Posts tagged as:

new york times

Heartland Institute Rebuts Outlandish New York Times Story on Stolen and Fake Documents

Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman authored a piece in the New York Times today titled “Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science.” I say “authored” and not “reported,” because this story is filled with false assertions, innuendo, and outright lies. I will break it down, from the top.

Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science

Actually, we’ve produced more sound research on climate change than all but a very small number of very elite government and university-based organizations. Climate Change Reconsidered  alone is 2 volumes totaling more than 1,200 pages of pure science and economic analysis.

 is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools,

Actually, we’re trying to make the “teaching of global warming” much more rigorous by replacing propaganda and agenda-driven rhetoric with real science.

 the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation’s culture wars.

“Culture wars”? we aren’t part of the religious right!! I suspect the reporter has a key programmed to spit out this line whenever writing about a “conservative” group!

 The documents, from a nonprofit organization in Chicago called the Heartland Institute, outline plans to promote a curriculum that would cast doubt on the scientific finding that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet. “Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” one document said.

Actually, we’re sharing the real opinions of real scientists on the causes, consequences, and likely future trajectory of climate change, and of economists and other policy experts on what should be done about it, if anything. And of course principals and teachers are biased… most are liberal Democrats, and large majorities of liberal Democrats believe in man-made global warming.

[click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Einstein He’s Not

I’m currently planning my next book in which I intend to discuss how shockingly anti-science the MSM has become when it comes to pet policy issues that involve science, technology and the environment. My proposition is that MSM journalists are so bad at reporting on these issues not so much because of their left-leaning biases, but because they are largely ignorant and lazy when it comes to covering these complex concepts. Thanks to guys like Paul Krugman at The New York Times I’m sure that I’ll never have any shortage of material to illustrate the point.

Jim Rust handily deconstructed Krugman’s arguments regarding mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in his excellent post of January 5. Admittedly, Rust had an unfair advantage in that discussion: he used actual data. Somehow I think that the average Joe would find actually data showing that mercury emissions from coal fired power plants represent of a pittance compared to natural and overseas sources a bit more persuasive than Krugman’s approach which was essentially “mercury bad – EPA good”. Perhaps that’s nice messaging, but it leaves a lot to be desired from the scientist’s point of view.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Paul Krugman, Occupy Wall Street, and the Never-Ending Push to Tax the Rich

Last week in the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman called for higher taxes than the Clinton era, citing how increased revenues need to be in the picture and not just spending cuts.

Krugman writes:

The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts?

Some conservatives would respond by saying the outlook has darkened because of spending. Intuitively increased revenue would just encourage inefficient government. But let’s give Krugman the benefit of the doubt by accepting his point that a combination of increased revenue and lower expenditure will yield a more expedient strategy to lower the deficit.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Congress Broadens School Lunch Choices — for Thanksgiving

Public schools nationwide have started “to look at every single thing” that could ease widespread budget woes, says a National School Boards Association spokesman. In the spirit of Thanksgiving’s food revelry and abundance, Congress has just offered them some financial flexibility on school lunches.

A House and Senate compromise on a big agricultural bill November 14 pulled the funding for school lunch rules the U.S. Department of Agriculture had implemented earlier this year, which would have required schools to offer “dark green and orange vegetables,” limit starches such as potatoes and peas to one-quarter cup every week, ban 2 percent milk, and make half the grains available whole-grain.

Those unable to get past the incessant, incestuous kabuki between big government and big business, such as the New York Times, painted the move as a fight between virtuous bureaucrats attempting to give poor kids more broccoli and whole-grain kale rolls versus industry giants evilly hoping to stuff transfat-soaked junk food into virgin bellies.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Where Did Global Warming Go? On the Pile of Debunked Media Scares

The New York Times will be the last media outlet in the world to admit that it was taken in by the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) delusion. It published thousands of stories saying AGW is a crisis, based on little more than the news releases of environmental activist groups, which enabled it to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue from oil and natural gas companies claiming they are “doing something” about a problem they believed was a myth.

The NYT used the issue to demonize Republicans and idolize Democrats for nearly two decades, and now wonders why Republicans believe it is a myth while only liberal Democrats believe it is a problem. It will forever deny that the science was uncertain and predictions faulty.

