Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another National Review Edition)

Judd Legum writes:

ThinkProgress: How The National Review Bastardizes James Hansen's Global Warming Research: Jason Steorts is on the defensive about his National Review cover story on global warming "Scare of the Century."... Steorts enlists James Hansen... the NASA climate scientist who was famously muzzled by the Bush administration.... Steorts quotes Hansen as saying "the IPCC scenarios are unduly pessimistic." Steorts never links to Hansen's actual writing.... Here's what James Hansen actually said:

There are reasons to believe that the IPCC scenarios are unduly pessimistic. First, they ignore changes in emissions, some already underway, due to concerns about global warming. Second, they assume that true air pollution will continue to get worse, with O3, CH4 and BC all greater in 2050 than in 2000. Third, they give short shrift to technology advances that can reduce emissions in the next 50 years....

Hansen's article is a call to action. He argues that we can reduce the impact of global warming if we limit carbon dioxide emissions, control air pollution and adopt new technologies. Here's how [Hansen's] article begins:

Global warming is real, and the melting ice is an apt portent of potentially disastrous consequences.... Study of these forcing agents shows that global warming can be slowed, and stopped, with practical actions that yield a cleaner, healthier atmosphere....

Steorts takes a couple of words from Hansen's call to action totally out of context to argue that action is unnecessary. This isn't a real argument, it's a shell game.

I can't understand why anybody who wants to have a reputation writes for National Review.

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