (Phyllis Schlafly & Co.) to the hippie libertarian lawyers from San Francisco. At one of these conferences I got to have lunch with the guy that organize some of the bioconservative groups that Nisbeth is comparing the Heartland Institute with. I need to know those groups, it is my job and my research passion. An trust me, Nigel S. Cameron, David Prentice, or their left wing ally Wesley Smith would never publish any of my work, but Joe Bast would.

Nisbeth is off his rocker, cause he is applying theory as a map without checking the terrain. I am a reporter first, communications researcher second. I call the people that I don't think will ever talk to me again, and ask them to show me their way, I might have my facts wrong after all. So maybe, just maybe, I should challenge the guy to put on a climate change panel for AJMC in August, cause I know that I have access to enough data to prove that his point in the World segment is doggone wrong, and I think the coverage from the conference prove it. There is no way Heartland's view of climate change is the predominant frame on this issue, no matter how right those scientists and policy wonks are in their assessment of the consequences and lack of scientific justification for current public policy on the issue.

Impressions from the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

by Lene Johansen on March 5, 2008

in Science

Last night I got home from an exhausting and exhilarating trip to New York City. During my stay, I barely got out of the hotel and I am still annoyed at all the wonderful presentations that I missed. Lucky for me, they will end up on the Internet shortly. I attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. There was some totally cool and breaking science stories at this conference, and here are some of the impressions I had when I was talking to Gardner Goldsmith at Against the Grain on Monday and Tuesday.

Monday

Tuesday

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?

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