in a knife fight

Lov*ey will back with a razor at your throat

soon

and again and again and again

how about an occassional post or two -- an op-ed-ish kind of thing (Dave too, of course)

It is not yet January 20, 2009.

Your guy is still in the White House.  

And you guys still have almost an equal vote in the Senate.

How about bringing up the "foot dragging" issue again?  Say mid-February....

The people who run the site obviously wanted "fair and balanced" reporting in order to gain political "credibility".  Erika agreed to provide that.  

Media that sticks to the facts on GHG climate change is labeled as having a liberal bias.  It's just that simple.

Senior editors and producers, many of whom are not aware of the facts, hire and promote people like Erika who are willing to ignore facts in the name of political correctness.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Just a quick note: One can't soft-pedal Loveley's nonsense. These articles get circulated all around the world, into places where there are not enough debunkers to counter them.

South Africa has the world's fifth-largest coal reserves. There is a HUGE push to hugely expand coal-burning to an extent that would make this country easily the highest per-capita user of coal in the world.

I have documented how local 'experts', funded by Exxon-supported entities in the US and using the same talking points, tactics and references as US-based deniers, have influenced the govt to ignore global warming. (We're not talking small-town newspaper punditry -- we're talking people being invited to dinners with govt. ministers to get them to change policy.)

The deniers here have had a nearly free ride because there are very few journos who have the background in climate change or the investigative nouse to expose them (my articles stand alone in the wilderness, so to speak). Loveley needs to be shot down, early and loudly, to stop her nonsense spreading.

She's only a cub, you say. Tough. The media biz is tough. If I had anything to say to her it would be 'welcome to the world, baby, now pick yourself off the ground and don't screw up like that again. The planet matters more than your feelings.'

Cheers

Whiskerfish

> "I have documented how local 'experts'..."

Whiskerfish, provide links please.

> The planet matters more than your feelings.

Amen to this.  Too many people have trouble grasping it.

Look who we get to read here.  Try to compare Kate's political/enviro reporting to this stuff from politico.  You can't.

Incomparable!  Read it and weep Politico.

The execs around here seem to be fully aware of the facts.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

That's the term we should be using.  Thank you JMG.

Oh, wow, I was so incensed by this article that I actually opened an account!

Lovely doesn't deserve any sympathy. She's a lousy, lazy reporter. Anyone who has read stories on gloabl warming for at least the last 5 years would know exactly where Inhofe is coming from.  The woman can't do a google search? It's the kind of crap I would have written in high school, when I thought it was much more important to generate controversy and make a name for myself than to worry about actual facts. To all the bloggers who went after her, I'd say, "Bring it on!"  Maybe she'll learn a lesson before she does any more damage.

And despite their mea culpa, Politico has no excuse either.

Does Grist have any decent push back "primer" on this whole "31,000 scientists" argument?

-David Ahlport

David and Russ:  I strongly object to your apologies.  Why?  Because you have confused courtesy with ethics.  If you apologize to Erika Lovley and Politico, then to be consistent, you also owe ExxonMobil many apologies!  

"Journalistic Ethics" requires a minimal degree of skepticism and fact-checking.  David wrote, "Erika Lovley ... is either the most dimwitted, gullible reporter in D.C. or ... um, I can't think of another explanation."  The only problem with that characterization is that David missed the other (even more "discourteous") explanation:  That Erika Lovley committed journalistic negligence in her embrace of venality.  

Politico's mistake was twofold:  (1) Hiring a reporter that incompetent or venal, and (2) Failing to exercise basic editorial oversight responsibility.

DISINFORMATION is far more damaging than any physical pollutant.  Not only does disinfo have a longer "residence time" in the cultural environment, it also can reproduce exponentially.  What Politico did, was equivalent to re-introducing smallpox among the broad population, just when a long and costly vaccination campaign had eradicated it among the broad population (by confining it to Inhofe's Oklahoma and the Saxby Chambliss cesspools of Georgia).

Disinformation is a pathogen.  The public-health approach to virulent pathogens is to identify dangerous carriers, quarantine them to protect the public, and only then, to treat those carriers.  

So David and Russ -- please get clear about your own responsibilities, as human beings and as journalists.  The "Emily Post" school of journalistic etiquette would have you write an article titled, "Climate Disinfo Pathogen Escapes Confinement; Threatens all Humanity!"  But it would be "discourteous" and "unfair", if you actually informed the public about WHO carried this new infection, or WHERE the outbreak occurred.

Please wake up and do your job.  Or do you think Obama will singlehandedly save us from Disinformation?