MSM reporters do not want to hurt Al Gore feelings by asking him any difficult questions.

Comment by Jim – February 10, 2010 @ 2:45 pm

Al Gore makes $700 million. Global warming, global cooling, who cares?

Comment by ic – February 10, 2010 @ 2:47 pm

Hard to believe that Seth Borenstein is providing decent coverage on an environmental story. Maybe the IPCC skimped on his Christmas tip.

Comment by TrulyBaffled – February 10, 2010 @ 2:48 pm

This assumes that the American press is more concerned with journalism than advocacy.

Comment by Dave – February 10, 2010 @ 2:59 pm

MR Mead writes: “Even Borenstein’s story doesn’t quite get the full measure of the problems: while the number of ‘proven’ errors in the IPCC report remains small, their impact is disproportionately large because the predictions were so high profile…”

Not the full ‘measure’ of a scandal on the global warming front from Borenstein? If MEad knew about the Society of Environmental Journalism’s conspiracy against truth in science, he would not be so surprised or even dismayed. Borenstein is reknown as one of its High Priests – a dissimulator par excellence.

“…the number of ‘proven’ errors in the IPCC report remains small?” The biggest problem remains the data. Raw (ie, ‘unadjusted,’ ie, unmanipulated, ie undistorted) US surface temperature data shows a century long warming trend consistent with the three-decades long global satellite temperature data record. A worrying warming only emerges when the ‘authorities’ introduce bias into it. This 800-pound gorilla in the scientists laboratory is the largest, most fundamental problem the climategate scandal exposes.

Because of this (among others), MITs Richard Lindzen is a proud ‘denier’ of any climate change crisis. There isn’t any. And claims to the contrary are fraudulent.

Thus, we arrive at the real reason for the prolonged and egregious journalistic malpractice, amounting to a conspiracy of silence among the US media: money. The US federal government funds 95% of the worlds global warming science research. Vested interests do not kill the geese that lay their Golden Eggs.

Comment by Orson – February 10, 2010 @ 2:59 pm

S. Fred Singer nicely summarizes the charges against the IPCC and CRU scientists today over at American Thinker.

Friday’s issue of the UK’s Guardian reinforces an important point relating to the CRU researchers: If you’re going to do good science, release the computer code too. Why? Most code used in science is buggy.

As for the manstream US press, Time. magazine tells us that There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common….

Oh well.

Comment by SC Mike – February 10, 2010 @ 2:59 pm

A belief based on saving the planet requiring reallotment and restructuring of assets and industry worldwide becomes a religion/ideology when evidence and facts disproving doom and gloom scenarios is so resisted, denied and demonized. Good news becoming bad news requires a serious reality check.

Comment by Steevo – February 10, 2010 @ 3:05 pm

The AP emphasizes that the errors have only been found in the 2nd report, and not in the first “which said the physics of a warming atmosphere and rising seas is man-made and incontrovertible.”

The first report is a bunch of blarney too. Climategate mostly pointed out problems with the first report, eg the “hide the decline”, the buggy code, etc. Fact is, the whole raison d’etre of the IPCC is that there is not any publishable argument that humans caused global warming, the IPCC report exists so that the summary for policy makers can offer the unsubstantiated opinion that “with 90% confidence humans caused it”. This conclusion is nonsense for bunches of reasons, such as ignoring the solar-cosmic ray- weather connection (they address strawman of direct solar luminousity affect, but not the cosmic ray connection), the fact that the surface data is corrupted and worthless (which has been made ever clearer by climategate revelations, the admitted fact that the GCM’s may have more parameters than data points, the fact that tropical troposphere measurements falsify the models, etc etc.

Comment by Natural Philosopher – February 10, 2010 @ 3:08 pm

I was going to joke about an Amber alert for Al Gore — he’s been rather silent of late — but Google informed me that the Rodeo Clown beat me to it. From the video at the link it appears that NBC News is touting the east coast blizzards as yet another symptom of global warming too.

