NYT Issues a Correction
May 2nd, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
The NYT issues a correction to its recent story alleging that the Global Climate Coalition of skeptical scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry in the 1990s had expressed different views on climate science in its private documents from its public documents. It turns out those views were not disparate. Kudos to Andy Revkin and the NYT for setting the record straight.
From the NYT:
A front-page article and headline on April 24 reported that the Global Climate Coalition, a group that throughout the 1990s represented industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, knew about the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions could cause global warming but ignored it in a lobbying and public relations campaign against efforts to curb emissions.
The coalition, the article said, maintained publicly that scientists disagreed about whether greenhouse gases generated by humans could cause warming even after its own scientific advisory committee concluded that the evidence for the “potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.”
The article cited a “backgrounder” that laid out the coalition’s public stance, published in the early 1990s and distributed widely to lawmakers and journalists. However, the article failed to note a later version of the backgrounder that included language that conformed to the scientific advisory committee’s conclusion. The later version was distributed publicly in 1998, but existed in some form as early as 1995, according to an online archive kept by Greenpeace. The amended version, which was brought to the attention of The Times by a reader, acknowledged the consensus that greenhouse gases could contribute to warming. What scientists disagreed about, it said, was “the rate and magnitude of the ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ (warming) that will result.”
The coalition did, however, as the article reported, remove from an internal report by the scientific advisory committee a section that said that “contrarian” theories of why global temperatures appeared to be rising “do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.” After the later, amended version of the backgrounder was published, the coalition continued to question the scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions could heat the planet enough to justify sharp cuts in emissions. In the 1995 report, the advisory committee had concluded that “substantially higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases” constituted a “potential threat.”
May 2nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I don’t know whether kudos are deserved when it was a reader who gave them the information. I think that correcting your own mistakes should be expected rather than praised. A quick look at the NYT web site located the linked correction to the main page, behind the link “Corrections.” Does that do justice to the failure of the original front page headline? Granted that this grudging ‘least possible admission’ is standard operating procedure for newspapers, but I hardly think that kudos are deserved in this case.
May 3rd, 2009 at 1:24 am
[...] NYT Issues a Correction [...]
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 am
I agree more with Jon Frum (post #1). While some on the Dotearth pages think Revkin is to be applauded for an unfiltered posting policy and prompt citing of the correction, it is still a correction buried in the paper. The original article was a front page full publicity piece cited repeatedly by Al Gore during his statement to Congress the next day.
At Dotearth I see a pattern of posts that is all to familiar with other outlets on the MSM – wherein they tend to accept without journalistic impartiality stories that support AGW. They either buy in or participate in the policy manipulation that is occurring. I am troubled by the coordination of media that is orchestrated with the release of science papers as if this was a Hollywood summer film. Instead of (insert-the-name-of-your-favorite-filmstar here) going on Letterman, Leno, Good Morning America in a frenzied attempt for attention the week of the box office release we now have spots on NPR “Science Friday” and a favorable Dotearth blog posting when your paper gets the front page of Nature. [As the great latenight comedian Craig Ferguson would say – “remind you of anyone you know?”]. In this milieu we have to place Revkin and in order to receive the mantle of journalist I would like to see him question more and be less of a publicity stool. Hopefully he takes this as a learning experience beyond the release of a correction with a renewed examination of all sides of the debate.
May 3rd, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I don’t think Revkin deserves kudos for this correction. First he writes a phoney baloney “news” piece, then, when “a reader” calls his attention to a document that exists in the public domain, he issues a correction, but can’t resist adding a weasel clause to the end of it
Revikin’s premise was that the public and internal statements were at odds. But even a quick glance at the source documents shows that there were two different, but related ideas in question. The undeniable idea was the theory of the Green House Effect and the potential for human caused emissions to affect climate. The idea that was “not well understood” was about the attribution of actual climate change to human activities. Even the most recent IPCC report doesn’t claim that man made global warming is “undeniable.
Now that he’s come under fire, Revkin retreats from,”(GCC)led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming”, to, “the coalition continued to question the scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions could heat the planet enough to justify sharp cuts in emissions”.
I will, however, give him credit for linking to the source documents.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Has Revkin run a big story about Gore’s financial bonanza from pushing AGW? Has he run a story on the fraud investigation of Wang? The fraud involves data which was part of a key “study” by Jones used to support the IPCC’s assertion that the UHI effect is insignificant.
When he exposes Gore and highlights the scientific fraud we’ll give him a hand.