Shoulda known not to sneer at a sailor
Dan Xavier posted a detailed response to my recent post making fun of Adrian Flanagan, who is attempting to be the first solo sailor to complete a vertical circumnavigation of the globe.
It is a form response he has been posting in response to a blog post written by P.J. Gladnick over at NewsBusters. Gladnick picked up the same story I did, referencing a Moscow News Weekly article headlined Global Warming is Here. The Russian article, dated 16 August 2007, was an Agence France-Presse wire service piece penned by Nick Coleman. It appeared under the headline Drip, drip of global warming spells change in northern Russia, and was published on 25 July 2007 on various alarmist sites, such as stopglobalwarming.org and Terra Daily.
Besides for the general theme that Russia’s northern ice is melting because of climate change, the article contains the line:
Contacted by AFP he [Flanagan] said that the ice looked set to recede at least as far as in 2005, which was a record year.
Gladnick’s article was the “false story” Flanagan linked to on his own blog, explaining:
After a badly written piece for a French news wire service, a false story has started circulating through the Internet.
Gladnick clearly took the AFP report at face value, as I did, and thought the Herald Sun report on his lack of progress to be pretty funny. The AFP’s articles and photographs are usually published on Yahoo! News. The search result that appeared most promising, however, has been removed. This isn’t the first time that an embarrassing AFP item mysteriously vanishes from Yahoo! News. I also have no faith in its ability to get the facts straight when it involves pet advocacy issues such as global warming.
Xavier’s explanation suggests that the AFP is indeed where the false connection with global warming originated, and that neither he nor Flanagan harbour the same faith.
Perhaps I should have guessed that the mainstream media — as opposed to a clearly experienced sailor — would be the gullible party in this story.
