Topic: NewsBusters
The Boston Phoenix highlights a June 5 NewsBusters post by P.J. Gladnick repeating a Daily Tech report by Michael Andrews asserting that NASA, in a "new" study, has concluded that the sun, not man, is the cause of global warming.
Only, not so much. According to the Phoenix:
But when Andrews writes of a "new research report," he's a bit off, seeing as A) it's not new, and B) there's no report.
What seems to have happened is that in May 2008, a NASA guy wrote a general interest article, relying on NASA materials and quoting NASA researchers, about solar variability and climate change. It ran on Science Daily's site on May 12, 2008. The article is about how climate-change researchers are working to understand the relationship between solar variability and earth's atmosphere, in order to more accurately measure and predict the real global warming problem happening now, being caused by man-made emissions. (Andrews concedes that the "NASA study" blames current global warming on human behavior, but writes that this was where the study "went badly off the tracks.")
Andrews appears to have just stumbled across the article, didn't notice the old date, mistook it to be refering to a new study, completely misinterpreted the actual substance of the article, and -- voila! -- hot news item!
