In yet another example of a right-wing, manufactured story Roger Pielke Jr. is there.

Rabett: “A real reporter would be working their way up that tree.”

Mr. Yulsman, wanna’ give this project the old college try? This time, don’t bury your lead.

The Kloor post was a crock. Koor told a long fairy tale about Cronon so he could bash Michael Tobis and Al Gore, but when challenged by Steve Bloom, begged off that he was “not really interested in rehashing the particulars of the Cronon/wilderness debate”. If he was not really interested, why did he discuss it at length. If Koor’s understanding of Cronon was nonsense, that means his understanding of Tobis is also nonsense. Eli can live with that.

The real story here, as has been said, is how did what Tobis wrote make it’s way from the comments in In It For the Gold (that’s sarcastic in case you have not figured it out) to Prometheus to Mark Morano to Drudge to Glenn Beck, and who was editing, omitting and pushing what to whom in general.

A real reporter would be working their way up that tree.

You might also ask Prof. Zimmerman who fed him the information about what Hansen was supposed to have said.

Tom, that should have been your pull quote.

I have to admit to exhaustion on this issue, so I’m not sure I’ll say anything coherent right now, but I’ll try….

I have been reacting primarily to the tone of what was said about both Andy and Roger, and the attitude of the people who said it. Perhaps I should be more critical than I am of my colleagues. I’ll let others judge. But I don’t think calling Andy “evil” accomplishes anything. Nor do I think defaming Roger Pielke, Jr. by implying his research is a crock because of his alleged “ties to right wing corporate America” is ethical or advances the ball. If you’ve got a problem with what Andy wrote, and Roger’s role in the climate change debates, fine. State your case. Use some evidence. Be rational and reasonable. But also try to remain open to other arguments. You might learn something. And most important, keep your eyes on advancing the ball, not tearing people down for the sake of vein-popping, blogospheric ego gratification.

But what do I know? I’m a naive old fogey of an ink-stained wretch (who at 53 can nonetheless run a mile in 5:30 at altitude — wow, I finally found a way to brag about that!) who doesn’t seem to understand that our children’s future is at stake. I know, I know, I need to stop tut tutting, get over this desire for decorum and decency and get with the damn program. My goodness, this is the blogosphere. What was I thinking?!

Just for the record, several journalist bloggers weighed in with criticism of the Revkin story, e.g. Chris Mooney and James Hrynyshyn. That they did so points up just what an aberration it was relative to Andy’s body of work. I suspect he got the message. OTOH it’s entirely possible that an editor was at fault, and that Andy had to throw in the Gore material to get the Will story approved. If so, he should have stuck to blogging about it.

The Zimmerman post seems to be on hiatus, BTW. Did he really use it to go after Hansen?

During the period after the Revolutionary War, “fiercely contending political parties” rose up, Winik writes. That combined with geopolitical intrigues involving the British and the French, and a bitterly divided country meant that “the very survival of the nation was at risk.” (Okay, this is starting to sound uncomfortably familiar.)

Winik continues: “And what role did newspapers play? A profound one. As Mr. Daniel amply shows, they stoked debate, with abandon as well as with a mean-spiritedness and partisan passion that make today’s scuffles seem tame by comparison.”

After reading Winik’s description of the book, I came away thinking that today’s bloggers sound very much like the newspaper journalists of yesteryear. For more details, check out the review. It puts the Will v Gore v Revkin v Pielke kerfuffle into perspective.