President Obama’s regulation mandating that health insurance plans offer free birth control is an issue that most directly affects women. And yet, the cable news chatter over this controversy has been driven mostly by men, according to a new ThinkProgress analysis.

From Monday through Thursday evening, the leading cable news channels – Fox, Fox Business, MSNBC, and CNN – invited almost twice as many men as women onto their shows to discuss contraceptive coverage.

Out of a total of 146 guests who discussed contraception, the cables invited 91 men compared to 55 women as commentators. In other words, males comprised 62 percent of the total guests who commented on contraception. Fox was the most gender stratified network – on the Business network, 10 of 11 guests were male; on the News side, male pundits took up 65 percent of the guest lineup (28 men vs. 15 women). Sixty percent of MSNBC’s lineup was male (44 men vs. 31 women). And while CNN was more evenly balanced, it was still slightly tilted in favor of male perspectives (9 men vs. 8 women).

A note on methodology: The survey did not include male or female hosts of shows who happened to comment on the controversy. Some guests, like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), appeared more than once during this stretch, but on different programs and networks. Each appearance was counted separately.

Contraceptive coverage is an issue where female perspectives should be heeded and understood. When it comes to contraceptive coverage, adding women’s voices on everything from their experiences with insurers to the decision’s impact on women voters can only make for a richer conversation. Hopefully, those individuals responsible for booking television guests will be more cognizant of gender sensitivities going forward.

But his Monday NYT article on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline reveals the myopia on climate that is characteristic of most business and economics reporters.  He simply asserts the tar sands “is hardly the environmental disaster many suppose,” while providing no evidence.

And Nocera asserts, “Environmental concerns notwithstanding, America will be using oil — and lots of it — for the foreseeable future,” which is true in a hand-waving sense:  If we ignore environmental concerns, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.  Whether humanity can withstand such self-destructive activity, however, is the real issue.

Ultimately Nocera writes:

As it turns out, the environmental movement doesn’t just want to shut down Keystone.  Its real goal, as I discovered when I spoke recently to Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, is much bigger.  “The effort to stop Keystone is part of a broader effort to stop the expansion of the tar sands,” Brune said.  “It is based on choking off the ability to find markets for tar sands oil.”

This is a ludicrous goal.

In fact, it isn’t a ludicrous goal.  As the nation’s top climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen said back in June,  “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.”

If Nocera wants to take on Brune’s position, then he is going to have to actually discuss climate change, which he fails to do at all in this article.  So far, it seems as if Nocera’s views on global warming derive from reading the likes of the widely debunked physicist Freeman Dyson and attending Exxon-Mobil shareholder meetings, which causes him to dismissing knowledgeable people who express science-based views of as trying to “push Exxon Mobil toward their belief system — their global warming religion.”

That equation of science with religion puts him him the climate ignorati.

If Nocera wants to become informed on climate science, I’d suggest that he start talking to actual climate scientists, folks like Hansen (who is conveniently located in New York).  He might also call up Lonnie Thompson who can explain why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.”

Nocera could also review the recent scientific literature, which  I have summarized here: “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces.”

One final note.   What is particularly ironic about Nocera being suckered by the “Big Lie” of the climate deniers is that he described how the Big Lie works in a different instance with uncanny accuracy  in a column titled, “The Big Lie“:

So this is how the Big Lie works.

You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.

You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.

Sound familiar?  Nocera was talking about a different lie:

Thus has Peter Wallison, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis.

But he has nailed how the climate science deniers operate –  if you multiply  the whole thing by, say, 16 (see In Must-Read WSJ Letter, 3 Dozen Top Climate Scientists Slam Murdoch’s 16 Posers: “Dentists Practicing Cardiology”).

This week, Iran escalated the war of words into action, with authorities allegedly harassing BBC Persian employees’ family members in Iran and arresting Iranians it accuses of working directly for the channel. A BBC spokesman released a statement last week accusing Iran of arresting the sister of a BBC Persian employee, amid other intimidation. Then news broke from a state-run agency that Iran detained alleged employees of the network inside Iran. The BBC said in a statement that this couldn’t be true because the “Persian language service does not have a presence in Iran. There are no BBC Persian staff members or stringers working inside Iran.” (In its 2010 annual report, the BBC indicated that much of its content from inside Iran comes from “citizen journalism.”)

Rights groups and journalism advocacy outfits chimed in to join the BBC in condemning the Iranian actions. Citing the recent reports as well as the arrests of other journalists and filmmakers, Middle East director of New York-based Human Rights Watch Sarah Leah Whitson said:

The recent wave of arrests, especially against relatives of journalists working abroad, is a reprehensible escalation in the current campaign to stifle freedom of information in Iran. It is a sober reminder of the lengths Iranian authorities will go to control the airwaves, newspapers, and the internet – even if it means ruining the lives of Iranians at home and abroad.

The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Abdel Dayem added:

Iran’s government must immediately stop its harassment of the friends and family members of journalists. These attacks on journalists beyond Iran’s own borders show the lengths to which Tehran will go to intimidate the media into silence and deprive its constituents of information.

The latest accusations traded between the Iranian government and the BBC follow a recently-heightened pattern of the Iranian regime cracking down on journalists and bloggers. The continuing blocking of websites and satellite jamming of outside news channels — including the U.S.-government sponsored VOA Persian Service — led to a protest last month in Geneva outside of a meeting of the U.N. telecommunications agency calling on the group to work to end censorship and jamming in Iran.

Meanwhile, on air, the network has largely avoided the jobs news. A ThinkProgress analysis of the cable networks (via Critical Mention) shows that Fox only mentioned the new unemployment rate 9 times through 2:30 this afternoon, far less often than its competitors. Notably, Fox’s less-ideological sister network Fox Business mentioned the rate three times more often:

Fox News — 9 mentions
MSNBC –18 mentions
CNN –17 mentions
CNBC –12 mentions
Fox Business — 27 mentions

In December, after another good jobs report, Fox displayed a misleading and inaccurate graph that downplayed the drop in the jobless rate.

