Andrew Revkin

Will New York Times environmental reporter Justin Gillis offer an addendum to his alarmist March 8 report, "Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years," in the face of new information that discredits the underlying data?

In that story Gillis summarized a report (whose lead author is Oregon State University earth scientist Shaun Marcott) to declare without hesitation:

Debunking Nobel laureate Al Gore's favorite money making scheme is "divisive and toxic."

So said New York Times writer Andrew Revkin during a talk last week at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as reported by the Santa Barbara Independent Tuesday:

Andrew Revkin, former New York Times environmental reporter who now blogs at Dot Earth on nytimes.com, is in a spat with fellow global warming believers, over fraud committed by environmental ideologue Peter Gleick against the Heartland Institute, a skeptical group.

Revkin’s initial coverage of the documents stolen from Heartland -- tax forms and donor lists, along with a “climate strategy” memo now known to be a fake -- was called out for hypocrisy by Times Watch for showing no moral disapproval over the theft.

The Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, his wire service, and most of the globaloney-advocating establishment press have a problem relating to development NB's Iris Somberg noted a short time ago.

Peter Gleick, described in a related UK Guardian story as "a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute," said last week that he "obtained" documents from the Heartland Institute about its strategy to, in part and in Borenstein's words (from his 1,000-word dispatch), "teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming." Now, Gleick has admitted that he stole them (Gleick's description: "I solicited and received additional materials directly ... under someone else’s name"). Oops. It get worse for Borenstein and the wire service on at least two levels.

Andrew Revkin, former environmental reporter for the New York Times, and now “Dot Earth” blogger for the paper, showed a stark double standard in his reporting Wednesday on a batch of documents obtained by fraud from the Heartland Institute, a group skeptical of human-based global warming hysteria. Revkin even blamed the victim of the fraud for failing to condemn the previous leak of the "Climategate" emails.

At first glance the incident is similar to Climategate -- the leaked emails from the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit that rocked the scientific world in November 2009 and helped erode support for apocalyptic predictions of global warming. The Climategate emails included some shockingly shoddy science and venomous attacks on climate-change dissenters by ostensibly objective climate scientists, and documented attempts to avoid legal Freedom of Information Act requests.

Former Executive Editor Bill Keller, now a columnist for the paper, used the tragic fire in Bastrop, Texas to let loose an Obama-inspired rant against the conservative argument for limited government (and again targeted Texas Gov. Rick Perry) on his New York Times blog Monday: “Life Without Government.”

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change has instructed all 831 researchers contributing to the organization's next round of assessments to "keep a distance from the media."

Such was disseminated in a July 5 letter from IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri which has already garnered some criticism from folks on both sides of the anthropogenic global warming debate.

Even the New York Times' Andrew Revkin expressed disgust with this revelation Saturday:

(Andrew Revkin has responded to this NewsBusters story which you can read in the Update below.)

The New York Times environmental writer, Andrew Revkin, has left that newspaper this week. What made Revkin's departure interesting is that in his long farewell story published on Monday, he never once mentions global warming or climate change.

First a little background on Revkin's departure from the Times via the Columbia Journalism Review:

Andrew C. Revkin, one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment, will take a buyout from The New York Times as part of the paper’s current round of budget cuts. His departure, after nearly fifteen years at the Times, is sure to leave a big hole in the publication’s coverage of climate change at a time when this controversial issue—and what to do about it—is at the top of the American and international agenda as never before. Revkin is currently on assignment covering the Copenhagen climate change summit and will step down from his staff reporting post next Monday after returning to New York.

Hmm... So if "climate change" (Newspeak for "global warming")  is so important then why did Andrew Revkin NOT once mention it in his extended farewell? Let us analyze what he did talk about since it makes the absence of any mention of global warming all that much more glaring:

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt took on the controversy over the "ClimateGate" emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain: "Stolen E-Mail, Stoking the Climate Debate." The text box: "Some say The Times has played down an important story."

Predictably, Hoyt did not agree. Though his Sunday Week in Review column gave critics room to make points, the paper's public editor readily signed on to the possibly corrupted conventional wisdom that the science of global warming is settled and that the emails showing sciences behaving badly, while "a story," is not a "three-alarm story."