So the closest the NYT can come to admitting it was wrong is to publish stories wondering, “Where Did Global Warming Go?” as it did last week.  To me, the article spells victory for The Heartland Institute and other groups that have been working hard to expose the fraud.

{ 4 comments }

Defending Climate ‘Skeptics,’ ICSC, and even The New York Times from Media Matters

Media Matters for America has taken after reporters who dared to cover The Heartland Institute’s climate conferences. They have also, I understand from Heartland, spread misinformation about the Institute. So it is not surprising that Media Matters is now condemning reporters who are simply balancing their coverage of climate issues by including the views of non-alarmists.

The story in question is this one in yesterday’s ClimateWire in The New York Times: “Gore Takes Climate Change Slide Show Around the World in 24 Hours.” Media Matters’ Jill Fitzsimmons and Jocelyn Fong published a scathing attack against Climatewire, The Times, the International Climate Science Coalition, and me, the ICSC’s executive director.

I submitted the following response as a comment on the Media Matters post, but it has yet to be allowed on their site. So, it’s reproduced below:

[click to continue…]

{ 11 comments }

Wednesday’s Editorial on The Fed: Stupid Even for The New York Times

In today’s New York Times there is an editorial that takes the supposed masters of money at the Federal Reserve to task for their timidity. It’s an almost boundlessly stupid editorial.

The NYT editors chide the Fed for worrying about inflation. They believe we need more of it — lots more.

They write:

A more aggressive strategy would be letting inflation rise above the Fed’s comfort level of 2 percent or so to, say, 4 percent. That could help the economy by easing the repayment of debt.

Read that last sentence again: “That could help the economy by easing the repayment of debt.”

They apparently expect our friends in China, India and other countries that have loaned us money to be happy receiving repayment in dollars that are worth less than the dollars they loaned us. Wouldn’t you want that if you loaned money to someone?

[click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }

Why Does The New York Times Bother to Defend the Reporting of its Ridiculous Anti-Shale Gas Story?

New York magazine’s blog reports today that Timespeople are defending the reporting of Ian Urbina’s story of June 27th: “Behind the Veneer: Doubts about Natural Gas.” The Times doesn’t want to be called “anti-Natural Gas,” as some people have done, and journalists are jockeying for position with the new editor-in-chief, according to the estimable media writer Gabe Sherman.

But Mr. Ubina’s story itself — which I had the pleasure of missing while on vacation — might well be completely accurate and still be ridiculous.  Here are the 3 points of Mr. Urbina’s big scoop.

1.  Internal US Department of Energy emails (leaked to the Times by anti-fracking government employees) show that anti-fracking government employees think that many of the companies trying to jump on the shale gas boom will fail — e.g. “‘It is quite likely that many of these companies will go bankrupt,’ a senior adviser to the Energy Information Administration” wrote.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

Europeans want gridlock, literally

Cars wait in traffic in Zurich. (KEYSTONE/Gaetan Bally)Not content with simply raising the price of gasoline through regressive tax policy, European governments have gone even further to make driving insufferable. According to the New York Times, city planners in Zurich have been especially malicious:

“Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in the favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.”

Additionally, the city has closed streets entirely and lowered speed limits to the point that crosswalks are removed entirely and pedestrians can cross “anywhere they like at any time.” [click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }

NYTimes: When we said Fracking Frequently Contaminates Drinking Water, We Meant it That it Didn’t at All

On May 7, The New York Times reported that the Energy Department had appointed a panel of experts to “to find ways to make hydraulic fracturing, a fast-growing method of extracting natural gas, safer and cleaner.”  The need for this was urgent, said the reporter, John M. Broder, because “there are also numerous documented cases in which fracking fluids leaked into aquifers and contaminated drinking water.”

On May 17, the Times made a slight adjustment to its earlier story (available through the same link):

An article on May 7 about the Obama administration’s appointment of a panel of experts to find ways to make hydraulic fracturing safer misstated the prevalence of cases in which fluids from the gas drilling process have been proven to have contaminated drinking water. There are few documented cases, not numerous ones, although federal and state investigations into reports of such incidents are continuing.

Since this is the Times, after all, there is passion even in the correction — or the admission, as Lachlan Markay says, that “the dangers of “fracking” are exactly the opposite of what the Times initially reported.”

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries