mainstream media

Wherein I praise the mainstream media from the back of an airborne porcine vehicle

I was bashing on Newsweek the other day, and in general that magazine really is weak on climate/energy issues.

Lest you think I'm just a hater of old media, however, I should point out that Newsweek competitor Time has been doing fantastic stuff on green issues lately, mainly thanks to the tag team of Michael Grunwald and Bryan Walsh.

Lou Dobbs leaves CNN viewers dumber about climate change

"Yes," you say, "I know Lou Dobbs is a knuckle-dragger when it comes to immigration and Latinos. But is he similarly idiotic when it comes to climate change?"

Here's your answer:

Newsweek once again deceives its readers about energy alternatives

Two Stanford scholars have taken to the pages of Newsweek to pen a piece on "clean coal" that embodies all the pretzel logic surrounding that subject.

It's called "Dirty Coal Is Winning" -- and the reason dirty coal is winning, we're told, is that we're not dumping enough money into the quest for clean coal. Oh, and those pesky environmentalists:

Environmentalists, in their opposition to coal of any kind, may provide the coup de grâce. Greenpeace, riffing on James Bond, is hawking a "Coalfinger" spoof on the internet and is deep in a campaign to stop all new coal plants. U.S. environmental groups recently announced a campaign to expose clean coal as a chimera. Thanks to such efforts, in the United States it's now nearly impossible to build any kind of coal plant, including tests of clean technology. As the world economy recovers, nations will once again turn to their old stalwart, dirty coal.

Damn greens! Their efforts to expose the fact that there's no such thing as clean coal are preventing us from creating something called clean coal. (But seriously: Can someone point to a bona fide test of coal with CCS that enviros prevented? Not "CCS ready," that is, but actual CCS?)

Notice, though, the unspoken premise here: Our choice is dirty coal or "clean coal." If we don't spend billions on "clean coal," we're stuck with dirty coal.

It says something extremely bad about our energy debate that you can write a piece in Newsweek that simply assumes that premise, without defense. Let's go down the same old path:

The dumbest headline of 2009

On the very first day of 2009, the L. A. Times ran a story that already seems a lock to win the year's dumbest headline award. And dumbest subhead: "Recent moves by lame-duck officials, though frustrating to environmentalists, offer the president-elect time and political cover to deliberately craft rules on emissions, energy lobbyists say."

Yes, the LAT thinks that accelerating new coal plant construction, greenhouse-gas emissions, and the wanton destruction of the planet's livability will give Obama "breathing room to fight global warming."

You might just as well argue that waterboarding gives its victims "breathing room" -- after all, right after you have been waterboarded, you breathe like you have never breathed before, desperately gasping for air.

Scientists and journalists team up to get the climate story straight

What do Weather Channel seductress Heidi Cullen, Steven "wedge" Pacala, former TIME writer Michael Lemonick, soon-to-be NOAA head Jane Lubchenco, and Grist founding board member Ben Strauss have in common?

They're all part of an new project called Climate Central. It was mentioned briefly in this recent post about Lubchenco, but it's so interesting and innovative that it merits further digital ink -- which I was going to provide myself, but Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review beat me to it.

Climate Central is a hybrid team of nearly two dozen journalists and scientists -- spread between a main office in Princeton, New Jersey and a smaller one in Palo Alto, California -- who work side by side on stories for television, print, and the Web. Relying upon a non-profit business model that is similar to The Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica, and others, Climate Central pitches its work to local and national news outlets, looking for collaborative editorial partnerships. It also makes its various experts, many of who are still affiliated with major research institutions, available as primary sources. The goal is to "localize" the story around regions, states, or even cities, in order to highlight the various and particular ways that changes in climate are affecting people's daily lives.

As Brainard points out, this new effort comes at a time when traditional news outlets are struggling to produce original environment-related content (many, like CNN, have axed their science and environment teams).

Whether Climate Central will be, as communications scholar Matthew Nisbet puts it, "the future of science journalism -- non-profit partnerships providing independent and syndicated science coverage," or whether it will falter under conflicts of interest (real or perceived), remains to be seen.

But it's great to see scientists stepping up to the plate -- or if you'll indulge a double-edged pun -- to the green screen.

Is Ken Salazar 'too nice' to head Interior?

The New York Times editorial page thinks Ken Salazar is too nice to head the Department of Interior:

 

The word on Ken Salazar ... is that he is friendly, approachable, a good listener, a genial compromiser and a skillful broker of deals. That is also the rap on Ken Salazar.

What the Interior Department needs right now is someone willing to bust heads when necessary and draw the line against the powerful commercial groups -- developers, ranchers, oil and gas companies, the off-road vehicle industry -- that have long treated the department as a public extension of their private interests.

Conservationists and pretty much everyone else exhausted by the Bush administration's ideological rigidity and deference to commercial interests have welcomed Mr. Salazar's appointment. The Colorado Democrat has a solid voting record on issues involving wilderness and wildlife protection and can be expected to bring a strong conservation ethic to the top of the department.

Yet that will not be nearly enough to reform and reinvigorate the department. The Interior Department is an unusually balkanized agency, with eight separate divisions charged with managing 500 million acres of public land in a way that balances private and public claims. It is essential that Mr. Salazar find the right people to run each of these fiefs, and find ways to make them work intelligently and harmoniously in the nation's interest.

John Tierney is the country’s worst science writer, not Gregg Easterbrook

Science blogger extraordinaire Tim Lambert (aka Deltoid) has called me out. I wrote: Tierney is easily the worst science writer at any major media outlet in the country. Pretty much every energy or climate piece he writes is riddled with errors and far-right ideology, including this one. Lambert writes that he “must, however, disagree with […]

Uh oh, looks like the news media is tired of getting played

“Senator, if there is a hoax, isn’t it this report of yours?” — MSNBC’s David Shuster, asking Sen. James Inhofe about his farcical list of 650 “scientists” that dispute the theory of anthropocentric climate change

Politico lets shill get away with the basic dodge at the center of the ‘clean coal’ campaign

The "clean coal" PR people are running a scam. Thing is, it’s an obvious scam — easily exposed, easily debunked. Just because it’s obvious, though, doesn’t mean the media won’t fall for it. Indeed, the entire "clean coal" propaganda push is premised on the media’s gullibility. Here’s the scam: They leave the definition of "clean […]