I attempted to criticize science journalists yesterday for their groupthink regarding global warming. I should probably have been more understanding as the enforcement of this groupthink can get rough.

About a week ago NPR had a feature on a 16 year old blogger, Kristen Byrnes, who has a (currently flooded) website, PonderTheMaunder, which is quite sophisticated for a 16 year old. Amazingly, NPR has been attacked rather viciously from the left because the website is strongly skeptical of the evidence backing much of the global warming idea.

David Appell is a science journalist who is a prominent blogger (QuarkSoup.com) who leads the way with this post that was the first Google search hit with opinion on the subject (third overall). He writes:

Yesterday NPR published one of the most atrocious, absolutely embarrassing pieces of scientific journalism I have ever witnessed. [wow, reminds me of the "simplify then exaggerate" dictate of sensationalism, not the scientific approach -jim]

David Kestenbaum -- who I thought was hired by NPR because he had some scientific training -- profiled a girl in Maine with a Web site that questions the canonical view on global warming:

Ms. Byrnes' Web site is an absolute joke, full of errors, entirely unscientific. For example, her graph of CO2 levels in the atmosphere showed it flat until about 1950, which is simply wrong. I corresponded with her for months and months about this, as did many other bloggers, until she finally hid her error without acknowledgement of what was correct. [wow again, Mr. Appell spends months harassing some teenager about her web site, actually gets some change but wants acknowledgment. Sounds a little like school yard stuff -jim]

.....

Profiling a high school girl as if her science stands up to the best peer-reviewed results from professional scientists and academic journals, as if she matters one iota, is a joke and reflects very, very poorly on NPR, and especially on their science desk. ...
Kestenbaum should be ashamed. Personally, I will never be able to believe anything he ever reports again, and, for that matter, the entire NPR Science Desk. This is pathetic.

The emotionalism in the comments is even worse.

This is a 16 year old kid. She got some stuff wrong. So did Al Gore despite serious scientific advisers. So, NPR wants to do a human interest piece on a kid's science site, focused much more on the kid than on global warming ideas, and Appell concludes "Personally, I will never be able to believe anything he reports again, and, for that matter, the entire NPR Science Desk." The imagination boggles at the thought of the reaction if NPR actually did a piece featuring the serious global warming skeptics.