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.
In it, Phil Jones, the now-embattled head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked files, discusses several papers that challenge the status quo with Michael Mann, a longtime colleague from Pennsylvania State University. This is the take-home line, now reverberating around skeptics’ Web sites:
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next I.P.C.C. report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Here’s Dr. Pachauri’s statement defending the climate panel’s procedures:
Statement on news reports regarding hacking of the East Anglia University email communications
It is unfortunate that an illegal act of accessing private email communications between scientists who have been involved as authors in I.P.C.C. assessments in the past has led to several questions and concerns. It is important for me to clarify that the I.P.C.C. as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency. IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out. The entire report writing process of the I.P.C.C. is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.
Dr. Pachauri goes on at greater length defending the IPCC peer review process which you can read in the rest of Revkin's report. However, if it weren't newsworthy enough that the IPCC chairman has responded to the Climategate scandal at length, it turns out that a delegate of that organization strongly disagrees with the chairman's assessment of the scandal.
Here is the reaction to the IPCC chairman's response to Climategate from Saudi Arabia's liaison to that organization, Mohammad Al-Sabban. Note that he does not use vague diplomatic language in his very direct reaction to the position of IPCC chairman:
A lot of damage has already been done to this international scientific body and I do not think the attached response by Dr. Pachauri was convincing enough to remove such a damage.
So there you have it. The IPCC chairman gives a lengthy response to the Climategate and a liaison to that organization claims a lot of damage has been caused by that scandal and is unsatisfied with the excuses provided. And yet the MSM still does not think this worthy of coverage.
The lengths that the MSM has gone to avoid mentioning Climategate has now entered the realm of the absurd. It is the scandal that dare not speak its name as far as the MSM is concerned. Of course, they risk embarrassing themselves yet again if Climategate explodes as an issue at the Copenhagen summit which President Obama will be attending. Then the MSM, as in the case of the ACORN and Van Jones scandals, will have to go through the embarrassing task of explaining to its readers and viewers what Climategate is all about even though most folks familiar with the Web would have already known all about it...no thanks to their ridiculous non-reporting of this major event.
Oh, and a big round of applause to Andrew Revkin for reporting on all aspects of climate news...including Climategate.