Is there anything it’s not responsible for?

All this is just stoking one senator’s fire.

Comment by SC Mike – February 10, 2010 @ 3:12 pm

It is for a Dutchman impossible to understand that the media in the USA is so far behind. If the AP is only telling about a few mistakes in the second report, what about the first report! The Hockeystick, the Medieval Warm Period with “Green”-land, the Little Ice Age, the method of measuring temperatures in USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, New-Zealand, the present cooling of the planet, all information is baloney. The leaking of emails gave most information about the wrongdoings of the scientists involved. Why is the media so reluctant???

Comment by A. Bakker – February 10, 2010 @ 3:15 pm

Anyone trusting mass media print or TV to cover serious issues on anything but a delayed-reaction, ideologically blinkered basis, may as well admit to endorsing censorship, partisan propaganda, willful ignorance. From the mid-1960s on “journalism” in the sense of broad coverage, objective inquiry, even (fer Pete’s sake) informed context and perspective, has been carried home to Ole Virginny where “cornfields, cotton, and the ‘taters grow”– fit for peons, serfs, “sheeple” of a herd mentality vulnerable to con-jobs such as Global Warming always has self-evidently been.

As it happens, no-one over 3 – 5+ years, neither phony IPCC researchers nor sophisticated skeptics like McIntyre, Moncton, Pielke, apparently ever scrutinized ridiculously alarmist UN reports in scholarly detail. Now of a sudden we find footnotes and references to sources appropriate to Captain Planet comic books, “peer reviewed” by Clown College Warmists who can’t even proofread idiotic data transpositions.

No wonder peculating proselytizers like Gore, Pachauri, Climate Cultists’ Green Gang of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. got so much mileage under cover of their prima facie fraud. What’s next, “ocean acidification” that threatens mass extinctions due to heavy breathing? The asininity, feckless stupidity, of these death-eating Luddite sociopaths would be beyond belief if (for example) 75% of Britain’s unworthy heirs did not mindlessly subscribe to just such drivel.

Comment by John Blake – February 10, 2010 @ 3:28 pm

You keep nibbling deeper into the story Walter. But you’re still nibbling. This constant refrain about Climategate being a minor science story because of the overwhelming other evidence of global warming is pure nonsense. There are only three extant temperature records that have been used to “show” global warming, and all three of them are tainted. There is NO scientific evidence or even plausible theory that CO2 has the “multiplier” effect that the computer models apply. That is pure computer programming hand-waving. The computer models are buggy, poorly documented, running off of bad data and as has been proven will “prove” global warming if you load them with random data.

This story is much deeper and much more troubling than you yet realize. To call it the biggest fraud in the history of science is no hyperbole. You still don’t understand what is going on, and you still seem unwilling to go where your own research is leading you.

There has been no documentable global warming in the past 12 years. Global sea ice has increased in the past decade. The last two winters are among the coldest in the past century.

And you still say “hmm… nothing to see here, move along.”

Ten years from now you are going to look back on this episode with nothing but shame.

Comment by CosmicConservative – February 10, 2010 @ 3:42 pm

Oh, snap, Seth Borenstein? Hahahaha, could you ever find a more impartial source? Or did he show you his copies of the Climategate emails.

Comment by dr kill – February 10, 2010 @ 3:47 pm

Please tell me this post of yours is sarcasm. Do you really throw this name out there without comment? This Seth dude tucks Phil Jones in at night.

Comment by dr kill – February 10, 2010 @ 3:49 pm

There are too many flaws in the data for anyone to ignore the issue now. From the Flawed Dutch sea level data to Himalayan glaciers to the distortion of temperature data by NOAA’s weather station hatchet job in the 70′s.

Frankly, I think it’s God’s sense of irony driving this stuff. As the country experiences its worst winter in many places in 100 years the contradictions and falsehoods are dripping out faster than a leaky percolator.

