On Tuesday, witch-hunting Senator Lamar Smith (R-TX) continued his anti-climate crusade with a Science, Space & Technology Committee hearing. The hearing was predictably one-sided, as its name suggests: “Paris Climate Promise: A Bad Deal for America.”
The witness panel consisted of three deniers testifying for the majority—including Chamber of Commerce’s Stephen Eule, Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves and University of Alabama’s Dr. John Christy—with only one person, WRI President Dr. Andrew Steer, there to represent reality.
Given that no new ground was covered, the spectacle received no mainstream media coverage outside a single story about Christy in al.com. It was covered, however, by a couple of technology-focused outlets and a feature on Steer in Pacific Standard. In a brief write-up, Ars Technica’s Scott Johnson gives the hearing the corrective treatment it needs. Johnson quickly debunks Smith’s NOAA attacks and provides multiple examples of how Christy’s testimony was misleading.
At WIRED, Nick Stockton provides a little more detail and a lot more snark, making for a slightly longer but much more entertaining read. It seems that Alyssa Navarro of Tech Times enjoyed Nick’s piece as well, since she pulled directly from Stockton’s opener to describe how "politicians in Washington were grumbling about how bad the deal was for America.” She also barely changed his title and a portion summarizing Eule’s testimony.
But worse than Navarro's apparent plagiarizing is her misidentification of Steven Groves as being from the World Resource Institute instead of the Heritage Foundation, even though the sentence links to Heritage’s website. The Tech Times piece also completely fails to mention Andrew Steer and his testimony, even though he received many questions from the Democrats in attendance.
Memo to Tech Times: If you’re going to more or less just copy another outlet’s story, at least get it right!
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