U.S. Heat Records Demolish Cold Records 13th Month in a Row; January Ending With Incredible Ratio of 27.5 to 1 in Lower 48

For reasons that no major U.S. news outlet can apparently explain, it has been really, really warm in the middle of winter over much of the country.  How warm is it?  It is so damn warm:

• “Dick Cheney waterboarded himself.”
• “Charlie Sheen was snorting actual snow.”
• “I saw Rupert Murdoch trying to hack his way into a Cold Stone Creamery.”.
• “Congress had to install a fan on the debt ceiling.”

It was so damn warm that the New York Times ran this amazing story:

Now this is just the paper’s City Room blog, so it is almost understandable that the article never mentions global warming.  But the L.A. Times actually wrote an entire story the same day trying to explain why most of the country missed out on winter:

That story was filed under “news/science” — so climatologist Michael Mann rightly tweeted that it was “simply journalistic malpractice” to omit any mention of global warming in the story.  Indeed, as we’ll see, that omission was beyond absurd in this case.

But first, it is important to point out that this isn’t the case of just a few warm days over part of the country.  January has, statistically, seen an extremely off the charts heat wave for the whole month for most of the country.

Steve Scolnik at Capital Climate analyzed the data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and found U.S. heat records have been outnumbering cold records by a stunning amount, as this chart shows:

Monthly ratio of daily high temperature to low temperature records set in the U.S. for December 2010 through January 30, 2012, seasonal ratio for summer and fall 2011, winter 2011-2012 to date, and annual ratio for 2011 and 2010, data from NOAA.

Scolnik explains:

This is now the 13th consecutive month that new high temperature records have exceeded low temperature records in the U.S., since cold records eked out a ratio of 1.5 to 1 vs. heat records in December 2010.  The preliminary reports from the National Climatic Data Center through January 30 show heat records crushing cold records by a ratio of 20.7 to 1, nearly as high as the incredible 22.2 to 1 last August. Without the 25% of total January cold records set in Alaska, the ratio for the contiguous 48 states is 27.5 to 1. With meteorological winter now two-thirds over, the ratio for the season as a whole is at 6.2 to 1.

I like the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one record temperature on global warming.  Obviously, 20.7-to-1 is an astonishing ration for a whole month for the entire country.

If you want to know the historical ratios, see “Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.,” which is the source of this figure:

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.

Our science-based institutions, like the National Center for Atmospheric Research, have no difficulty straightforwardly explaining the connection between human-caused global warming and these monster heatwaves.  If only our news-based institutions could do the same.

Now as I’ve said many times, every story about extreme weather does not need to mention global warming.  But if you are writing about a heatwave that is so uniquely extensive in space and time — just the kind of heat wave climate scientists have warned would become increasingly likely — and you are devoting an entire science article to explaining why it’s been so warm, then, yes, it is incumbent on you to at least mention global warming.

The article notes:

Throughout the continental United States, it’s been a very warm winter.

“The talk across the whole country has been, ‘Where has winter been?’” said Dale Eck, who runs the global forecast center at the Weather Channel in Atlanta.

The answer: A combination of factors has trapped the winter’s cold air in the northern latitudes over Canada and Alaska.

“If you look at U.S. temperatures, you’d say, ‘Wow, it was a warm winter,’” said Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at the U.S. Geological Service and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. And you’d be right.

And yet global warming from human-generated greenhouses gases never gets mentioned.

What makes the L.A. Times article especially head-exploding — put your head vise on, you have been warmed — is this amazing paragraph:

La Niña-related dryness might have helped California stay cool at night, Kittell said, because less rain means less water vapor in the air. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas that traps heat near the ground.

Yes, reduced greenhouse gases due to La Niña supposedly helped COOL California, but GHGs from humans apparently had no impact worth mentioning at all on the record-smashing warming across the rest of the lower 48!  I can’t do any better than this:

Related Post:

• Mysterious Nationwide Heat Wave Causes Exploding Sidewalks and a Blood-Red Reservoir
• NY Times Asks Why “Horrible” U.S. Drought “Has Come on Extra Hot and Extra Early.” Their Answer is … La Niña, Of Course!

But that doesn’t stop serial disinformer David Rose of the UK’s Daily Mail from misleading the public — even after being slammed by top scientists in 2010 for falsely asserting “no global warming since 1995″ — see “Error-riddled articles and false statements destroy Daily Mail’s credibility.“  Rose has another willfully misleading piece, “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.”

I saw “willfully misleading” because the UK’s Met[eorological] Office, part of its Defence Ministry, has taken the unusual step of releasing a statement utterly debunking Rose’s assertions as “entirely misleading” — and pointing out that they spoke to Rose before the piece came out but he chose to ignore what they had to say.

Climate Progress has debunked the “we’re not warming” myth umpteen times, most recently yesterday when 16 know-nothings with scientific degrees pushed a particularly laughable version of it in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal of Lies.

Even so, I’m reposting the Met Office debunking because they do a good job, have a great new chart people might like (above), and they repeat a low-ball estimate of warming this century that merits a response:

Today the Mail on Sunday published a story written by David Rose entitled “Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about”.

This article includes numerous errors in the reporting of published peer reviewed science undertaken by the Met Office Hadley Centre and for Mr. Rose to suggest that the latest global temperatures available show no warming in the last 15 years is entirely misleading.

Despite the Met Office having spoken to David Rose ahead of the publication of the story, he has chosen to not fully include the answers we gave him to questions around decadal projections produced by the Met Office or his belief that we have seen no warming since 1997.

For clarity I have included our full response to David Rose below:

A spokesman for the Met Office said: “The ten year projection remains groundbreaking science. The complete period for the original projection is not over yet and these projections are regularly updated to take account of the most recent data.

“The projections are probabilistic in nature, and no individual forecast should be taken in isolation. Instead, several decades of data will be needed to assess the robustness of the projections.

“However, what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850. Depending on which temperature records you use, 2010 was the warmest year on record  for NOAA NCDC and NASA GISS, and the second warmest on record in HadCRUT3.”

