A recent flurry of articles clearly illustrates how climate misinformation is inserted into major media stories--how these articles are then manipulated by climate skeptics--and then quickly spread like fire.
A July 28, 2011 AP story by Becky Bohrer was "balanced" with a quote from well-known climate skeptic Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprises Institute (CEI): "Arctic scientist under investigation"
AP EBELL QUOTE: "Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the case reinforces the group's position that people should be more skeptical about the work of climate change scientists. Even if every scientist is objective, 'what we're being asked to do is turn our economy around and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on the basis of' climate change claims, he said."
The next day (7/29), the AP's Bohrer reported: "Official: suspension unrelated to polar bear paper"
THE JUNK SCIENCE EFFECT
But the anti-climate action lobby had already jumped on this story as evidenced by blog postings and also editorials appearing in publications such as Investors.com (Investors Business Daily): "Junk Science Unravels"
Some media sources ADDED an additional Ebell quote (see below) that does NOT appear to have been included in the original AP story--such as Forbes.com's version of "Arctic scientist under investigation"
ADDITIONAL EBELL QUOTE: "If global warming really takes hold here in the next few years and bad things start to happen, then we can act. But right now, I think we should just be sitting on our hands, observing."
The above Forbes.com story also included references to the email "Climategate" controversy--again, also not appearing to have been included in the original AP story.
Fox Nation posted: "Global warming industry rocked by polar bear fraud"
FACTS NOT BALANCE
Felicity Barringer at The New York Times improved upon the original AP story by dropping the Ebell quote completely in: "Report on dead polar bears gets a biologist suspended"
See also Andrew Revkin's NYT DotEarth blog: "Polar bear science and the spin cycle"
And for coverage by the Guardian: "Arctic scientist suspended 'over integrity issues' "
MEDIA SAVVY EBELL
Ebell has no problem getting his climate myths into mainstream press, for example, check out this USA Today list of articles containing such Ebell quotes or (not surprisingly) this list from The Washington Times.
FOR MORE ON MYRON EBELL:
See: Exxon Secrets Fact sheet
and Wikipedia's "Ebell page"
and Vanity Fair on Ebell: "A convenient untruth"
and DeSmogBlog's: "Ebell page"
Also see below: "Excerpts from Open Letter to Washington Post"
And below: "The Climate Con"
As I stated in below referenced paper "Climate of Scepticism" (Global Environmental Change, 2005), Ebell, a longtime climate sceptic with industry ties once told the BBC that the UK's former chief scientific adviser Sir David King, "is an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change."
My Climate of Scepticism paper included a focus on the exponential spread of misinformation via wire stories picked up by regional newspapers across the US. This problem continues as community newspapers such as Summit Daily News (Frisco, Colorado) ran the Forbes.com version with the expanded Ebell quote.
