Who's denyin' now?
There may not be a better example of establishment media Climategate denial than Jim Tankersley's "breaking" story at the Los Angeles Times's Greenspace blog that President Barack Obama will attend the December 7-19 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Tankersley identifies all kinds of supposed factors that seem to have influenced the president's alleged change of heart on attending, while ignoring one that seems more than a little possible -- the need to get some kind of one-world commitment done before enough of the world learns of the fraud that is Climategate.
Here are some excerpts from in-the-tank Tankersley (HT Hot Air Headlines):
Breaking news from Washington reporter Jim Tankersley:
President Obama will attend the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month, according to a senior administration official, a sign of the president’s increasing confidence that the talks will yield a meaningful agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House will also announce today that the United States will commit, in the talks, to reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for global warming “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, the official said. That’s the target set out in the climate bill the House passed in June.
The president will address negotiators on Dec. 9, just after the opening of the two-week summit, on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize in nearby Sweden. His speech will come ahead of planned visits by prominent heads of state from Europe and around the world, and before the talks are expected to reach their most frenzied pitch.
White House officials said the decision to attend came after productive climate discussions between Obama and the heads of China and India, two developing nations whose participation is seen as critical to any successful effort to avert catastrophic climate change.
Those discussions left the president optimistic that his presence in Copenhagen could seal a meaningful – though not legally binding – climate deal, meeting the standard that Obama previously set for his attendance at the summit, the officials said.
.... Several nations key to the talks, including the United States and China, have conceded in recent weeks that negotiations have proceeded too slowly to produce a legally binding treaty in Copenhagen. Instead, those nations are now aiming for a sort of executive summary of a future treaty to be completed next year; that summary would nevertheless include critical issues such as emissions reduction pledges for individual nations.
.... Environmentalists were cheered by the news -- at least in part.
"Obviously, we are glad that President Obama will be in Copenhagen in the early part of the climate summit," said Keya Chatterjee, the climate director for World Wildlife Fund. "It's important that his words during this important moment convey that the United States intends to make climate change a legislative priority, not simply a rhetorical one.
"If it becomes necessary to secure the right commitments," she added, "the President must also be willing to return to Copenhagen with the rest of the world's leaders during the final stages of the negotiations."
Well, TV is ignoring it, except for Fox (which is why it really is fair and balanced), and much of the rest is employing a hysterical double standard on not using surreptitiously obtained material -- an exposure problem that obviously didn't exist in instances running over several decades, from as early as Daniel Ellsburg's Pentagon Papers to Sarah Palin's hacked e-mails last year.
Thus, this would appear to be another example where commenters will have to deliver the news to Tankersley's other blog readers to bring them and an establishment media journalist into reality.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
