Simon Lewis files 31-page official complaint, paints devastating portrait of Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Leake

I wish to lodge a complaint about the article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” by Jonathan Leake, published in the Sunday Times, across pages 8 and 9 on 31 January 2010. I consider it in breach of PCC Editors Code of Practice point 1) Accuracy, i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

So begins tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis in his official complaint to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission.  The PCC is “an independent body which deals with complaints from members of the public about the editorial content of newspapers and magazines.”

Finally, we have someone who understands, as Nature editorialized, “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

The full 31-page complaint — a CP exclusive (click here, big PDF) — is a must-read for anyone who wants to see just how Leake and the Times operate.  I excerpt it below, but first some background.

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Our guest blogger is Dave McCurdy, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) are on the verge of finalizing a landmark national program to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and increase new car average fuel economy to an unprecedented 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Just as when the process started a year ago, the auto industry stands fully behind this new program and is proud to have played a major role in its development.

While this new national program takes gigantic steps towards our shared goals of increasing fuel economy, enhancing energy security, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the auto industry feels that to achieve longer-lasting success, the EPA and NHTSA should quickly start the process of planning for 2017 and beyond.

Clearly, crafting a program for the years past 2016 will be just as important, if not more so, than what we’ve accomplished in the last year. Our goal is to avoid going down the same path that lead to the unnecessarily complex and uncoordinated regulations that we have now fixed by crafting a strong national emissions and fuel economy plan. The EPA, NHTSA, states, and other stakeholders can promote the continued and unparalleled innovation so greatly needed from the auto industry, by creating an even more unified and harmonious set of goals beyond 2016.

In the last several years, the auto industry has begun reinventing itself, making drastic changes in the way vehicles are conceived, designed and, ultimately, built. We currently have hundreds of models of vastly more fuel efficient cars on the road than were available even 5 years ago. In 2010 there are close to 50 models of hybrids and clean diesel vehicles available and nearly 200 models that achieve 30 miles per gallon or more on the highway. 2009 marked the 5th straight year fuel economy standards for autos increased. This regulation will ensure that trend will continue through 2016 and beyond.

But rest assured, the auto industry is not only making dramatic improvements to old combustion technology: within a year, plug-in vehicles that use even less fuel will start reaching consumers. And further down the road, technologies such as fuel cells and advanced next generation biofuels promise to make an even larger variety of low and zero emissions technology available.

Yet, although we plan on bringing all of these amazing solutions to market, if we ever hope to successfully address our climate concerns and enhance our energy security, these solutions need to be embraced by consumers and most importantly they need to be affordable. Ultimately, the sooner automakers can start planning for 2017 and beyond, the more cost effectively all of these new technologies can be brought to market.

James Cameron’s eco-pic has become the top grossing film of all time (see “Post-Apocalypse Now“).  And that did not endear him to the anti-science crowd.  Glenn “brainless frog” Beck said Cameron “is officially running for Antichrist.”  Cameron has now responded, as Brad Johnson reports in this repost:

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I of course replied, something here inside, cannot be denied….

You can vote here on another pointless online poll.

Big Oil wants us to remain addicted to oil, a major source of carbon pollution. So it and other special interests have conducted an aggressive disinformation campaign for more than a decade to convince Americans that there’s a major disagreement among scientists on the dangers posed by carbon pollution, just as the tobacco industry disputed the science to keep smokers addicted….

That’s the opening of my op-ed in U.S. News this month, in response to the topic question, “Did Climategate Expose Global Warming Fears as Unfounded?”

Yes, that framing is triply biased, with “Climategate” and “fears” and “unfounded” all crammed into one uber-lame question/push-poll that tries to push people hard to vote “yes.”

I am pitted against Sen. Jim “the last flat-earther” Inhofe (R-OIL).  I only got 680 words, so had to compress the arguments, but let me know what you think:

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Says pre-1978 temperatures use “magic readjustment”

Accuweather’s “expert long-range forecaster” Joe Bastardi has now firmly established himself as the least informed, most anti-scientific meteorologist in the world (see here).

In this impossible-to-believe video more suitable for April 1 or The Onion, he demonstrates he doesn’t even know the difference between temperature and temperature anomaly or what the Arctic Oscillation does!  And while he himself is constantly citing temperature data from before the satellite era, he labels all such temperature records as based on “magic.”

Please put your head in a vise before viewing this:

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Colorado sets 30% target for 2020

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) signed into law yesterday a revision to the state’s renewable energy standard, requiring that 30 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.

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Back in January, the journal Science exploded the myth of clean coal, with a study concluding mountaintop removal (MTR) “permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses.” Guest blogger Anne Polansky has the latest on citizen action against MTR in this repost.

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The natural gas industry wants to have its cake and eat it, too — after cooking it with some shale gas, of course.  Guest bloggers Richard W. Caperton Policy Analyst at CAP, and Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow, has the story of the industry latest effort to bypass safeguards for the controversial drilling technique known as “hydraulic fracturing.”

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