Notes on Censorship, Climate, Bisphenol A, and Whac-A-Mole

China Delays Censorship Software

The New York Times reports that China will delay their rule requiring all new PCs to come installed with the Green Dam Youth Escort" censoring software that we wrote about earlier this month.

EPA Grants California Waiver

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted California the waiver the state has long sought which will allow it to set emissions standards that are stricter that the federal government's. We wrote about this in several posts including "Clean, Clear Air, Nothing To See Here, Drive Through Please".

Bisphenol A in the NYT and Journalistic Fence-Sitting That Must Hurt

Yesterday we wrote on Nicholas Kristof's NYT report about disturbing research on endocrine disruptors. We discussed what we called 50-50 science journalism, where you erode your science article by giving credit to the "other side", which could be a global warming denier, for instance, or the chemical lobby.

Another way newspapers can practice balanced journalism is when a publication like the New York Times or the Economist or LA Times runs conflicting articles to appeal to all paying advertisers. For instance John Tierney's column in the NYT today, written by Tina Kolata, quoted Stats.org to deny the dangers of bisphenol A, an endocrine disruptor. Stats has the opposite (and incorrect) science information, which conflicts with what Kristof wrote yesterday. Thus the NYT gets 50-50 coverage, for all of those science deniers it wants as subscribers.

Both Stats and Tierney are solidly in the science and environmental deniers camp. We wrote about John Tierney's denialism in "Scientist Columnists Sell You Short". Tierney has long expressed his devotion to bisphenol A -- "if they ever try recalling it, they'll have to pry [my Nalgene bottle] from my cold dead fingers", he wrote last year. Tierney routinely comes out against science.

Acronym Required previously wrote about Stats in "Yotta-Yotta-Yottabytes: Content Makes Kings, Print Dies", and various posts on bisphenol A. Stats, as reported here by Sourcewatch, claims to be a "non-partisan" think tank, but they are funded by conservative sources and consistently produce reports that fly in the face of science.

Climate Bill's Mixed Reports

The Waxman-Markey Climate Bill passed last week by Congress received mixed reports on its predicted effectiveness. The National Resource Defense Fund sent an email screaming euphorically, "Well, we did it! And we did it because millions of people like you made their voices heard on Capitol Hill."

On the other hand, Clive Crook, who we previously highlighted for his climate denialism, had an opposing opinion. Read his "The Steamrollers of Climate Science", for instance, in which he wrote that the IPCC report on climate change was biased, and what the world needed was some opinions from people affiliated with the Marshall Institute, Fraser Institute, and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) (all funded by ExxonMobil). You'd think from that you'd know where he stood.

But Crook, climate science denier last time we looked, said yesterday that the President was being too weak on climate change. Accompanied by a cartoon of the president ripping open a Superman t-shirt to reveal a cute little Hello Kitty figure, Crook said:

"The cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design: a law that really made a difference would make energy dearer, hurt consumers and force an economic restructuring that would be painful for many industries and their workers. Congress cannot contemplate those effects. So the Waxman-Markey bill, while going through the complex motions of creating a carbon abatement regime, takes care to neutralise itself."

Conservatives argue that the climate bill will negatively effect the economy for a very small pay-off, whereas some environmentalists argue that the cap-and-trade regime proposed will not work, that there a giant loopholes, and that coal gets too much of a boost from the legislation.

RealClimate, for its part, is taking a break, a little bummed out about the Groundhog Day aspect of the internet, where you explain the science that all the deniers deny, then they pop-up again. How true, though more a game of Whac-A-Mole than Groundhog Day perhaps. Tenacity wins.

Joseph Romm of Climate Progress weighs in favorably on the bill.