Furthermore despite criticism of a paper published by the Met Office he chose not to ask us to respond to his misconceptions. The study in question, supported by many others, provides an insight into the sensitivity of our climate to changes in the output of the sun.

It confirmed that although solar output is likely to reduce over the next 90 years this will not substantially delay expected increases in global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases. The study found that the expected decrease in solar activity would only most likely cause a reduction in global temperatures of 0.08 °C. This compares to an expected warming of about 2.5 °C over the same period due to greenhouse gases (according to the IPCC’s B2 scenario for greenhouse gas emissions that does not involve efforts to mitigate emissions). In addition the study also showed that if solar output reduced below that seen in the Maunder Minimum – a period between 1645 and 1715 when solar activity was at its lowest observed level – the global temperature reduction would be 0.13C.

Well, yes, technically, the IPCC’s B2 scenario does not include any efforts to mitigate emissions — but then technically none of their scenarios do.  In any case, B2 models a “more ecologically friendly” and “environmentally sustainable” world than many of the other scenarios (or current reality).

In B2, CO2 concentrations in the air don’t even hit 600 ppm.  In fact, we are headed to 1000 ppm.  Indeed, even the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment warns that “Based on current understanding of climate carbon cycle feedback” the level of cumulative CO2 emissions that had been projected to lead to 600 ppm in 2100 would in fact get us to near 1000 ppm — see “Hidden Bombshell in the IPCC Fourth Assessment.”

And the Met Office knows this (see Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path). Dr. Vicky Pope, head of climate change predictions at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, wrote in the UK Times in late 2008:

In a worst-case scenario, where no action is taken to check the rise in Greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures would most likely rise by more than 5°C [9°F] by the end of the century.

And they put together this amazing figure:

We’re headed to 5.5°C [10°F] warming by 2100 on our current emissions path — and so even a new Maunder Minimum would have virtually no noticeable impact.

Conservative media have misrepresented the results of Chevy Volt crash tests, claiming the batteries “blow up” and are a “fire trap,” and suggesting that fires have occurred spontaneously during use. In fact, fires only occurred after crash tests and regulators concluded an inquiry after finding that Volts are just as safe as conventional cars.

Regulators Concluded Inquiry After Finding Volts Are Just As Safe As Conventional Cars

Battery Fire Happened Weeks After Pole Crash Test And Rollover Test. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s description of the test:

During an NCAP [New Car Assessment Program] oblique side pole impact test conducted by NHTSA in May 2011, the pole struck and deformed the sill plate under the driver’s door at a location where there is a structural member. The lateral member displaced inward, pierced the HV battery enclosure and battery, and caused a battery coolant leak. Thereafter, the Agency conducted a rollover test (the rollover test consists of four 90-degree rotate-and-hold movements about the vehicle’s longitudinal axis). In that test, the HV battery and electronics were exposed to coolant that leaked as a result of the crash. The vehicle fire that occurred three weeks later and the additional testing NHTSA conducted are discussed in a report titled “2011 Chevrolet Volt Battery Fire Incident Report” a copy of which is available in the public file. The report indicates that intrusion induced coolant leakage, and subsequent rollover that saturates electronic components, were the only test conditions which resulted in a subject vehicle HV battery fire. [NHTSA, 1/26/12]

CNN: “No Fires Were Reported In Cars That People Were Actually Driving.” CNN’s Erin Burnett made clear that fires had only occurred in crash tests, not real-life scenarios:

ERIN BURNETT: Investigators did not find a safety defect. They also supported GM’s fix, which reinforces the structure surrounding the battery. No fires were reported in cars that people were actually driving. This came from crash tests. [CNN, Out Front with Erin Burnett, 1/20/12]

NHTSA Did Not Drain Battery After Crash, As GM Protocols Require. From an Associated Press report:

General Motors spokesman Greg Martin said the test did not follow procedures developed by GM engineers for handling the Volt after a crash. The engineers tested the Volt’s battery pack for more than 300,000 hours to come up with the procedures, which include discharge and disposal of the battery pack, he said.

“Had those protocols been followed after this test, this incident would not have occurred,” he said.

[...]

After the crash test, NHTSA found a coolant leak and moved the damaged Volt to a back lot, where it was exposed to the elements, said Rob Peterson, a GM spokesman who specializes in electric cars. Exposure to the weather caused the coolant to crystalize, and that, combined with the remaining charge in the battery, were factors, he said.

NHTSA did not drain the battery of energy as called for under GM’s crash procedures. But at the time, GM had not told the agency of its protocols, Peterson said. NHTSA normally drains fuel from gasoline-powered cars after crash tests, he said. [Associated Press, 11/11/11, via MSNBC.com]

GM Knows Via OnStar About Any Crash Significant Enough To Compromise The Battery. The Detroit Free Press reported:

Chevrolet dealers have sold about 6,000 Volts, all of which are equipped with the OnStar emergency notification system, said GM spokesman Greg Martin.

“There have been no reports of comparable incidences in the field,” GM said in a statement. “With Onstar, GM knows in real time about any crash significant enough to potentially compromise battery integrity.”

Since July, GM has implemented a process with first responders that includes depowering of the battery after a severe crash. [Detroit Free Press, 11/26/11]

GM Provided A Fix To Volt Owners. Automotive News reported:

The agency [NHTSA] said that modifications intended to reinforce the Volt’s 435-pound lithium-ion battery pack that General Motors announced on Jan. 5 should “reduce the potential” of the pack catching fire in the days or weeks following a crash.

[...]

