To recognize Earth Day and the important strides the United States has taken to improve the environment, the Associated Press credits the government for passing tough regulations that cleaned our nation’s water and skies. AP’s Seth Borenstein reports that “Improvements took shape in the form of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and changes in the way businesses treat the environment.”

This it not the case. Improvements took place before the passage of these bills. Indur Golkany’s book Clearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on Air Pollution and paper “The Environmental … Continue Reading

The Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein published an article September 23rd, titled “NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening.” The story opens, “New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.”

Oddly, there is no mention of “runaway” in either the British Antarctic Survey’s press release or the research paper itself. Yet the lurid conclusion appears in the reporter’s first paragraph.

Although the paper at issue is already, as we see here, being spun as evidence of impending catastrophic sea level … Continue Reading

A large Arctic ice mass loss in 2007 was widely reported as proof of man-made global warming, even though NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories attributed it instead to unusual winds. Now, as a April 7, Associated Press story by Seth Borenstein affirms, the massive 2008 gain of Arctic ice mass is being presented not as recovery, but used to perpetuate the meme of a melting Arctic.

That piece, “Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring”, opens with “The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before.” Outside of the improper use of “ever” in the two spots that … Continue Reading