Comment by matt – February 10, 2010 @ 4:17 pm

Walter, the AP story is not very good at all. It only looks good in comparison to what outlets like the AP and reuters had reported on Climategate before, which was nothing. I would rather have AP not mention the story at all (since most people get their news from other sources anyway) than stories that mention the scandal, only to downplay it as though it was just a few errors here and there.

Comment by DF – February 10, 2010 @ 4:20 pm

You are far to generous with the MSM. They intentially withheld information from the American people because it did not jive with the Democratic Party agenda.

Comment by No Chop Charlie – February 10, 2010 @ 4:21 pm

Stormy Weather…

Mead: AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent. (via Driscoll’s Global Warming: Is There Nothing It Can’t Do? Part Deux)
 …

Trackback by Maggie's Farm – February 10, 2010 @ 4:28 pm

The aspect everyone seems to be missing here is a handful of environmental Fascists are about to rob us all blind over the fact “weather happens” and the Malfeasant Media are as guilty as the corrupt (alleged) “scientists”.

Climate Change? Duh! It’s called: Weather!

How stupid can people be and still breathe unassisted?

Isn’t anyone outraged by this deception? This theft? This B.S.? … Anyone? Beuller?

Comment by Constitution First – February 10, 2010 @ 4:32 pm

The Grauniad is “center-left”?

Not in my universe.

Comment by Parabellum – February 10, 2010 @ 4:33 pm

The computer models have predicted a warming trend that will continue until 2055…except one thing, tempuratures have been declining since 1998. Thus the “settled science” behind AGW is basically bullshit. The computer models haven’t modeled anything other than the preconceptions that the “programers” (and I use that term loosely) programed into them. Thus they showed (along with the “forcing”) a warming trend since 1850…but can’t model the cooling trend of the past 12 years.

Therefore, the science is bogus…

Comment by Rich Vail – February 10, 2010 @ 4:40 pm

Currently here in the nation’s cesspool — sorry, Capital — it’s wind chill 2 degrees and snow up to my arse. Just as all politics are ultimately local, so is the whole global warming charade. Just another Convenient Lie from the EverHating Left. When I wake up tomorrow morning with ubersore arms and an aching back, I will renew my resolution to fight these wackos ’til the end.

Comment by ZRegime – February 10, 2010 @ 4:45 pm

Has nobody realized that by letting the British newspapers work for weeks to months on developing this story, the US papers can get an intern to cut & paste brand-spanking-new “news” stories essentially forever without spending any money on that reporting stuff they used to do?
This is a great story, and a free one if the US papers keep themselves just a month or so behind the reporting from overseas.

Comment by Mikee – February 10, 2010 @ 4:50 pm

…is there anything it’s not responsible for?

Nope, global warming is your all-purpose, one-stop cause: http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

Comment by Robert – February 10, 2010 @ 4:56 pm

“…where the media is more alert.” ??

Are you kidding? The American MSM knows this is going on. Seems like you could’ve come up with something more appropriate than ‘alert’. Try,
“…where the media is less committed to the subjugation of a free people.”.

But I’m just a hick. It seems you journalist guys could do even better.

Comment by catastrophist – February 10, 2010 @ 5:07 pm

Robert gets it.

If there’s a heat wave, it’s due to climate change. If there’s a blizzard, it’s climate change. Flood? Climate change. Sunny, seasonable weather? Climate change.

Climate Change is the Universal Theory of Everything. And the only answer for it is a “wrenching transformation” (Gore’s exact words) in our standard of living in the developed world.

Jeebus, you people are slow.

Comment by Mike C – February 10, 2010 @ 5:20 pm

The main reason they are tip toing around this is $’s.. They know that $B’s of dollars that has been pouring into the pockets of all the egg heads studying this non problem needs to be shut down, But think what that would do the ranks of the unemployed. – legions of truly worthless, unemployable climate scientists and modelers (charlatons, everyone!!), not to mention all the UN bureaucratsso and profressiuonal “go to conferences around the world, preferably swank and warm, attendees”. No, no , they want to keep the $’s flowing because it is a sweet job.
If I could I’d put an immediate “Stop Payment” on all the money being spent on this.