Company executives [at GM] say the voluntary fix will make the car “safer” by reinforcing the steel surrounding the battery pack to prevent it from being punctured during a crash. It also will add a sensor to the battery pack to monitor coolant leaks.
GM is asking its 8,000 Volt customers to visit their Chevy dealership to have the work done. Dealers will be ready to perform the work starting in February, GM said. [Automotive News, 1/20/12]

Shauna Theel is a researcher with Media Matters. This is an abridged version of a piece published at Media Matters. You can find the entire piece here.

by Joceyln Fong and Jill Fitzsimmons, in a report from Media Matters

A Media Matters analysis shows that as a whole, news coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline between August 1 and December 31 favored pipeline proponents. Although the project would create few long-term employment opportunities, the pipeline was primarily portrayed as a jobs issue. Pro-pipeline voices were quoted more frequently than those opposed, and dubious industry estimates of job creation were uncritically repeated 5 times more often than they were questioned. Meanwhile, concerns about the State Department’s review process and potential environmental consequences were often overlooked, particularly by television outlets.

The governor announced that he believed same-sex marriage should be put before voters in November. Republicans whom Democrats had been counting on quickly backed him.

To a public suspicious of government, Mr. Christie might come across as reasonable — why let 121 people in the Legislature decide? — rather than retrograde. And by affirming that he opposed same-sex marriage and would veto the Democrats’ legislation, he avoided alienating the conservative voters who are the key to the hopes of any Republican with national ambition. Putting the issue on the ballot could even help burnish Mr. Christie’s image among national Republicans; same-sex marriage ballot initiatives have tended to bring out a swell of conservative voters to defeat them, which could help a Republican presidential nominee even in a blue state like New Jersey.

In Zernike’s narrative, it’s the Democrats who are ideologically obtuse and demanding. Christie is the brilliant political player whose charming reputation “as the big, blunt-talking guy” is quickly winning over New Jersey voters and national Republican leaders. The governor has cajoled Democrats to support “a property tax cap, limits on collective bargaining and changes to state employees’ health and pension benefits” and, Zernike writes, again managed to dance very carefully “to get what he wants” on the marriage issue, “disarming his critics or leaving them sputtering as they try to figure out his next move.”

New Jersey Democrats were, indeed, surprised to hear that Christie — who had initially left the door open to marriage equality — had told a town hall meeting that he would veto the measure on the very day that the Senate Judiciary Committee was considering a bill extending marriage rights to gays and lesbians. The comments provided instant cover for Republicans on the Committee to vote against the legislation and dismayed the same-sex couples who had delivered emotional testimony detailing how the states’ existing civil unions law allows hospitals to discriminate against their relationships and relegates them to second-class status.

But Christie’s “critics” were in no way “disarmed,” either. During the Committee’s closing comments — as lawmakers cast their votes on the marriage bill — Democrats chided Christie for his political cowardice. Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D) directly addressed Christie’s call for a referendum, saying, “The last time to my knowledge we put a civil right issue on referendum in the state of New Jersey was in 1915 and it was woman’s suffrage issue and the vote went down,” she said. “Women were not allowed to vote. This is our responsibility in this legislature.” Senate President Steve Sweeney (D) reminded the governor, “We vote on issues here, we don’t put civil rights on the ballot” and Newark Mayor Cory Booker also weighed in, comparing marriage equality to the struggle for Civil Rights. “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states,” Booker said in a statement. “Equal protection under the law – for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation – should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day….I hope our leaders in Trenton will affirm and defend it.” Or, at the very least, reporters take the time to report it.

McCain has made at least 53 appearances on Meet the Press alone

In 2009 and 2010, Republican Members held a small advantage over Democratic Members in appearances on these programs, getting 52 percent of the invites in both years. In both years, CBS had more Democrats as guests than Republicans by a narrow margin; in the same period, Fox News had more Republican guests by a wider margin.

But in 2011, the GOP lawmakers captured 64 percent of the Congressional appearances on the five shows that Roll Call tracks, and every network featured more Republican lawmakers than Democrats. Of 330 Congressional appearances tallied by Roll Call last year, 210 went to Republicans and only 120 went to Democrats — fewer if you subtract the eight appearances made by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Certainly, some imbalance could be expected given that Republicans control the House and have a presidential primary contest, but the disparity could arguably be too great to explain this way. Michael Shanahan, assistant director of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, offered another explanation: “Democrats aren’t all that interesting.” In other words, producers find that Democrats provide less entertainment value. Either way, it means that viewers will get disproportional exposure to one world view.

Unfortunately, this is a bit of a pattern on the Sunday morning talk shows, especially for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who is famous for his ubiquitousness on Sunday mornings, making at least 53 appearances on Meet the Press alone.

The finding also undercuts the pervasive conservative myth about the media possessing a liberal bias. That is, unless one believes that more chances Republicans get to express their views the more they hurt themselves.

So what, other than bad journalism, explains this nonsensical headline and image from the top tech magazine Wired?

Actually, it is just bad journalism, pure and simple.  Indeed, the magazine itself clearly wanted a sensationalistic headline — and even more sensationalistic photo — to get eyeballs in this highly competitive media environment.

The story simply doesn’t justify the headline. That’s obvious from the fact that the story itself includes this summary of wind energy prospects:

Outlook: Cheaper prices for turbines should result in lower costs for wind power by 2014. Though growth has slowed since 2008, this sector is still expected to cover about a third of any increased energy consumption in the US between now and 2035.

Huh?  An energy industry that barely registered any significant U.S. capacity or generation a decade ago is now  expected to provide a third of the increased energy consumption in the next quarter century — and that’s somehow a clean-tech “bust” which warrants an exploding wind-turbine image?  Amazing (and I will repost a response to the article by a leading wind expert below).

For the record, I’m not saying the wind industry doesn’t face a near-term challenge in the face of unconventional gas and a GOP Congress unwilling to support a crucial tax credit.  Climate Progress has made clear that it does (see “Policy Uncertainty Threatens 1,600 American Wind Jobs at Vestas — and 37,000 Jobs Nationwide“).  I’m saying that there has been no bust in the industry yet, there doesn’t need to be one, and, indeed, the prospects  for the industry over the next couple of decades remain very strong, as the article itself makes clear.

I asked Eilperin about the headline and images, which I thought were completely unwarranted.  She makes clear she had nothing to do with them:

“I stand by the story, which accurately portrays some of the challenges the U.S. clean tech faces in light of the current fiscal and political climate. The piece also highlight some of the industry’s bright spots, including the fact that cheaper conventional PV panels has made the expansion of distributed solar generation and utility-scale solar projects more affordable. As many magazine readers would understand, I had no input into either the display art or the headline that accompanied the piece.”

