A Bigger Problem Than the New York Times Environment Desk Closure

The New York Times is breaking up its environment desk, reports Katherine Bagley at InsideClimate News.

It's disappointing in the broader context of declining NYT newsroom staffing, a bad public signal that the environment isn't a top priority, and if they lay off staff that works on environment issues that's a big setback. But this desk was just formed in 2009 so it's not like they're tearing down some storied institution, and NYT news & editorial coverage of climate change has been strong.

It's the Washington Post that's the real obstacle to a national conversation that takes the climate crisis seriously. It too often takes a disdainful "why are we talking about that climate thing when we could be gutting the social safety net or starting new wars?" attitude that trickles down from its editorial page into its news coverage.

Heating of Pot No Reason for Alarm, Reports Frog Media

It's not true that if you slowly turn up the heat, a frog won't notice that his surroundings are getting hotter - the frog will jump out of the pot if he can. That's an allegory - but whether humans will recognize & respond to their warming climate is a very real & open question.

Mainstream media coverage of Friday night's extreme storms in the Mid-Atlantic region shows no sign of hoppiness:

• The Washington Post has no mention of climate impacts in its main story on the storm. Even its sidebar story detailing the record-shattering temperatures that fueled the derecho waits until its final sentence to say the rare storm "raises the question about the possible role of man-made climate warming" - but says any judgement must be left to after the frog has already boiled future case studies. Next to the storm coverage is an in-depth look at tar sands, one of the most carbon pollution-intensive fuels on the planet, but true to modern American journalism's View From Nowhere, the Post makes no connection between the two stories, not even on the editorial page.
• The New York Times, NPR and CNN make no mention of climate change in their stories on the storms. Last night, CBS Radio News blamed the storms on "Mother Nature," skipping past ignorance to outright denial.
• Meanwhile out West, the Associated Press reports nationwide droughts are canceling fireworks displays for many states. Climate scientists have been warning for years that global warming will result in deeper droughts and more intense wildfires, yet the AP makes no mention of climate impacts.

Reading these stories, I can't help but think of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Past dominant societies have proved quite capable of blissfully ignoring all evidence of impending doom. So far, America's media is proving no different. Will 2012's record temperatures and extreme weather change that? Or be just another milepost on the road to disaster?

Golden Ostrich Nominee: NYTimes Dodges Global Warming

Today's Oblivious Environmental Journalism Challenge: Can you write an article on this year's worldwide, record-shattering heat ... without using the words climate, global warming, carbon pollution, or man-made?

The New York Times' Erik Eckholm is up to the obfuscating task. His article on the summer heat wave here in the U.S. brilliantly walks a tightrope over the big picture without falling into the trap of connecting it to man-made emissions.

Watch has he even dares to stick his head in the mouth of the lion, mentioning the global records while still carefully avoiding giving his readers proper context:

The stifling heat blanketing the mid-Atlantic this summer seems to be part of a global trend. So far, 2010 is on track to overtake 2005 as the warmest year ever recorded for the planet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It's hardcore oblivious environmental journalism like this that keeps people thinking global warming is only about melting glaciers at some point in the distant future, not about Americans dying in heat waves right now.

Special Bonus Ostrich: Bloomberg News is always right, therefore anyone who thinks it might have screwed up reporting on oil drilling poll data is automatically wrong.

NY Times Only Sees Bright Side of Global Warming Deniers

The New York Times has an article out Tuesday talking about how some TV weather presenters are global warming deniers. Reporter Leslie Kaufman goes out of her way to avoid taking the shine off some of the denial universe's biggest stars.

First, there's Anthony Watts, whose two primary occupations are denying global warming and peddling small weather gauges. As Joe Romm explains on ClimateProgress:

Watts uses his blogs to try to convince people that government weather sites are faulty, that their data can’t be trusted, enlisting the unpaid help of countless people — and he makes money selling weather stations?

Kaufman also cites the Heartland Institute, one of The Green Miles' favorite front groups -- and by "favorite" I mean "most comically inept." Heartland has received $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998. While Heartland stopped disclosing its funding after 2006, SourceWatch reports Heartland received around $260,000 in 2007 from energy companies -- "coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear." But Kaufman doesn't report any of that, merely calling Heartland "a free-market research organization."

And there's former weatherman John Coleman. A Columbia Journalism Review article on this same topic cast Coleman's denial not as scientific disagreement -- but as ignorance:

For the many Americans who don’t understand the difference between weather—the short-term behavior of the atmosphere—and climate—the broader system in which weather happens—Coleman’s professional background made him a genuine authority on global warming. It was an impression that Coleman encouraged. Global warming “is not something you ‘believe in,’” he wrote in his essay. “It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise.”

Except that it wasn’t. Coleman had spent half a century in the trenches of TV weathercasting; he had once been an accredited meteorologist, and remained a virtuoso forecaster. But his work was more a highly technical art than a science. His degree, received fifty years earlier at the University of Illinois, was in journalism. And then there was the fact that the research that Coleman was rejecting wasn’t “the science of meteorology” at all—it was the science of climatology, a field in which Coleman had spent no time whatsoever.

NYT's Kaufman touches on the same issue -- but where the CJR article boldly confronts it head-on, Kaufman merely tiptoes around the edges:

Resentment may also play a role in the divide. Climatologists are almost always affiliated with universities or research institutions where a doctoral degree is required. Most meteorologists, however, can get jobs as weather forecasters with a college degree.

“There is a little bit of elitist-versus-populist tensions,” Mr. Henson said. “There are meteorologists who feel, ‘Just because I have a bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on.’”

Those snooty climatologists! Thinking they know more about climate just because they've "studied it more" and "work in the field" and are "actual experts on the topic"! Weather presenters who aren't meteorologists but listen to Rush Limbaugh should be allowed to spout ignorance with just the same credibility!

UPDATE: Joe Romm responds to Kaufman's article, blogging NY Times once again equates non-scientists with climate scientists.

What's Going on with NYTimes' Enviro Reporter?

What's with the New York Times' environmental reporter approvingly posting links to a shadowy global warming denial group?

Andrew Revkin just tweeted a link to the Science and Public Policy Institute. The group has only existed for two years, refuses to disclose its funding sources, and has extensive ties to polluter-funded front groups like the Heartland Institute.

Revkin's suspect tweet comes just three days after what Joe Romm of Climate Progress called "arguably the worst article of [Revkin's] career" -- a one-sided parroting of the latest in global warming denial.

Reporters who are on Twitter will often say, "Oh, just because I tweet a link doesn't mean I agree with what it says." But pushing out a link from a group that actively lies to fight science in the name of protecting polluter profits with no mention of the group's agenda?

At best, I'd call that sloppy. At worst, I'd call it the second example of terrible environmental journalism this week from what's supposed to be the best newspaper in the country.