Romm's Bud at NYT
Is Joe Romm becoming the Michael Mandelbaum of climate change in Thomas Friedman’s op-ed columns? Romm still has a way to go before he can approach Mandelbaum’s record number of appearances. But today’s column brings the latest evidence that Romm is a fav of Friedman.
What’s doubly perplexing about this is that Friedman has never cited Andy Revkin’s work at Dot Earth, a far superior informational source on climate change related news and issues. Maybe Revkin is just too evenhanded and nuanced for Friedman’s boilerplate arguments.
I must say, Tom’s second, third and fourth talking points on climate seem awfully familiar… ; )
e.g., insurance: http://j.mp/nytMiddle
“a far superior informational source on climate change related news and issues”
Oh, not hardly, I’m afraid. While Andy’s blog does have plenty of information, albeit way less than Romm does, his focus is more on examination of controversies and on the professional navel-gazing (about how journalists can best cover climate) that journalists seem to find so fascinating. That’s fair enough — if I were a journalist rather than an activist I’d be asking myself the same questions. On the other hand, I don’t see how constantly blogging about it helps much of anything. It’s a bit like a public therapy session.
Friedman says:
In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts “” from places like NASA, America’s national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre “” and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.
Gotta wonder how he’s missed that the peer review process itself has been corrupted. And not only for climatology.
Not to mention that NASA/GISS and Hadley/CRU have major “honesty” problems. Or that the IPCC AR4 is still being deconstructed by the blogosphere.
Or that some of the top “experts” are sceptics.
Or that some of the most recent sceptical papers come from National Labs.
Some people just seem to never learn.
Steve,
Based on the huge quantity of comments that Dot Earth routinely generates–virtually none from journalists–I have to wonder if you’re reading the same blog as me.
Also, when I say “far superior,” I’m referring to the quality, not the quantity of the posts–or their length. Also, Andy uses his blog as a reporting platform, so there’s often extended exchanges with climate scientists that I find very edifying.
sorry keith, but i gotta go with what steve said. and if one is to judge a blogger by virtue of their commenters then where does that leave RPJr?
Andy is more concerned with the debate dynamics and society/press interactions it seems than with the actual science and solutions (which is fine, to each their own). I would also suggest that it is Joe’s focus on solutions in particular that attracts the attention of Friedman more than anything else…
Marlowe,
I didn’t say you could judge by virtue of the commenters–merely the quantity of comments and diversity of views.
But I can see your last point about the solutions orientation of CP being one of the attractors.
Joe also does way more posts about the developing science and what it means. That’s makes it a “superior informational source” in the most direct sense. To be fair to Andy, though, all the breaking science stories are supposed to be covered in the NYT news section (until recently a lot of it by him), so comparing Dot Earth to a stand-alone blog like Climate Progress is a little apples/oranges.
I’m personally interested in Andy’s stuff, in particular the exchanges between the scientists, but in the end it’s mostly inside baseball that doesn’t mean much for science or policy. His interests also lead him to blog crap with some frequency, as with the absurd promotion of a wingnut misinterpretation of an AR4 comment by Andy Lacis. I know AR’s tried to make up for it by giving AL a platform to expound his views in detail, but AR needs to stop and think before doing that kind of damage, fun though it might be to discuss. I know journalists like to think of the recent IPCC and CRU stuff as speaking truth to power, but really it’s just peddling confusion to a public not in need of any more. (And hey, look how fast Charlie Petit got his fill of it.)