Readers know that headlines  are the most important part of any such story, seen by  at least 10 times as many people who read it — and in the internet era, it’s likely that 20 to 100 times as many people see the headline from a  respected magazine like Wired.

Wired should retract and change the headline.

I blame the editors for this — but I don’t agree with Eilperin’s assessment of the story itself.  I think it is flawed, especially its discussion of solar energy.

The piece uses Solyndra as a stand-in for the entire US solar industry and devotes over one third of the piece to the now-bankrupt company.  But Eilperin and Wired seem completely unaware of the fact that Solyndra was always a one-of-a-kind solar play that made sense only if silicon prices stayed high.  In that sense, it was obviously part of a ”portfolio” investment strategy by DOE, a hedge against their much broader strategy, which was based on silicon prices coming down.  As Bloomberg Government made  clear in a recent analysis that received virtually no coverage in the media, “the focus on Solyndra is not proportional to its impact.”  About 87% of the DOE loan portfolio is low-risk.

You’d never know from the Wired piece that in 2010, America was a net exporter of $1.9 billion in solar products.   You’d never know that the U.S. solar industry grew 100% in 2010 and another 100% in 2011, making  it perhaps the “fastest growing” industry in America.

How does Wired make the case that the solar industry is a bust when there are ”over 100,000 Americans are working in the solar Industry.”

Promise:  … In 2010, the solar industry predicted that as many as 500,000 people would be directly or indirectly employed in the US solar sector by 2016.

Reality: As we head into 2012, the number is more like 100,000. Prices for conventional solar cells have fallen 40 percent in the past year, due largely to a flood of panels from Chinese manufacturers, which have benefited from plunging silicon prices and government support. The price drop has eviscerated the US solar manufacturing industry.

Seriously.  Apparently because there is one solar study that said we would have 500,000 jobs 4 years from now, the super-fast growing industry with 100,000 jobs is a bust.  For the record:

• It is a 2011 study .
• The 500,000 number assumes a 5-year extension of the crucial Treasury Grant Program.
• The 500,000 number is based on direct, indirect and induced jobs. Induced jobs roughly double the total!

Yet Wired still had the chutzpah  to use this image as its depiction of this staggeringly successful American industry:

Wired Caption:  ”Solar: Cheap panels from China have viscerated the US industry.”

No, the industry isn’t quite yet disemboweled.  Again, one part of the U.S. industry — manufacturing of solar cells — certainly faces a great challenge from China.

But the article  is quite confused about the impact of shale gas on solar, asserting:

Meanwhile the price of natural gas has fallen by 77 percent since 2008, and the cost of producing electricity in gas plants is down 40 percent since then. Renewables simply can’t compete.

In the case of solar, the article  utterly misses the key point that solar photovoltaics generally compete with the retail price of power, not the wholesale price.

I asked one of the leading experts on solar energy, Jigar Shah, for a response.  Shah, who founded the pioneering solar company SunEdison, writes me:

Since 2000, commercial electricity prices have gone up by almost 5% per year.  Even after the crash in wholesale prices from the financial crisis of 2008, most electricity customers are still paying much higher prices than the historic 0.6% annual rate increases in the 1980s and 90s.  The reason for this is that all of the infrastructure in the United States is “old”.  Most of the coal plants are over 40 years old and realistically cannot be run for more than another 10 to 20 years.  Most of the substations in the United States were built before everyone decided to install air conditioning.  When new natural gas plants are built, it isn’t the gas plant that is so expensive, it is the changes in the grid required to accept this new concentrated electricity source that makes up the bulk of the expenses.

With installed solar prices approaching the $2/Wdc mark for commercial rooftop systems, it is now more cost effective than retail electricity prices for over 20% of all US electricity covering 200 utilities in 29 states.  The persistence and the excitement fueled by the VC community caused over 5,000 contractors to invest their hard earned money to make solar in the local community a reality.  The final step in the solar transformation is about finance, not about technology.  In 2008, the solar industry was on the cusp of finally creating ways for common Americans to invest in solar power, to put their money where the poll numbers already suggest their heart is.  This last step was postponed by the financial crisis and is finally ready to be started again.  There are ten individual initiatives that are being led by entrepreneurs, well-known private equity managers, and large well capitalized companies all headed for the same objective, bring low risk solar assets to the public markets so that pension funds and individual investors can benefit from what Warren Buffet already knows — renewable energy projects have a higher yield and are a safer investment than corporate bonds.

In the oil, electricity, and transportation industries we have annual capital expenditures into infrastructure (not consumer products) of almost $2 Trillion per year.  The combined revenues of HP, IBM, Cisco and others that sell hardware for information infrastructure is almost 10 times less than that.  Shifting the investment into our core energy infrastructure is a multi-decade struggle that has resulted in 2010 with more money going into new renewables of $187B  while only $157B went in to new fossil fuel and nuclear generation.  Given that investment banks, law firms, and jobs care about new stuff being built all shifted their loyalties to the renewables side of the ledger.  In 2011, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that since 2000 we have invested over $1 Trillion in clean energy broadly — $243B in 2010 alone.  This means that with current growth rates, our next Trillion will take only 4 years and by 2020 we will probably be at $1 Trillion annually — over 50% of the almost $2 Trillion needed by the whole energy industry.

Financial innovation is about building trust.  Investors need to believe that these technologies have almost zero technology risk or 100,000 hours of field testing.  They need to know that the financial products are structured in a way that clearly takes into account all of the risks.  While these steps are easier for clean energy, they are not trivial.  The efforts of the VCs and the US Government mean that we now have a set of technologies that meet this profile and have been accepted by the grand masters of finance such that they can reach $1 Trillion of annual investment by 2020.  Like the oil and gas industry, more innovation will always be possible, but meeting the final hurdle of acceptance by the finance industry is something that the oil and gas industry knows how to do.  And now so do we.

