Blogs & Main Stream Media: "mischaracterized my perspective"

"I was very disappointed that the New York Times so badly mischaracterized my perspective, but fortunately we now have blogs so that errors can be corrected, and I've posted my response there,"


Thursday, August 25, 2005
Professor says reason he quit Bush team not reported correctly
By NIKOLAUS OLSEN
NikOlsen@coloradoan.com
Climate Science: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu
New York Times: www.nytimes.com

The globe isn't the only thing warming.

A Colorado State University professor who quit a Bush admission science advisory team researching the causes of global warming said his reasons for leaving the committee were "mischaracterized" in an article published Tuesday in the New York Times.
Roger Pielke Sr., a respected atmospheric science professor and also Colorado's state climatologist, on Wednesday issued a retort to a Times article in the form of an open letter to reporter Andrew Revkin.
"The reference to my perspective and to the reasons I resigned from the committee are mischaracterized and erroneous in the New York Times article," Pielke said in an online posting on a departmental Web log, or blog, called Climate Science.
The New York Times could not be reached for comment Wednesday by the Coloradoan.
Pielke was on Bush's Climate Change Science Program committee to examine trends of recent surface and troposphere (a layer of Earth's atmosphere) temperatures. He left the committee in a disagreement about views presented in a chapter for which he was the lead author.
Pielke took exception to the Times' characterization that, as a scientist, he has "long disagreed with the dominant view that global warming stems mainly from human activity," as written in the lead paragraph of the article.
"I was very disappointed that the New York Times so badly mischaracterized my perspective, but fortunately we now have blogs so that errors can be corrected, and I've posted my response there," Pielke said in an e-mail statement sent from Tucson, Ariz., where he is attending a conference, after speaking with the Coloradoan by telephone.
"The fact is that science is complicated and sometimes doesn't easily fit into views that are black or white," Pielke's statement said.
In his blog post, hosted through the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science, Pielke said: "The committee was supposed to investigate spatial as well as temporal trends of recent surface and troposoheric temperatures, which, in the last version (of the report) that I saw, it failed to do."
Pielke, in his post, also disputed a line in the Times article that said he "contends that changes in landscapes like the spread of agriculture and cities could explain many of the surface climate trends, while most experts now see a clear link to accumulating emissions of heat-trapping gasses like carbon monoxide."
Pielke responded to that sentence in his posting by saying: "This is a completely bogus statement of my conclusions on climate."
He cited, through a hypertext link, an article he wrote explaining his position.
"Landscape change is only one of a number of climate forcings. I can only assume that this statement is written out of an intentional attempt to mischaracterize my work or simply a failure to comprehend my various peer-reviewed papers on this subject," Pielke said.
Pielke made mention to an "inappropriate shadow version of the chapter that I was convening lead author on that (Revkin) was aware of ..."
In the end, Pielke said readers of the Climate Science blog will be provided a correction to the Times article.
"I am simply aghast at the major errors and mischaracterizations in this article," he wrote.
"I welcome (Revkin's) response."

Originally published August 25, 2005
source: http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050825/NEWS01/508250319/1002