Comment by Jerry – February 10, 2010 @ 5:29 pm

[...] link: AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent – Walter Russell Me… [...]

Pingback by AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent « The Right Cup of Tea – February 10, 2010 @ 5:30 pm

How about the huge legion of environmental reporters out there? This field is supposedly their specialty. The fact that they are all ignoring the biggest story of all in their own reporting specialty indicates how hopelessly biased they are.

Comment by Richard40 – February 10, 2010 @ 6:08 pm

One thing the internet has done is prove how slothful and negligent the American media is compared to the British press with the exception of the BBC, which is as invested in a liberal agenda as our MSM. One of the NBC shills went on air today to complain about FOX opining that he and his cohort don’t like the tea-party people. He sounded wounded that someone would point this out.

Comment by Banjo – February 10, 2010 @ 6:51 pm

Borenstein is PAID to investigate and write this? Readers won’t pay for propaganda, especially if it’s false or old news which is often the case with MSM.

Bayh, Bayh!

Comment by MediaCritic – February 10, 2010 @ 7:50 pm

Too cold. Lips must be frozen.

Comment by PTL – February 10, 2010 @ 8:08 pm

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. — a climate scientist who’s not a denier and who has published much in the peer-reviewed literature — deconstructs the “global warming is responsible for the current east coast blizzard” here.

Perhaps a journalist from a major US newspaper or other news medium will contact him.

Comment by SC Mike – February 10, 2010 @ 8:19 pm

Keep in mind Seth Borenstein has been at the vanguard of the “persecute AGW deniers” movement while pretending to be a science journalist for years. Take what he says with the appropriate grain of salt. He’s been “reporting” on climate change for years, with discrediting sceptics as his raison d’etre.

Comment by Sean – February 10, 2010 @ 9:52 pm

Regarding the ‘small number but high profile errors’ aspect — that’s exactly how the left crucified Bush over Iraq wrt WMD stockpiles, even though Hussein did have WMD tech — and was proven to be determiend to resume it once sanctions ended, and that issue was only one part of the pro-invasion case (all the others of which were still valid).

Actually the pro-invasion case (errors and all) was much stronger than the ‘manmade-global-warming-sky-is-falling-so-we-must-go-socialist’ argument.

Comment by newscaper – February 10, 2010 @ 11:02 pm

[...] AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent [...]

Pingback by WRM « Sister Toldjah – February 11, 2010 @ 9:35 am

[...] Walter Russell Mead: AP story breaks ‘wall of silence’ of US media on ClimateGate [...]

Pingback by ClimateGate update: “Irony abounds” edition « Spin, strangeness, and charm – February 11, 2010 @ 11:16 am

[...] fools who rely on the US media for their news learn about the IPCC chapter of ClimateGate:  “AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent“, Walter Russell Mead (Council on Foreign Relations, bio), The American Interest Online, 10 [...]

Pingback by FM newswire for 12 February, articles for your morning reading « Fabius Maximus – February 11, 2010 @ 7:03 pm

[...] Breaking News – Climategate As if they just discovered this story, the Associated Press (AP) finally published a story on Climategate. And, while light on detail, it’s almost fair and balanced. (more here) [...]

Pingback by Breaking News – Climategate « Da Mook – February 12, 2010 @ 7:55 am

Apparently this truth was inconvenient to the main stream media.

Comment by Caveat Emptor – February 13, 2010 @ 11:27 pm

[...] AP Story Breaks US Media Wall of Denial on IPCC Mess; Al Gore Still Silent – It had to happen and today the Associated Press has given the American public at large its first good look at a story that has been old news for weeks in countries where the media is more alert. The story, by Seth Borenstein doesn’t cover all the angles, but it does a very good job of introducing readers to the IPCC’s assorted problems. [...]

Pingback by Sunday Reading – 02/14/10 « Romick in Oakley – February 14, 2010 @ 9:31 am