So, no, the US solar industry has not busted yet, and the future  is incredibly bright.  Would it be even brighter if  Congress were willing to extend the tax credits?  Of course, but solar is here to stay in any case.

NOTE:  Eilperin attempted to interview Shah for the story, and he declined to be interviewed.

As for wind power, Tom Gray of the American Wind Energy Association posted this response [scroll to bottom] on Wired’s website :

1) Wind is close to cost-competitive with new natural gas generation, even at today’s unsustainably low natural gas prices, and has positive offsetting benefits.

Adding wind farms to a power system helps lower fuel prices and electric rates and make them more stable and predictable.  For example, the Colorado Public Utility Commission recently approved a 25-year, 200-megawatt (MW) power purchase agreement between Xcel Energy subsidiary Public Service Co. of Colorado and NextEra Energy for power from the Limon Wind 2 project. The Colorado PUC underscored how the contract would be cost effective for consumers, saying, “the contract will save ratepayers $100 million on a net-present-value basis over its 25-year term under a base-case natural gas price scenario.”

As Bloomberg New Energy Finance lead wind analyst Justin Wu recently commented, “The public perception of wind power tends to be that it is environmentally friendly, but expensive and intermittent. That is out of date in the best locations, where generation is already cost‐competitive with fossil fuel electricity, and that will be the case for the majority of new onshore turbines installed worldwide by 2016.”

2) States that rely more on wind power have seen their electricity rates rise more slowly than states with little or no wind.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the 40 states with least wind installed (and the District of Columbia) saw electric rates rise by just over 34% between 2005 and 2010.  By contrast, the top 10 states in wind generation (with wind providing between 5.1% and 15.4% of electricity) saw an increase of less than 11%, or less than one-third as much.

Electricity rates are the result of a number of factors, so wind can’t get all the credit.  However, it makes sense that a resource with zero fuel costs, when it is available, is going to push the most expensive (and dirtiest) power plants on a utility system off line and save consumers money.

[See "The 5 States With the Most Installed Wind and Solar Power Saw the Least Increase in Electricity Prices from 2005-2010."]

3) Rep. Stearns is misinformed.  Wind energy is an American manufacturing success story. The wind industry has been a bright spot through the depths of the recession, creating one of the fastest-growing U.S. manufacturing sectors. Wind is actually insourcing a whole new manufacturing sector. Sixty percent of a wind turbine’s value is now produced here in America, compared to 25% prior to 2005. As the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service recently found, American wind manufacturing facilities have grown to almost 400 in 2010, up from as few as 30 in 2004. The key to that expansion has been the federal Production Tax Credit for wind, which has helped the companies that build wind farms to attract investment and create a market for turbines.

A recent study from Navigant Consulting finds that with stable tax policy, the wind industry can grow to nearly 100,000 American jobs in the next four years, including growing the wind manufacturing sector by one third to 46,000 American manufacturing jobs. This will keep the wind sector on track toward supporting the 500,000 jobs by 2030 envisioned in a report by the U.S. Department of Energy during the George W. Bush administration.

The development of clean, renewable energy sources such as wind power is critically important for the future of the country and everyone who uses electricity now and in the future. Wind energy is clean, abundant, and homegrown, and its cost is dropping. The case for continuing to invest in its growth through a reasonable low tax rate remains strong. And to change course now would only shut down a new U.S. manufacturing sector, just as it is starting to deliver on a large scale.

Let wind finish the job. – Tom Gray, American Wind Energy Association

So, no, there hasn’t been a bust in clean tech yet, and the industry is poised to do unbelievably well in the coming decades.  Yes, the foes of clean energy in Congress can put a crimp in the near-term growth, but the technological and marketplace reality is  very promising for renewables in the medium term.  And, of course, the ever accelerating reality of climate change means renewables are the inevitable winner in the longer term, no matter how hard their  opponents try to kill the US industry.

Dink, the editor of a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, wrote critically about Turkey’s treatment of its Armenian ethnic minority, and particularly about the killing of more than 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman army in 1915 which he and others considered genocide, a term that is hotly contested. The advocacy group Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) research demonstrated widespread nationalist threats leading up to Dink’s murder on the front steps of his paper.

The protests were the largest in Turkey in years. Some held aloft signs in Turkish and Armenian that said, “We are all Hrant. We are all Armenian.” Here’s a photo of an Istanbul neighborhood from the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet:

The Paris-based journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said the decision was “absolutely scandalous.” Nina Ognianova, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator, said:

Justice for our colleague Hrant Dink will not be achieved until the commissioners of his slaying five years ago are tried and punished to the full extent of the law. We stand in solidarity with Dink’s family, colleagues, and friends in calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into the suspected involvement of military and security service officials in this brutal crime.

Turkish president Abdullah Gül and other members of the ruling AK Party expressed disappointment with the ruling: “The conclusion of this case in transparency and fairness in line with our legislation is an important test for us,” Gül reportedly said. Some, however, doubted the sincerity of the nationalist government.

I’m particularly glad to see the love for Happy Endings, which has its flaws, but I think is the best group-of-friends comedy on television right now. At the Television Critics Association press tour, I asked creator David Caspe how he came up with the character of Max, who I think is one of the most balanced portrayals of a gay man anywhere in popular culture right now. Caspe said that while he knows Max has gotten praise for avoiding being either totally nelly or totally butch, he just based the character on a friend of his. It’s evidence of the fact that pop culture will get more diverse not only as the country does, and generational turnover (hopefully) makes the entertainment industry less white and dudely, but as white dudes have more diverse groups of friends and more contact with other kinds of people.

Similarly, Revenge, about which I really should be writing more, has done a nice job of getting different kinds of people into what’s typically seen as a hegemonic enclave. They’ve got both race and class in Ashley, who is trying to make her way in a world that looks down on her more for her economic station than (at least explicitly) her skin color. And Nolan is gay and techie and something entirely behind the standard menu of gay stereotypes. Tyler’s bisexuality was handled as if it was no big deal — neither he nor Nolan have ever had a conversation about their sex lives that’s about orientation, just individuals. Sometimes, I think TV shows get themselves hung up on the idea of diversity because they think they’d have to tell stories that are explicitly about the experience of being diverse. But it turns out that black people and gay people want things that don’t have to do with being black and gay.