Never mind that the United Nations relied heavily on CRU's dubious, discredited data, most infamously the famous "hockey stick" graph showing drastically rising modern-day temperatures, to back up its alarmist claims about the dangers of human-caused climate change. Hoyt also ignored evidence that the scientists destroyed their raw data and were actively working to block Freedom of Information requests.

Some climate alarmists are so invested in their beliefs and corresponding policy preferences that even a joke at their expense is grounds for disownment. New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin saw this trend first-hand when he cracked a joke about Copenhagen prostitutes, and was threatened with a "cutoff" by one of the world's leading alarmists.

"My lord. Copenhagen prostitutes push back on warnings about their services & offer free sex for cop15?  http://j.mp/cop15sex". So read a tweet from Revkin, which he published on the Times's Dot Earth blog. The University of Illinois's Michael Schlesinger sent a furious email to Revkin, calling his "unbelievable and unacceptable" joke "gutter reportage."

But an even more serious crime on Revkin's part was his audacity in relaying the words of others that criticize the close relationships between climate scientists and liberal advocacy groups:

New York Times environment reporter Andrew C. Revkin had a post yesterday that was primarily about an open letter from Judith Curry.

Revkin describes her as "a seasoned climate scientist at Georgia Tech .... (who) has no skepticism about a growing human influence on climate." Revkin writes that "Dr. Curry has written a fresh essay that’s essentially a message to young scientists potentially disheartened in various ways by recent events."

Here are some of the key paragraphs from Curry's letter that touch on that matter:

Big news on the Climategate front. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, has issued a major response to the Climategate scandal. As a result a big rift has developed between the IPCC and a delegate to that organization on the topic of Climategate. This is big news, is it not? Does this not sound like a huge news story? Well, guess how many MSM reporters have covered this story? The answer as of this moment is one. ONE!

The sole reporter who went where the rest of the MSM dares not tread was Andrew Revkin, the New York Times environmental reporter, who covered this story in his Dot Earth blog. Revkin is hardly what one would call a global warming "denier" or skeptic but to give him credit he will report on breaking climate stories even if contradicts the prevailing MSM agenda on this topic. And his latest report covers both the IPCC chairman's response as well as the huge rift over Climategate that has now developed as resuult of that scandal:

Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has distributed a statement on the unauthorized disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages and documents involving a variety of contributors to the panel’s reports. One e-mail message from July 8, 2004, particularly related to the workings of the climate panel, has been the subject of much discussion. 

Here’s a dirty little secret about The New York Times. It likes to leak things. Important things. Things that change the course of the public conversation. From the Pentagon Papers to the ruined terrorist-surveillance programs of the Bush era, the Times has routinely found that secrecy is a danger and sunlight is a disinfectant.

Until now. A troublesome hacker recently released e-mails going to and from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, e-mails that exposed how the "scientific experts" cited so often by the media on global warming display are guilty of crude political talk, attempts at censoring opponents, and twisting scientific data to support their policy agenda.

The ClimateGate email leak has demonstrated in full force a glaring double standard in the mainstream media's coverage of leaked information. Too often, liberal media outlets jump at the chance to damage conservative figures by publishing sensitive information, but refuse to publish such information if it discredits or hinders the left's efforts.

As Clay Waters reported yesterday, Andew Revkin, who writes for the New York Times's Dot Earth blog, refused to publish emails from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showing efforts to manipulate climate data and marginalize global warming skeptics.

Said Revkin, "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here."

Revkin is correct that the emails were never intended for the public eye, contained private communications, and were released by hackers who violated the law in obtaining them. But apparently this standard for publication of such documents does not apply to information about Sarah Palin.

Fox News's Glenn Beck took on the global warming e-mail scandal known as ClimateGate Monday, and really laid into all the high-profile scientists involved.

As NewsBusters reported Friday, hacked e-mail messages to and from folks with direct access to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show a concerted effort on the part of these powerful scientists to manipulate temperature data in order to exaggerate average global temperatures.

