A few days ago, House Republicans held their first hearing on climate science. Actually, as John Broder reported in the NYT, the ostensible purpose of the hearing was
to review the economic impact of pending limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. But much of the discussion focused instead on whether climate science supports the agency's finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to health and the environment; that finding is what makes the gases subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Broder does a nice job distilling the highlights to support his nutgraph (what much of the hearing's discussion focused on). But if you want a saltier taste of the event, head over to The Economist's Democracy in America blog, where this post gives you the same news while also deconstructing the absurdist kabuki nature of a typical congressional hearing. Posts like this demonstrate why reporting-centric blogs at magazines are much more engaging than those at newspapers. For example, I really like the Green blog at the NYT, but its style is only marginally less dispassionate than the house style of official NYT news stories. In that sense, the blog serves as just another platform to report environment and energy related stories, which is great in of itself. But if you want some color and verve with your news, you'll have to look elsewhere, and that is usually at magazine blogs like Democracy in America.