Percent of Americans Who Believe the Effects of Global Warming Have Already Begun to Happen, by Political Ideology, from McCright and Dunlap

Conservative columnist Michael Gerson broke sharply from right-wing orthodoxy today when he ended an op-ed on climate change with this bombshell:

The extraction and burning of dead plant matter is not a moral good — or the proper cause for a culture war.

As evidenced by the presidential debates and recent Congressional hearings and speeches, it is in fact an article of faith for much of the national GOP that extracting and burning fossil fuels is a moral good, a matter of national security and economic security.  Drill, Baby, Drill!

Imagine Gerson telling the attendees of the Republican National Convention that what they are chanting for isn’t a moral good.  He’d be drummed out of the movement.

And in his op-ed, “Climate and the culture war,” Gerson gets that the planet is warming rapidly, creating many dangerous impacts, and the best explanation is human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately, accompanying this bombshell is a dud, Gerson’s tired — and erroneous — blame-the-messenger strategy for the culture war:

No cause has been more effectively sabotaged by its political advocates. Climate scientists, in my experience, are generally careful, well-intentioned and confused to be at the center of a global controversy. Investigations of hacked e-mails have revealed evidence of frustration — and perhaps of fudging but not of fraud. It is their political defenders who often discredit their work through hyperbole and arrogance. As environmental writer Michael Shellenberger points out, “The rise in the number of Americans telling pollsters that news of global warming was being exaggerated began virtually concurrently with the release of Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’”

Obviously, any “fact” offered up by confusionist Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute is likely to be a nonsensical myth — and this one most certainly is.  There is no polling data to support that view, as is clear from the chart above from the 2011 journal article, “The polarization of climate change and the polarization and the American publics view of global warming.”  I confirmed this with co-author Riley Dunlap when the study came out, which I’ll discuss further in a later post.

And yes, it is laughable that Gerson has the nerve to blame Gore or anybody else for the culture war or the polarization of any issue.  Gerson “served as President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006, as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006, and was a member of the White House Iraq Group.”  Gore just made a movie and then use the proceeds to try to depolarize the issue whereas Bush/Cheney politicized science, and specifically climate science,  more than any administration in history.

As an aside, blaming the messenger is certainly an emerging climate strategy for many in the conservative movement since it lets them off the hook.  You see, folks, it isn’t the  disinformation campaign — which Gerson never mentions — or the power of the fossil fuel lobby — which Gerson never mentions.  It’s those darn “defenders” of scientists who are to blame.  I wonder who scientists could possibly need defending from?  But I digress.

Let me go back to the polling data because it is certainly a widely held myth that Gore is responsible for polarizing this debate.  That is a myth conservatives love to tout, of course, and it is one the Breakthrough bunch has repeated again and again.  But it just isn’t true.

As an important aside, it is pretty well-known from social science research that people take crucial cues (as to their beliefs) from elites and that Republicans tend to take their cues from Republican elites and Democrats tend to take their cue from Democratic elites.  So it would be hard for Gore by himself to polarize the debate in any case.  Indeed, Gerson himself notes that:

In 2005, then-Gov. Mitt Romney joined a regional agreement to limit carbon emissions. In 2007, Gingrich publicly endorsed a cap-and-trade system for carbon.

Many, many Republicans embraced cap-and-trade around that time and didn’t flip flop on climate until 2009, suggesting again it was something other than Gore’s advocacy to blaim (see Tim Pawlenty: “Every one of us” running for president has flip-flopped on climate change).  Let’s remember that the GOP presidential nominee ran on a platform of climate action and cap-and-trade — even his conservative VP, Sarah Palin, endorsed it.  That’s a key reason again that you see in the top chart that the liberal-conservative polarization did not accelerate until 2009, when a certain person got elected with overwhelming majorities and the prospect of an actual climate bill became quite real.

And for those sticklers who point out that Gerson was referring to a different polling question, here’s Gallup’s polling on the exaggeration question:

Note that for most of the period through 2009 (other than the election year of 2004) an overwhelming majority of people believe that either the news gets it right or underestimates the seriousness of global warming.  Go figure!

Note also that this poll has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3%.  So we see it is false to claim, “The rise in the number of Americans telling pollsters that news of global warming was being exaggerated began virtually concurrently with the release of Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ ” — which was released in May 2006!  Indeed what’s remarkable is how little these numbers change at all within the margin of error from 1998 through 2008 (other than the election year of 2004).

And Gallup breaks these down by party ID:

Now this is a little interesting in that you see that the view of independents and Democrats hardly budged through 2008 on this question.  Even for Republicans, their 2007 and 2008 percentages were below that of 2004, and once you throw in the margin of error, any claim that Gore’s movie polarized this issue because untenable.

Aside:  There is another complicating factor for interpreting this polling.  From 2006 to 2010, “there has been an actual decrease in the number of straight Republican identifiers among registered voters (down 2 points) which has produced a concomitant increase in the number of Republican-leaning independents over the 2006-2010 time period,” as polling expert Ruy Teixera explained in November 2010.  What that means is that Republicans became more conservative (as they shed more independent-leaning R’s) and independents also  became more conservative (as they added  former Republicans).  So that accounts for some of the rise in the percentages in 2008 and 2009 for Republicans and independents.  I confirmed the plausibility of this view with Teixera last year.  That’s one reason I prefer to look at the conservative-liberal split (the top chart) than the  Democrat-Republican split.

