Seth Borenstein

As Paris Climate Talks Loom, AP's Borenstein Goes Full-Bore Over 'Trying to Save' Earth
By Tom Blumer | November 30, 2015 | 7:46 PM EST

From time to time over the past nine years, I have written about "globaloney," a shorthand term for the pseudo-science behind “climate change,” and “globalarmism” to describe the enviro-hysteria over "global warming" and the misguided public-policy prescriptions arising from that hysteria. Since the Paris climate talks have just begun, the press hysteria has reached a fever pitch.

At the Associated Press on Sunday, Seth Borenstein, swept up in that hysteria, wrote up a perfect example of "news" coverage embodying the essence of each term. We should be forever grateful that longtime skeptic Christopher Monckton, at the Watts Up With That blog, picked Borenstein apart, utterly destroying the AP reporter's work, piece by piece.

AP's Borenstein Uses Tortured 'Analysis' to Estimate 'Likely' Deaths From VW's Emissions Cheat
By Tom Blumer | October 6, 2015 | 10:37 AM EDT

A story by Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press ("AP ANALYSIS: VW EVASION LIKELY LED TO DOZENS OF DEATHS"), originally published on Saturday but currently carrying a Monday morning time stamp, claimed that "Volkswagen's pollution-control chicanery" has been responsible for "killing between five and 20 people in the United States annually in recent years." Those results, based on an AP "statistical and computer analysis," "cleverly" recast the effort's raw results of "somewhere between 16 and 94 deaths over seven years."

Given how poorly supposedly sacrosanct computer models have done in predicting "global warming" trends, and how gullible journalists, especially Borenstein, have been all these years about them, it seemed quite wise to treat his VW "analysis" with caution. In an op-ed at Investor's Business Daily yesterday, Michael Fumento demonstrated that such skepticism was warranted.

At AP, Global Warming 'Deniers' and 'Skeptics' Are Now 'Doubters'
By Tom Blumer | September 22, 2015 | 11:57 PM EDT

In what appears to be a mixed result in the quest for clarity, the Associated Press has announced that its reporters and those who wish to adhere to its Stylebook guidelines will henceforth refer to those who don't worship at the altar of the global warming/climate change absolutists "doubters" instead of "deniers" and "skeptics."

The specific change reads as follows: "To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers."

AP's Borenstein Notes No Hurricanes for 9 Years; Didn't Global Warming Alarmists Say There'd Be More?
By Tom Blumer | May 31, 2015 | 10:24 PM EDT

In a report on the relative infrequency of hurricanes in the U.S. during the past decade nationwide, and many decades in certain coastal areas, the Associated Press's Seth Borenstein detected a problem.

The problem is that those who contend that human-caused global warming is ruining our planet believe that hurricane frequency should be increasing, but it's not. So Borenstein tried to cover his tracks (bolds are mine throughout this post):

AP: 'Conservatives Say They're Happy, But Liberals Show It'
By Tom Blumer | March 12, 2015 | 3:49 PM EDT

In a writeup which shows that the wire service obviously hasn't studied the hateful examples of liberal-left hate collected by the Twitter curators at Twitchy.com, a Thursday afternoon Associated Press writeup claims that conservative "say" they're happy (with an implication that they don't really mean it), while liberals "show it" (supposedly meaning that they're genuine).

The reporter assigned to this pathetic piece of pablum somehow deemed worthy of "Big Story" status is Seth Borenstein, whose normal beat is twisting his reportage to convince America in light of mountains of contrary evidence and 18 years of flat worldwide temperatures that global warming-climate change-climate disruption is real. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

Global Sea Ice Hits Record, Warming 'Pause' Continues; Alarmists and Their Media Friends Hardest Hit
By Tom Blumer | December 30, 2014 | 5:36 PM EST

The Associated Press is obsessed with global warming. It currently has seven items at its national site containing that term.

Two of them relate to how the U.S. is allegedly exporting more pollution, and therefore more global warming, to other countries even as it supposedly is cleaning up its act. These are the kinds of stories which the rest of the press would eagerly jump on if a Republican or conservative were in the White House, but they're basically getting the silent treatment (AP's Monday afternoon before Christmas publication may also have dampened interest). But the item I want to pick on predictably comes from the wire service's "Science Writer" and chief global alarmist Seth Borenstein, who two weeks ago set out to convince readers, with the help of a ginned-up federal report, that "The ice is melting! The ice is melting!" (bolds are mine throughout this post):

AP: 'Temperatures Go Off the Charts Around 2047'
By Noel Sheppard | October 9, 2013 | 5:34 PM EDT

With egg all over the faces of global warming alarmists given the halt in temperature increases the past fifteen years, you would think media outlets would be a little gun-shy concerning "studies" predicting environmental doom with the help of climate models.

Not the Associated Press's Seth Borenstein who actually published a piece Wednesday about a study having the gall to predict the exact year when "temperatures go off the charts" for cities around the world:

As AP Hypes Models Claiming Global Warming Involvement in Fiercer Storms, UK Media Points to Massive Arctic Ice Cap Growth
By Tom Blumer | September 8, 2013 | 6:19 PM EDT

As is all too often the case, in certain matters affecting things here in the United States, if we didn't have news from Britain, we wouldn't have any real news at all.

Take "climate change" aka "global warming." At the Associated Press, Seth Borenstein on Thursday hyped the idea that man-made global warming increased the likelihood of about half," or six of 12, of "2012's wildest weather events." His "evidence"? Computer simulations. But on Friday, the UK Telegraph and Daily Mail took note of the cold, hard fact of growing Arctic ice cover, as well as its possible implications.

AP Coverage of Exxon Annual Meeting Contains Predictable Misleading 'Climate Change' Statements
By Tom Blumer | May 29, 2013 | 10:59 PM EDT

David Koenig's Wednesday coverage at the Associated Press of Exxon Mobil's annual meeting contained a predictable headline and related content telling us that the company wouldn't "explicitly ban discrimination against gays because the company already banned discrimination of any type and didn't need to add language regarding gays." Koenig's report apparently couldn't be considered complete without a contribution of misleading climate statistics and statements from the wire service's Seth Borenstein.

Borenstein's apparent input consisted of the following four paragraphs (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Actual AP Headline: 'Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic Ice'
By Noel Sheppard | October 10, 2012 | 5:11 PM EDT

For many years, climate realists have pointed to expanding ice in Antarctica as a counter to the claim that decreasing ice in the Arctic is necessarily proof of anthropogenic global warming.

The folks at the Associated Press on Wednesday came up with an unbelievable answer to that in an article unbelievably titled "Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic ice":

AP's Boring Borenstein: Gleick's Heartland Doc Theft 'Mirrors' Climategate Incidents
By Tom Blumer | February 24, 2012 | 3:52 PM EST

On Thursday, over 40 hours after the Pacific Institute's Peter Gleick (pictured here) revealed that he stole documents from the Heartland Institute by posing as one of that organization's board members, Seth Borenstein at the Associated Press finally broke the ice and filed a related three-paragraph "this is boring, you don't need to read it" dispatch. Two hours later, the AP science writer extended it to 500-plus words, but kept the headline as uninformative as possible -- "Scientist admits taking, leaking think-tank papers."

The "clever" failure to describe Gleick as a "climate scientist" (which he is) will dissuade many of those who see the headline from clicking through or reading further. By contrast, the headline at Borenstein's report on February 16 after Gleick (whom Borenstein did not name) disseminated the documents was: "INFLUENCE GAME: Leaks show group's climate efforts." In his longer item, Borenstein (or is it now "Boring-stein," Seth?) posits the howler that what Gleick did "mirrors" the Climategate email revelations which occurred in late 2009 and 2011. In your dreams, pal. The initial item plus excerpts from the longer one are after the jump.

How Will AP's Borenstein Respond to Peter Gleick's Admission That He Stole Documents From Heartland?
By Tom Blumer | February 21, 2012 | 12:11 PM EST

The Associated Press's Seth Borenstein, his wire service, and most of the globaloney-advocating establishment press have a problem relating to development NB's Iris Somberg noted a short time ago.

Peter Gleick, described in a related UK Guardian story as "a water scientist and president of the Pacific Institute," said last week that he "obtained" documents from the Heartland Institute about its strategy to, in part and in Borenstein's words (from his 1,000-word dispatch), "teach schoolchildren skepticism about global warming." Now, Gleick has admitted that he stole them (Gleick's description: "I solicited and received additional materials directly ... under someone else’s name"). Oops. It get worse for Borenstein and the wire service on at least two levels.