Columbia Journalism Review slams Times for “outright lie” about its commitment to environmental coverage.

This weekend two of the premier newspapers in the country basically abandoned the story of the century — climate change — as a specialized beat. The NY Times shut down its Green Blog (fast on the heels of dismantling its environment desk) and the Washingon Post is switching its lead climate reporter, Juliet Eilperin, off the environment beat.

These epic blunders in editorial judgment essentially signal the end of the era of great national newspapers — certainly neither the New York Times nor Washingon Post qualify anymore. One can hardly be a great national newspaper while moving to slash coverage of the single most important story to the nation (and the world), the story that will have the biggest impact on the lives of readers and their children in the coming decades.

And we can finally strip the NY Times of its vaunted title “The Paper of Record.” Now, like most others, it is just a “paper of record-keeping.”

Back in January, I reported that the Times was “Widely Cricitized For Dismantling Its Environment Desk, Eliminating Editorial Positions.” Now, to compound that mistake, the NY Times has terminated its Green Blog, with this abrupt post:

The Times is discontinuing the Green blog, which was created to track environmental and energy news and to foster lively discussion of developments in both areas. This change will allow us to direct production resources to other online projects. But we will forge ahead with our aggressive reporting on environmental and energy topics, including climate change, land use, threatened ecosystems, government policy, the fossil fuel industries, the growing renewables sector and consumer choices.

Thanks to all of our readers.

Since Sandy was a freak, once-in-a-century superstorm, we figure New York is safe for another century.

OK, I added the final sentence, but still this move is doubly head-exploding in a post-Sandy world where even the media elite now know they aren’t free from the ravages of climate change. And again, we’ve only seen the impact of slightly more than a degree Fahrenheit of warming — we’re all but certain to see at least 5 times as much warming this century as we did last century, especially if the ignorati (not-so-intelligentsia?) gag themselves on the greatest story never told.

Curtis Brainard, editor of Columbia Journalism Review‘s “online critique of science and environment reporting,” slammed the move:

This is terrible news, to say the least. When the Times announced in January that it was dismantling its three-year-old environment pod and reassigning its editors and reporters to other desks, managing editor Dean Baquet insisted that the outlet remained as committed as ever to covering the environment. Obviously, that was an outright lie.

The Green blog was a crucial platform for stories that didn’t fit into the print edition’s already shrunken news hole—which is a lot on the energy and environment beat—and it was a place where reporters could add valuable to context and information to pieces that did make the paper….

In an act of total cowardice, the Times clearly timed its announcement to avoid (for the weekend, at least) having to deal with what is sure to be widespread criticism. When I called the paper shortly after 5pm on Friday, I was informed that executive editor Jill Abramson, managing editor Dean Baquet, and corporate spokeswoman Eileen Murphy were all out of the office for the day….

Those masthead editors should be ashamed of themselves. They’ve made a horrible decision that ensures the deterioration of the Times’s environmental coverage at a time when debates about climate change, energy, natural resources, and sustainability have never been more important to public welfare, and they’ve done so while keeping their staff in the dark. Readers deserve an explanation, but I can’t think of a single one that would justify this folly.

Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the NYT called “an expert on environmental communications,” emailed me:

The NY Times coverage of the environment has continued its journey from bad to worse. It continues to abrogate its responsibility to inform the public about critical issues.

Slate has terrific piece, “The Times Kills Its Environmental Blog To Focus on Horse Racing and Awards Shows,” which lists some of the “the 65-odd other Times blogs” (!) saved from the axe while the green blog was beheaded:

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Cross-posted from Huffington Post

Given the relentless “all of the above” energy strategy pursued by the Obama Administration, the release this past Friday of a positive environmental impact report for the proposed Keystone oil pipeline was no big surprise. The U.S. State Department essentially declared that since the extra-dirty tar sands oil designated for the pipeline was going to be shipped and burned one way or another, building the pipeline down from Canada to Gulf coast refineries would not have that much impact on the environment — despite warnings from climate scientists that burning all the tar sands oil would be “game over” in the fight to stop climate change.

This conclusion by the State Department was a laughable bit of self-fulfilling logic. But perhaps the biggest surprise in the report was the tacit admission that the tar sands oil isn’t going to be burned in the U.S. at all. Instead, it is destined for refining and export overseas.