And also note that this is one of those somewhat flawed questions that ask people to think about what is said in the news — rather than simply asking people whether they think the seriousness of global warming has been exaggerated (see “Experts Debunk Polls that Claim Sharp Drop in Number of Americans Who Believe in Global Warming“).  If we look at the polling of Stanford’s Jon Krosnick, it’s just hard to see any major trend concerning public belief about global warming that Al Gore can be blamed for:

National survey of American public opinion on global warming via Jon Krosnick, Stanford University

What makes the charge against Gore so pernicious is that the former vice president worked hard to keep the issue bipartisan after his movie came out, something that the social science community acknowledges.  You may recall the error-riddled, self-contradictory, and demonstrable false report, Climate Shift that Prof. Matthew Nisbet of American University wrote last year.  Nisbet, funded by the same folks who fund the Breakthrough bunch, tried to push the exact same attack on Gore — but two of his original expert reviewers would have none of it:

• Nisbet in Exec Sum:  “Gore has consistently sought to mobilize progressives politically, pairing his messages about climate science with attacks on Republicans.”
• Max Boykoff:  “I don’t agree with that statement.”
• Robert Brulle:   “His claim about the role of Vice President Gore has no valid empirical data behind it.”

This was a classic counterfactual.  Gore reached out to Republicans in his famous WE campaign — I’m sure everyone now remembers Gingrich and Pelosi on the couch.  And there was also Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson.

“The discussion of Al Gore ignores basic scholarship on the climate denial efforts, and supports an ideological position that is not grounded in an empirical analysis,” as Robert Brulle,  a leading expert on climate communications, put it to me.

The bottom line is that there just is no polling data or social science scholarship to support the charge that Al Gore’s movie began the polarization of the climate debate —  and there is much polling data and scholarship to the contrary.

The true acceleration of the polarization occurred around 2009 — and primarily involved a shift by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, most likely responding to elite cues by politicians and of course the right wing media that they tend to read online, watch on TV, and listen to on the radio.

I’ll end where Gerson began:

The attempt by Newt Gingrich to cover his tracks on climate change has been one of the shabbier little episodes of the 2012 presidential campaign. His forthcoming sequel to “A Contract with the Earth” was to feature a chapter by Katharine Hayhoe, a young professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas Tech University. Hayhoe is a scientist, an evangelical Christian and a moderate voice warning of climate disruption.

Then conservative media got wind. Rush Limbaugh dismissed Hayhoe as a “climate babe.” An Iowa voter pressed Gingrich on the topic. “That’s not going to be in the book,” he responded. “We told them to kill it.” Hayhoe learned this news just as she was passing under the bus.

So the right-wing media leaped on Gingrich, who once embraced climate action and cap-and-trade, because he was going to include a chapter by a scientist who is an evangelical Christian and a moderate voice on this issue.   It really isn’t that hard to figure out who is responsible for polarizing this issue.

UPDATE:  I ran this piece by McCright and Dunlap and Brulle, and they are all supportive of the analysis and conclusion.  Brulle sent me a fascinating chart of polling data I’ll use in a subsequent post.

No, this absurd piece is not (intentional) satire.  But the “headline could just as well be found at the Onion,” as one of the many exasperated New York Times readers puts it.

Obviously any paper, but most especially the New York Times, has little value to society if it knowingly prints lies — or if it fails to do the minimal investigative reporting and fact-checking needed to determine if a statement by a newsmaker or, say, a global warming denier, is false.

The public editor is “the readers’ representative,” which is to say he has no power whatsoever except the public platform to shame the paper of record.  That in theory makes him the “conscience” of the paper, but by not clearly stating the obvious here he has mostly provided cover for journalists to continue doing the lousy job they are doing.

This is not an abstract question.  We’ve seen the media described as “stenographers” by one of the country’s leading journalists in a major Harvard study — see How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress.” The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has harshly slammed his fawning, stenographic colleagues in his piece, “Rotten to the press corps”:

[Fired Issa press aide Kurt] Bardella also disclosed contempt for reporters he described as “lazy as hell. There are times when I pitch a story and they do it word for word. That’s just embarrassing. They’re adjusting to a time that demands less quality and more quantity.”

The issue of reporters simply repeating what they have heard with little or no fact checking is one of many flaws that go to the heart of the demise of modern journalism, of which climate coverage is but the most important subset.  There is a related flaw of getting that quote from a global warming denier to provide balance in a story when the reporter or their editor should know that the denier is a widely debunked purveyor of falsehoods, something that still happens at the Times (see below).

And the issue comes up with respect to columnists — see “The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages.”

Now that would be an interesting topic for Brisbane — should the NY Times fact-check its opinion pieces?  Right now, like most other newspapers, it publishes the most absurd, error riddled nonsense that would hardly withstand even a few minutes of fact-checking online — see, for instance, “Small IS Beautiful”! Robert Bryce Pushes Nuclear Power by Quoting Famous Author Who Called It “an Ethical, Spiritual, and Metaphysical Monstrosity”

Brisbane tries to explain his original column as poor word choice in his weak follow-up, “Update to my Previous Post on Truth Vigilantes“:

I must lament that “truth vigilante” generated way more heat than light. A large majority of respondents weighed in with, yes, you moron, The Times should check facts and print the truth.

That was not the question I was trying to ask. My inquiry related to whether The Times, in the text of news columns, should more aggressively rebut “facts” that are offered by newsmakers when those “facts” are in question. I consider this a difficult question, not an obvious one.

I don’t consider this a difficult question at all.  First off, if the NYT actually thinks that a newsmaker has made a false or misleading statement, then it has two easy options:  debunk it or not print it in the first place!

This second point is apparently something that never dawns on Brisbane at all.  Let me come back to it shortly.

First, Brisbane writes:

The second example I used in the blog post was Mitt Romney’s quote about the president “apologizing” for America. This one isn’t a slamdunk, either. It certainly isn’t being systematically rebutted in the paper’s news coveragenow. Maybe this is one that should be. My point is: the question is worth a reasoned discussion.

By the way, I should add that I did receive some thoughtful responses to the blogpost from people who recognize that the issue is timely and unresolved. Here is one from Greg Sargent at The Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/what-are-newspapers-for/2012/01/12/gIQAuUCqtP_blog.html

Sargent does acknowledge the issue is unresolved, but he doesn’t think it’s a very tough call: