I can think of three things in particular that you published back then that pushed me in this direction. One, interestingly enough, was the article about Kilimanjaro that you mention above. You indicate that the article was about a scientific debate. But it was also about media coverage, it had rather an ironic take on environmentalism, and it questioned the reality of global warming in general. One of the experts you chose to trot out was Pat Michaels, an open anti-global warming propogandist, whose newsletter was funded by coal companies from its inception and who had blatantly falsified a scientific paper by Jim Hansen in some testimony he had given to Congress. (That’s what I mean by intellectual dishonesty.) There was Michaels on a par with Lonnie Thompson. You were teaching the controversy, Andy, just as Michaels and his wealthy backers would have wanted you to. I remember giving your article to my girlfriend to read. She’s quite intelligent, but she wasn’t up on the science or the subtleties of the public relations war. When she finished reading, she said, “Oh, so global warming probably isn’t happening, right?”

As for the debate about whether warming has anything to do with the melting of the Snows of Kilimanjaro, I have a long endnote about that in Thin Ice. To me Kaser’s analysis has always seemed simplistic, and, as Lonnie says, untested. It’s more-or-less pure conjecture. And I find the interpretation of Doug Hardy’s weather station data somewhat ludicrous. I suspect there are surface effects close to the snow, which his sensors, located a meter or two above it, miss. Doug’s overall understanding might have benefited from a look around while he was setting up his weather station. (Simple observation, properly recorded, constitutes perfectly valid scientific data.) He was standing on slushy snow, he had walked around large puddles on the surface of the glacier to get there, and he was filling his water bottles and cooking his meals with meltwater from the glacier. A huge waterfall issued from its surface about a hundred yards from our campsite. Yet he agrees with Kaser that the snow is subliming away, not melting. I was there when Doug and Matthias set up the weather station. I watched and heard that glacier melt away all day every day for about four weeks. I flatly disbelieve the sublimation argument. But even if sublimation is the main culprit, as Doug’s former thesis advisor and the lead author of the sublimation paper, Ray Bradley, once said to me, “Look. There’s no way on Earth that every glacier in the world outside of Scandinavia is disappearing as a result of global warming; and here’s this glacier in the tropics that is somehow disappearing, but it’s not related to global warming. Give me a break.”

In 2006, when the IPCC report and Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” came out, some media outlets, such as Time, ABC News, and 60 Minutes finally began reporting that global warming was real and was actually happening–a few years too late. At that point you made an interesting move that I still see as an attempt at media one-upsmanship. You and your august publication scrambled for the high journalistic ground. You retreated into a lofty (dare we say arrogant?) skepticism and accused the other media outlets of having forsaken their senses, more-or-less. By that time, the scientific case for global warming was undeniable. Yet in this video, you asserted that climate scientists didn’t know much of anything at all. Your closing line was “What do we really know?”

I think climate scientists know a lot, Andy, and that it’s the responsibility of some journalists–not yourself evidently–to make that knowledge clear. Meanwhile, I wish you all the fun in the world expressing your opinions, cherishing your nuance, teaching your controversy, and entertaining oh so sophisticated friends in your ever-expanding hall of mirrors.

You’ve perhaps conflated my hundreds of pieces, over 25 years, focused on the science pointing to human-driven climate change with those focused on the policy fight over responses to climate change — which involves many factions, far more layers of wicked complexity, and inevitably a prismatic approach. (Among other coverage, you probably missed my 1994 magazine piece on retreating glaciers, featuring Lonnie. Give it a read, and a grade.)

Justin’s piece, while a beautiful profile, (surely for space reasons and to keep it oriented to a human-interest audience) glosses over significant and legitimate scientific debate over Kilimanjaro conclusions and doesn’t get into Lonnie’s shift into advocacy (akin to the one you chronicled in your book on Jim Hansen) — which also comes with more complications and legitimate room for disagreement.

My hope is that Lonnie’s new heart gives him the power to climb new mountains and old ones (and also provides many more years for Lonnie and Ellen to enjoy together). My hope for you is that you can learn to avoid oversimplified distillations of what is, and isn’t, responsible journalism.