The biggest media flap to complicate John Holdren’s debut as White House science adviser was the one about his apparent willingness to consider geoengineering to combat climate change. It started with Seth Borenstein’s AP article in April saying that the once “radical” idea “is being discussed by the White House as a potential emergency option.” Borenstein had gotten an early interview with Holdren and, as the Tracker noted at the time, he had a reasonable story. Reasonable or not, Holdren (photo) and his Office of Science and Technology Policy, then tried to distance itself from geoengineering ideas with further statements.

Now the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media has published an excellent examination of the whole flap, noting that several other outlets, including the New York Times and Science magazine, had come to pretty much the same stance as Borenstein. Written by Bill Dawson, a former environment writer for the Houston Chronicle and now teaching at Rice, it’s a comprehensive account of the evidence on where Holdren and other scientists stand and how their stands have been covered in the press.

Three other worthy takes on the story:

Kevin Bullis at MIT’s Technology Review;  Dan Vergano at USA Today; Jonathan Fahey at Forbes

To append a minor point: The Yale Forum article also cites the KSJ Tracker as taking the same view but, prior to an update, it called our post “unsigned.” (This graf was revised to reflect that fact at 5:47 PM ET.) That post, like all of ours, carried a signature of initials, in that case -CP, which stands for Charles Petit, head tracker. This post is signed with the initials of Boyce Rensberger, backup tracker.

-BR

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under About Journalism, Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.