The State Department report details how Gulf Coast oil refineries will use the tar sands crude oil delivered by Keystone to replace supplies from Venezuela and Mexico, refine the crude into high-end products like gasoline, and then export the refined fuel overseas. Meanwhile, as if to add insult to injury, fuel prices paid by U.S. consumers in the Midwest are expected to jump as the pipeline will siphon off crude oil supplies that are currently landlocked in America. The U.S. State Department did not, of course, highlight these findings at the top of its report but instead buried them down in the “market analysis” section, where it left a clear trail of breadcrumbs.

Interestingly, the State Department went way out of its way to argue that the pipeline won’t be used to export unprocessed crude oil. (Though the industry clearly expects otherwise: see here.) Yet at the same time, the State Department admits, using painstakingly disconnected phrasing, that the crude oil delivered by the pipeline will be processed by Gulf coast refineries and then exported, in a shell game whereby export refineries replace declining crude oil supplies from Venezuela and Mexico with Keystone Canadian tar sands oil.

Regarding the pipeline’s impact on the export of refined crude, the State Department report says: “…future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.”

And what exactly are those trends? The State Department reports that: “In 2005, exports began increasing… Export volumes have increased to over [3 million barrels of oil per day] in the first half of 2012. This increased volume of refined products is being exported by refiners as they respond to lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.”

And why use the extra dirty crude oil to be delivered by the Keystone Pipeline? The State Department says: “Gulf Coast refiners’ traditional sources of heavy crudes, particularly Mexico and Venezuela, are declining and are expected to continue to decline. This results in an outlook where the refiners have significant incentive to obtain heavy crude from the oil sands.”

And there you have it, a shell game, with Keystone as the lynchpin for the whole effort. Gas prices go up for Midwesterners, big oil refineries profit from the overseas export of fuel processed from dirty tar sands oil, and the rest of us are that much further in the hole in our fight to stop climate change. The environmental impact statement appears to be a clear signal that the Obama Administration is headed down the road to approval. However, the growing backlash against the pipeline creates a headache for the president who just made a very public commitment to protect the climate. A fight is clearly in the works.

– Hunter Cutting is a consultant and writer.

Washington, D.C. is abuzz with the news that a new storm is sweeping down towards the mid-Atlantic seaboard, already dubbed “snowquester” (or “snowquestration” if you’re a grammar stickler) in honor of the nation’s latest budget debacle.

There’s a 50 percent chance the snowquester will dump over 5 inches of snow within the Beltway, and a 20 to 25 percent chance it will immobilize the city entirely. Given Washington, D.C.’s meager snowfall in recent winters, the snowquester’s impending arrival is understandably grabbing everyone’s attention.

It’s a “teachable moment” for diving into how Washington, D.C.’s weather specifically fits what we know about climate change.

One paradox that’s emerged from climate science in recent years is the “less snow, but worse blizzards” pattern. The Associated Press recently summed up the logic behind this: “A warmer world is likely to decrease the overall amount of snow falling each year and shrink the snow season. But when it is cold enough for a snowstorm to hit, the slightly warmer air is often carrying more moisture, producing potentially historic blizzards.”

Global warming is bringing us closer to the sweet spot where moisture in the air is maximized while temperatures remain low enough to cause snow. And recent studies have confirmed that snowfalls over the last 100 years in the United States, as well as those projected for the next 100, fit this pattern.

Jason Samenow over at the Washington Post decided to dig into whether D.C.’s weather specifically has lined up with the “less snow, more blizzards” pattern. Sure enough, it does:

In the 30 winters since 1984 (including this year, assuming we don’t miraculously get 14 inches of snow in the coming weeks), only 5 winters have had above average snowfall in D.C. – compared to 25 winters with average to below average amounts (15.4 inches or less). In 4 of the 5 winters with above average snowfall, the total was 2 to more than 3 times normal – or 30.1 to 56.1 inches (in 1987, 1996, 2003, and 2010). Or, put another away, the 25 snow-deprived winters averaged 9 inches of snow, the 5 snowy winters averaged 40 inches.

At the same time, D.C. has not seen accumulating snow in November for the last 16 years, the longest stretch on record. And the 30-year average for snowfall has dropped from 24 inches in 1918, to 18 inches in 1984, to 14 to 15 inches this year.

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