As Beck pointed out Monday, those involved also conspired to prevent viewpoints counter to their own from getting published in scientific journals or becoming part of IPCC reports.

"Think about that next time you hear about, oh, 'the consensus,' and 'the science is settled,' and Al Gore is bragging about the peer reviewed journals" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Anthony Watts via Bob Ferguson):

A trove of emails back and forth among climatologists stolen from a server at the University of East Anglia in Britain has caused shock waves and may even have repercussions against the idea that humans are making a significant and harmful contribution to global warming. The emails include some shockingly shoddy science and venomous attacks on climate-change dissenters by ostensibly objective climate scientists.

In a New York Times Saturday front-page story, environmental reporter Andrew Revkin showed, albeit too politely, that the emails show global warming propagandists in a bad light: “Hacked E-Mail Is  New Fodder For Climate Change Dispute.”

But why won’t the Times post the raw documents on its site?

Revkin’s corresponding post on his nytimes.com Dot Earth blog displayed institutional hypocrisy:

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

Let us give New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin credit. He is one of the few in the mainstream media reporting on the hacked global warming e-mails story which has gone viral in the blogosphere and was covered in-depth by NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard. If you aren't yet familiar with this brewing scandal then I recommend you get up to speed on this controversy by reading Sheppard's blog post.

Despite Revkin's commendable willingness to at least cover this controversy, he is still stubbornly clinging to his global warming belief...for now. Perhaps his stubbornness against veering away from the global warming doctrine is more a matter of inertia. After all, he has invested over 10 years of his life in that particular dogma and it is not easy to give it up overnight despite the shocking revelations of the e-mails. Here is Revkin's not very convincing money quote disclaimer:

The documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists. But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

On Thursday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Elizabeth Palmer proclaimed: “Climate scientists say the ice has helped keep the planet cool by reflecting the Sun’s rays. Once it’s largely gone, though, the sea will absorb heat more rapidly and global warming will speed up.” However, an October 6 New York Times article declared: “Over the Summer, a Spread of Thicker Arctic Ice.”  

Co-host Russ Mitchell introduced Palmer’s report by fretting: “Scientists report today that the Arctic is melting so fast, the North Pole could be ice free during the summer within the next decade or two.” Meanwhile, in the New York Times story, Andrew Revkin explained: “The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic on Tuesday, noting  a substantial expansion of the extent of “second-year ice” — floes thick enough to have persisted through two summers of melting. The result could be a reprieve, at least for a while, from the recent stretch of  remarkable summer meltdowns.” The CBS report failed to cite such evidence.

Remember the artificial panic pervading the CBS "Early Show" just a little over a year ago that, for the first time in history, the North Pole may not be covered with ice sometime during the summer of 2008? Well, not only did it not happen but evidence now shows that Arctic ice has been thickening substantially this year.

And who is making that "heretical" claim? Why Andrew Revkin, the New York Times environment writer. On the heels of his recent "heresy" of quoting noted climatologist Mojib Latif's finding that the world will probably be in for a cooling trend for the next decade or two, Revkin's latest report will probably not sit well with the global warming alarmists: 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic on Tuesday, noting  a substantial expansion of the extent of “second-year ice” — floes thick enough to have persisted through two summers of melting. The result could be a reprieve, at least for a while, from the recent stretch of  remarkable summer meltdowns.

Mark down the week of September 20, 2009 as the period when global warming skepticism kicked into high gear. Yes, there had been a lot of skepticism earlier but this was the week when doubt about the "inevitability" of global warming broke into the mainstream media in a significant way.

In the not so humble opinion of your humble correspondent it began last Sunday when I took the American MSM to task here in NewsBusters for failing to report on the observation by a noted climatologist, Professor Mojib Latif, of Germany's Leibniz Institute, that the planet is in for a cooling period that could last from 10 to 20 years. The very next day, by an amazing "coincidence," the findings of Professor Latif were reported by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Although Revkin couldn't quite bring himself to renounce the global warming faith in which he invested a couple of decades of his life, the mere mention of Latif's findings caused him to be charged with heresy from the usual leftwing suspects including the Daily Kos. Here are a couple of  examples of Kossack invective  hurled at Revkin for daring to question in even a small way the sacred global warming dogma:

Come on, Andy... 'fess up.

