NYT's Gore Bashing

Drudge was trumpeting a William J. Broad New York Times story he called "a hit on Gore." More like a cotton ball fight, I think. The usual suspects were trotted out: Pielke, Spencer, and Lindzen, plus an array of geologists, entomologists and others unlikely to know much about the subject. Jim Hansen allowed as how Gore sometimes highlighted the more serious of equally likely scenarios.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

This kind of mild criticism, mainly from people with limited relevant expertise, is pretty much the tale. This is about a close to a non-story as you can get.

Nothing in the reporter's story suggests that he has any command of the facts or any way to make a case. He, I guess, started with a point of view and went looking for people who would support it. He didn't find much, and what he did find isn't very interesting, much less persuasive.

Maybe Eli or somebody will fill in more details.