Friday, August 05, 2005

No trade-offs in Portland -- reconsidered

Some weeks ago, I posted my skepticism re a NY Times columnist's gullible acceptance of a Portland claim that they had found a way to reduce greenhouse emissions at no cost. Just win-win.

Richard Posner's piece on the NY Times Book Review last Sunday nicely summarized the state of big media in the U.S. They bristle at the bias charge but it is clear that we all have predispositions (no one is pure) and the attitude of most big-media journalists is obvious. It gets weird when they pompously deny it -- and then jump at the chance to report news of the sort that had come out of Portland but which has now been exposed as resulting from a math error.

Rich Page called my attention to a news release from the Cascade Policy Institute, "Portland Now Admits Math Error in Global Warming Report". It appears that their carbon dioxide emissions had been going up, not down.

Will the Times print a correction? How big? What page?