Admit that you have been reading NewsBusters, particulary the story posted by your humble correspondent on Sunday about how the U.S. media has been ignoring observations of a noted climate scientist, Professor Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute, that we are entering a period in which the earth is likely to cool for a period of one to two decades.

The very day after the NewsBusters story was published, New York Times writer Andrew Revkin by strange "coincidence" decided to mention Professor Latif and his inconvenient observations about global cooling. Poor Andy sounds more than a bit peeved that Mother Nature is just not cooperating with the global warming dogma:

The world leaders who are meeting at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday, are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.

In today's You Really Can't Make This Stuff Up moment, the New York Times has issued a correction to a front page article that was highlighted by Nobel Laureate Al Gore in his recent climate change testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 24.

Here's what Gore said that day (video embedded right, relevant section at 1:40):

Sen. Warner made reference in his opening statement to the story on the front page of the New York Times this morning. Absolutely incredible. The largest corporate carbon polluters in America, 14 years ago, asked their own people to conduct a review of all of this science. And their own people told them, “What the international scientific community is saying is correct, there is no legitimate basis for denying it.” Then, these large polluters committed a massive fraud far larger than Bernie Madoff’s fraud. They are the Bernie Madoffs of global warming. They ordered the censoring and removal of the scientific review that they themselves conducted, and like Bernie Madoff, they lied to the people who trusted them in order to make money.

Eight days later, Marc Morano reported at Climate Depot that the Times has issued a correction: 

Climate realists won a huge battle with Global Warmingist-in-Chief Al Gore when the former Vice President pulled a new slide he recently added to his now famous -- or, more to the point, infamous! -- presentation linking an increase in natural disasters to "climate change."

As the New York Times' Andrew Revkin reported moments ago:

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said.

According to Revkin, this slide has now been nixed:

Do you think the media have blown this whole global warming thing out of proportion by devoting so much attention to it? One New York Times reporter says it deserves a more prominent place in the media.

Andrew Revkin, the environmental reporter for the Times, spoke in Newark, Del., on March 12 for the University of Delaware's Global Agenda lecture series, "Boiling Point: International Politics of Climate Change." He said he thought this issue deserved more spotlight, but outlined why it didn't get it.

"On the climate issue, climate - science particularly - climate, in multitude doesn't get a lot of respect because science is laden with complexity," Revkin said. "Newsrooms crave ‘Spitzer, Prostitute.' That says it right there - where's the complexity? Or - stock scandal, or you know, $107 oil, or the Yankees traded somebody big."

Remember when more than 400 scientists were revealed as "skeptical" about global warming hype? The New York Times's Andrew Revkin blogged about it, saying the "perennial tug of war" was actually "a distraction from fundamentals that are clearly established."

Of course, 44 Southern Baptists who buy into the green agenda received a respectful print story in the March 10 Times, widely quoting the church leaders saying things like: "when we destroy God's creation, it's similar to ripping pages from the Bible."

In April, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich rocked the conservative world by stating in a highly publicized Capitol Hill debate with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) that he believed global warming was real.

Since then, Gingrich has published a new book on the subject entitled "A Contract with the Earth."

A few weeks ago, the former Speaker sat down with New York Times environment reporter Andrew C. Revkin to discuss his views on this controversial subject.

This resulted in a marvelous video posted at the Times website (available here), along with a November 13 article entitled "Challenges to Both Left and Right on Global Warming" (h/t NBer botg):

NewsBusters readers are aware that one of my contentions concerning global warming alarmism is that those involved are doing it for the money.

Well, this editorial from the Olympian in Washington state will give you an idea that it's not just folks like Al Gore, Laurie David, and carbon offset marketers that are cashing in on this scam.

Now, media members are getting into the act as well.

Entitled "Climate Change Event Mishandled," the editorial deliciously complained about the Olympia, Washington, City Council paying a speaking fee to Andrew Revkin of the New York Times (emphasis added):