White House Science Czar John Holdren has a weak hold on facts. At least as they pertain to The Daily Caller. Last week, in a follow-up testimony he provided to the Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, he claimed that University of Colorado climate scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. published a story in The Daily Caller criticizing Holdren.
Except, well, he didn’t.
Pielke tweeted criticisms of Holdren from the czar’s Feb. 14 testimony that stated that Pielke’s views were not representative of the mainstream scientific community — which irked Pielke. The article that Holdren was referring to was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation on February 14. The story discussed Pielke and former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer’s criticisms of Holdren’s drought claims. Holdren wrote, “Dr. Pielke also commented directly, in a number of tweets on February 14 and thereafter, on my February 13 statements to reporters about the California drought, and he elaborated on the tweets for a blog post on The Daily Caller site (also on February 14).”
Why Holdren could not tell whose byline was on the article is a mystery. Pielke was also perturbed by Holdren’s sloppy attempt to discredit Pielke by linking him to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Let me be quite clear — I did not write anything for ‘The Daily Caller’ nor did I speak or otherwise communicate to anyone there,” Pielke wrote on his personal blog. “Why that blog has any relevance to my standing in the ‘scientific mainstream’ eludes me, but whatever. This sort of sloppiness is inexcusable.”
Pielke called the czar’s error typical of what happens on blogs, but “unbecoming of the science advisor to the most powerful man on the planet.”
But Pielke may also not be the brightest bulb in the bunch, as his grasp on modern journalism lingo is shaky. The Daily Caller is not a “blog” as he states above. And the 12 million readers who visit the site each month may be able to attest to that. The Mirror, however, is a blog and one that Pielke, Holdren and the other wonks should read often to brush up on their Washington media and gossip news.